In 17C, the Dutch school of painting became one of the leading in Europe. It was here, for the first time in history of world art, that the objects of the surrounding reality turned out to be a source of creative inspiration and painters design. In portraits, domestic paintings, landscapes and still lifes, artists with rare skill and warmth conveyed their impressions of the surrounding nature and unpretentious life. Painters earned selling paintings that were painted with the possibility of detailed viewing at close range. This, in turn, gave rise to a particularly thorough, subtle style of painted. Oil paintings on parquetted wood panels, later frames of 19th century. Both signed C. Bega, we are also inclined that this is painter.

Size app.: 25 x 19 cm (roughly 9.8 x 7.5 in), frame 32.5 x 26.2 cm (roughly 12.8 x 10.4 in). Very Good condition, wear, cleaning, retouches, conservation; parquetting of cracked (1) panels. Please study good resolution images for precise cosmetic condition. Weight of app. 3 kg is going to measure 5 kg packed for shipment.

Cornelis Pietersz Bega, or Cornelis Pietersz Begijn (1631/32 – 1664) was a Dutch Golden Age painter and engraver. He assumed the name Bega when he started working professionally. He was a student of Adriaen van Ostade, and produced genre scenes of similar subjects, typically groups of a few peasant figures, often in interior settings, or fanciful figures such as The Alchemist (Malibu) or The Astrologer (London). From 1653 to 1654 he traveled by horse and boat on a Grand Tour with fellow painters Dirk Helmbreker, Vincent van der Vinne and Guillam Dubois through Germany, Switzerland and France. This trip was recorded in Vincent van der Vinne's diaries and gives an accurate view of the art in the cities they visited in those times. His dated works begin in 1652, and in 1654 he was accepted into the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke, dying only ten years later, which according to Houbraken was due to the plague. He was close friends with the Haarlem painter Leendert van der Cooghen. When he died he was buried in the grave of his grandfather Cornelis van Haarlem.