Gerard I Hoet, Bacchanalia, Oil On Panel

Gerard I Hoet (attr.)
(1648 - 1733)

Bacchanalia
oil on panel, cm. 68x53.5
Within a gilded and carved wooden frame

The painting, oil on panel in very good general condition, depicts a bacchanal scene with a dance of satyrs, cherubs and girls in scantily clad clothes. An old Bacchus seated at the bottom right, with a large shell at his side, follows the scene with his right arm raised. The whole is set within a pleasant landscape with two tall trees full of fronds dominating the central part of the table and ideally dividing the right side of the work - a simple rocky background - from the left side, richer and brighter with a clear landscape of green valleys and mountains in the background.

The work can rightfully be attributed to the Flemish painter Gerard I Hoet (not to be confused with his son, Gerard II), son of Moses Hoet, a stained glass decorator, who was also his first teacher. Initially assisted his father in his profession, then became his pupil, Warnard van Rysen.

In 1672, due to the capture of Zaltbommel by the French, he moved to The Hague where he worked on the decoration of halls and ceilings in some of the main hotels in the city and subsequently moved to Amsterdam and Paris. After a year, he returned to North Holland and settled in Utrecht, invited there by M.van Zuylen, one of the leading patrons of the period, for whom he executed some of his best works. In this city, in 1697, he founded a drawing academy together with Hendrick Schoock, of which he was director.

Hoet followed large-scale paintings, often with many figures, in a classically elegant style but mainly produced works of religious, mythological or classical subjects, usually in a small format, with landscapes in the style of Cornelis van Poelenburch as a background. The work presented here fits perfectly into the vein of this latter type of work, a work that is pleasing in terms of subject, quality and size and worthy of a primary collection.