Rhapsodies

Today’s sketch is of the painting “Boys Blowing Bubbles” a Flemish painting attributed to Michelaena Woutiers (The best article I could find on her was in Dutch, Sorry) Done in the 1640s in oil and is one of the Museum’s better examples of Chiaroscuro.  A and a nice example of Flemish artists tendency to focus on slice of life scenes. In this case two boys playing (or at least one boy playing.. based on his facial features I have the sneaking suspicion that the other boy is a dwarf.)

When I was doing a little bit of research on this piece I stumbled over an interesting article from the Stranger about it. Until 2002 it had been attributed to Jacob van Oost, a 17th-century painter from Bruges. Regrettably little is known about Woutiers, one of the rare female court artists at the time, and credit was given to the slightly better known Van Oost.