Cornelis Bega (Haarlem 1631/32–1664) Card players in an interior, oil on canvas, 31 x 26.2 cm, framed Provenance: Collection of Otto Prutscher (1880–1949), Vienna; thence by descent to the present owner We are grateful to Fred Meijer for confirming the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a photograph. He suggests a date of execution around 1660. The present canvas is a characteristic work by Bega, a pupil of Adriaen van Ostade, who specialised like his master in evocative and often humorous Dutch interior scenes, known as genre-paintings. He also rendered inventive mockeries of astrologers and alchemists with accomplished still lifes of their various laboratory paraphernalia scattered throughout. Although typically Haarlem in its handling, and exuding Bega’s mature style, the clustering of course-featured card-players around a wine butt in the present painting appears to owe something to the oeuvre of a Flemish master of the prior generation, Adriaen Brouwer. The grandson of the celebrated Mannerist painter Cornelis van Haarlem, Bega’s first dated work is from 1652, and by 1654 he was accepted into the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke. His vibrant career was cut short, according to Houbraken, by an outbreak of plague in 1662.