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Lumen Portengen(Utrecht 1608-1649)A music party in an interior
Sold for £23,040 inc. premium
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Poppy Harvey-Jones
Head of Sale

Lisa Greaves
Head of Department
Lumen Portengen (Utrecht 1608-1649)
oil on canvas
133.8 x 164.6cm (52 11/16 x 64 13/16in).
Footnotes
Provenance
Collection of Henri Barbier, Geneva, before 1950
The Zanchi Collection, Switzerland, before 1981
Sale, Lempertz, Cologne, 16 May 2018, lot 1046, where purchased by the present owner
Literature
W.L. van de Watering,'Petrus, Roetert en Lumen Portengen', in Oud Holland 82, 1967, p. 154, under note 22, fig. 9
T. Borgogelli, 'Per una rivalutazione di Lumen Portengen (Utrecht, 1608 ca. – 1649): il "mistero" della Scena di suicidio di Lille e altri dipinti', in Parma per l'Arte, 2022, p. 147, under note 33
Very little is known about Lumen Portengen's life, with only twelve works known to be by him in existence, but his younger brother, Roetert, and cousin, Petrus, were also artists.
The present work, traditionally ascribed to Lumen Portengen, was published by van de Watering in 1967 as by Simon Peter Tilman, an artist from Bremen active in Utrecht between 1637-1646. This attribution was overturned by Paul Huys Janssen at the time of the Lempertz sale in 2018, and he noted several characteristics of Portengen's style, such as the sharply rendered drapery, the accentuated lips and the way some of the figures lean slightly backwards or to the side. The present work can be compared to: The Concert, formerly in the Olschki Collection, Florence, now with Koetser Gallery, Zurich; and to Réunion musicale, now in musée de Tessé, Le Mans (inv. no. 18.55).
We are grateful to Tommaso Borgogelli for further confirming the attribution to Lumen Portengen upon inspection of colour photographs.
