Adriaen van der Werff

Circle of ADRIEAEN VAN DER WERFF ( Kralingen, 1659 - Rotterdam, 1722).
"The banishment of Hagar".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Measurements: 89 x 69,5 cm.
This biblical scene combines a narrative treatment of moralizing character with a careful idealization of the figures, typical of the classicist and academic taste of Adriaen van der Werff's environment. The composition derives directly from the version preserved in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Abraham's Expulsion of Hagar, one of the artist's most widespread images, which explains the existence of numerous copies and variants made by his workshop and followers. There is also a copy in grisaille by Bernard Picart dated 1721, preserved in the Louvre Museum, which shows the wide international diffusion of the model.
Adriaen van der Werff, trained in his youth with Eglon van der Neer, developed an early successful career in Rotterdam, where he achieved great prestige for his religious and mythological compositions and portraits. His style, of great technical refinement and marked idealization, earned him the appointment as court painter to the Elector Palatine John William in 1697, who also granted him a noble title and pension.
Considered in his time as the most outstanding Dutch painter of his generation, Van der Werff was later criticized for his departure from the Dutch naturalist tradition, favoring an academic aesthetic, polished and of great formal perfection. Nevertheless, his production exerted a notable influence on European taste in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
The present canvas, linked to his circle, reflects precisely that tendency to the repetition of successful models, adapted by the workshop and its followers, with a high degree of finish and a clear desire for idealization. The result is an image with a strong narrative and moral charge, typical of the academic painting of the late Dutch Baroque.