Landscape with Goats and a Statue of Laocoön
Abraham Cornelisz Begeyn (Leiden 1637/38 - Berlin 1697)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
circa 1673
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
832 x 997 mm (32 ¾ x 39 ¼ in)
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Ham House, Surrey
NT 1139653
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Landscape with Goats and the Statue of Laocoön by Abraham Cornelisz. Begeyn, known as Bega (Leiden 1637/8 - Berlin 1697). A.Bega fecit [or possibly] AC Bega fecit [the signature is not clear]. In a forest, with two goats at the base of the ancient statue group of the death of Laocoön, the Trojan priest, and his sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus, where they are seen struggling against the sea serpents that eventaully kill them which was unearthed in Rome in 1506. A distant horizon with cloudy sky to the right.
Provenance
Originally one of three inset paintings by Bega in the Gentlewoman’s Chamber, painted for the Duke & Duchess of Lauderdale; in the 1677 inventory; acquired in 1948 by HM Government when Sir Lyonel, 4th Bt (1854 – 1952) and Sir Cecil Tollemache, 5th Bt (1886 – 1969) presented Ham House to the National Trust, and entrusted to the care of the Victoria & Albert Museum, until 1990, when returned to the care of the National Trust, and to which ownership was transferred in 2002
Credit line
Ham House, The Dysart Collection (purchased by HM Government in 1948 and transferred to the National Trust in 2002)
Makers and roles
Abraham Cornelisz Begeyn (Leiden 1637/38 - Berlin 1697) , artist previously catalogued as attributed to Dirck van Bergen (Haarlem c.1645 – Haarlem c.1690), artist
References
Ogden 1955 Henry V.S.Ogden and Margaret S. Ogden, English Taste in Landscape in the Seventeenth Century, Michigan, 1955, p. 120 Whinney and Millar 1957 Margaret Whinney and Olivar Millar, English Art 1625 - 1714, 1957, p. 237