Putti with military equipment,
oil on canvas, 73 x 59 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, van Ham, Cologne, 18 November 2016, lot 548 (as Johann Conrad Seekatz)

The present composition illustrates both the wit and innovation of this intriguing German painter of the mid-eighteenth century, who was able to marry scenes of ‘low’ rural life, in the tradition of Adriaen Brouwer, with the pomp and circumstance of the Baroque. Executed around the time of the War of the Austrian Succession, which saw many battles over towns on the river Main, the meaning of the picture has puzzled historians. The regimental standards, drums and uniforms depicted are used as playthings by the putti, who slouch around the picture space. This humorous juxtaposition of militaria with putti lacking either discipline or posture would not have been lost on somebody like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose family the artist Johann Conrad Seekatz and other artists, portrayed in Frankfurt. The colours of many nations, with arms laid on the ground, may allude to the Peace of Aix-le-Chapelle, following Britain (characterised by its red-coated soldiers) and its allies defeat of the French and its allied army at Dettingen, an event immortalised in Georg Friedrich Händel’s Dettingen Te Deum.