Barent Gael (1630/1635 – 1698)
Pair of landscapes with genre scenes
(2) Oil on canvas, 33 x 40.5 cm
With frame, 48 x 54.5 cm
The two oil paintings on canvas are by the painter Baren Gael, born in Haarlem in 1630. Initially active in his father's workshop, Gael was already registered with the local painters' guild in 1642, although the early part of his body of work is unknown. He was most likely a student of Philips Wouwerman (1619–1668), who himself owed to an apprenticeship with Frans Hals (1582-1666) and Pieter Verbeck (1610–1654). He broke away from Wouwerman's painting around the 1660s, as documented by A. Houbraken (De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlantse Konstschilders... vol. 3, 1753). Part of the inspiration relating to the 'macchiettistico' genre and representative formalism, also evident in these paintings, certainly came to Gael from his colleagues in Haarlem; after leaving this city between 1661 and 1673, when he reached Amsterdam, the artist continued his production teeming with peasant scenes in the manner of Adriaen and Isaac van Ostade. In continuity with the entire sixteenth-century Flemish production, Gael also reprises in this pair the typical dualism of Dutch genre scenes, introducing on the one hand the serenity of the natural element, and on the other the tumultuous vitality of life, sometimes accompanied by scenes of a religious, amorous nature or small battle scenes. The artist stopped dating his works in 1681, although the historiographical conviction of the past, which held him inactive at the easel between the 1680s and 1690s, is incorrect.
Today, several paintings by Gael can be admired in museum institutions such as the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Birmingham Museums Trust, and the Luigi Mallè Museum in Dronero. The artist's concomitant graphic production, often exceeding the mere purpose of study, falls fully within the tradition of Dutch 'bozzettismo', as demonstrated by the Scene with Horseman now at the British Museum in London.
