Jan Boeckhorst (1604-1668)

Jan Boeckhorst (Münster or Rees 1604 – 1668 Antwerp)

The Supper at Emmaus

Oil on paper, laid down on panel, 152 x 200 mm (6 x 7.9 inch)

Provenance
- With Rafael Valls, London, and shown at TEFAF, Maastricht, March 1999
- Private Collection, The Netherlands

Literature
Maria Galen, Johann Boeckhorst, Gemälde und Zeichnungen, Hamburg 2012, p. 283, No. Z28, repr. (colour)

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Jan Boeckhorst was born in Westphalia as the son of the mayor of Münster, Heinrich Bockhorst, and moved to Antwerp around 1626, where he was taught by Jacob Jordaens and Peter Paul Rubens. Boeckhorst finished paintings started by the great Antwerp master and also collaborated on large projects, such as the work celebrating the joyous entry of Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635.

From 1635 to 1639 Boeckhorst travelled in Italy, and joined the ‘Bentveughels’ in Rome, where he took the pseudonym ‘Lange Jan’ (Tall Jan). After his return to Antwerp he specialsed in painting large-scale religious works for many churches and monasteries in the Southern Netherlands, promoting the virtues of the Counter Reformation.

The present informal and rapid sketch, executed very much in the manner of Rubens’s oil sketches, has recently been published by Maria Galen in the new catalogue raisonné of Boeckhorst’s works. Galen dates our sketch around 1652/53, and points out that it was engraved by Cornelis Galle as a vignette for Dominica Resurrectionis, which also has scenes of the Resurrection and Noli me Tangere (see last figs).¹ Our oil sketch is in mirror image to the engraving, and together with the fact that the hound and small table in the foreground are lacking in the print, this indicates that the oil sketch was made in preparation for the engraver. Oil sketches by Boeckhorst are extremely rare.

EUR 5250

^{1. Maria Galen, Johann Boeckhorst, Gemälde und Zeichnungen, Hamburg 2013, pp. 280-81, No. Z27.}

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