Attributed to Bernhard Keil, called Monsù Bernardo (Elsinore 1624-1687 Rome)


A boy and a girl playing in an orchard with a dog oil on canvas164.5 x 122.2cm (64 3/4 x 48 1/8in).
|ProvenancePrivate Collection, Scotland With Kunsthandel P. de Boer, Amsterdam, 1950sCollection of F.J Sandbergen, The Netherlands, before 1986Thence by descent untilSale, Christie's, London, 2 November 2001, lot 98LiteratureW. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, vol. III, Landau/ Pfalz, 1986, p. 1462, no. 955, ill., p. 1465 (as Bernard Keil)M. Heimbürger, Bernardo Keilhau, detto Monsù Bernardo, Rome, 1988, p. 282, no. AR1, ill (under 'Attribuzioni Respinte')Sumowski, loc. cit., regarded the present lot as an autograph work by Keil and dated it to circa 1660, a period in which the artist was transitioning to a more Italian style. Although stylistically the work does not fit with much of Keil's later works, he notes comparisons to Man and woman playing instruments and Boy and a girl teasing a sleeping youth (ibid, p. 1463, nos. 966 and 967).Heimburger rejects the attribution to Keil in her 1988 monograph and suggests, with corrobation from the RKD and Rijksmuseum, that the artist is unlikely to be Dutch. She proposes that the artist might be Spanish and suggests that it could be by Pedro Nuñez de Villavicencio (1635-1700).