Two Boys Blowing Bubbles | |
Artist: | Michaelina Wautier |
Year: | 1640s |
Medium: | Oil on canvas |
Height Metric: | 90.5 |
Width Metric: | 121.3 |
Metric Unit: | cm |
Imperial Unit: | in |
Two Boys Blowing Bubbles is a painting by the seventeenth-century Walloon artist Michaelina Wautier. It has been suggested that the painting is a double portrait, given the specific facial expressions and costumes of the two boys depicted are so distinctive.[1] Besides the two boys, the painting depicts a candle and a sandtimer. As with the bubble, both are symbolic of the passing of time, and were familiar motifs in seventeenth-century painting.[2]
The painting was previously attributed to Jacob van Oost. However, research done in 2007 led to the re-attribution to Wautier.[3]
The painting hangs in the Seattle Art Museum who purchased it in 1958.[4] A second version by Wautier is in a private collection in Spain. A third painting, executed in the eighteenth century and copying just the boy on the right, is in the Collection des Musee d'Amiens, France.