Boy Blowing on Charcoal by Schalcken

Acquisition of painting, A Boy Blowing on Charcoal by Schlacken. The picture, painted in the fine and smooth technique of the Dutch fijnschilder, depicts a night scene with a boy blowing on a lump of charcoal. Schalken specialised in this subject. Although the exact meaning of the boy with a firebrand is not known today, it derived from a painting by the Italian artist Jacopo Bassano (1557-1622) and was also enthusiastically adopted by El Greco (1541-1614), who incorporated the motif in his Allegory, also in the collection of the National Gallery of Scotland.