Art and Monarchy 1714-1760
ANTHONY VAN DYCK (1599-1641)
Portrait of a Man
c. 1630Oil on canvas | 70.9 x 59.3 cm (support, canvas/panel/stretcher external) | RCIN 406036
This was until recently believed to be a contemporary copy after a lost Van Dyck portrait. It has however been convincingly suggested that this is the Van Dyck original; the handling certainly has the freshness and vigour of an original rather than a copy and the quality is sufficient to suggest Van Dyck's hand.
The sitter cannot be identified but the portrait belongs to the artist's second Flemish period (c.1630), when he painted a number of heads which are loosely finished and many of them, like this one, set in a fictive oval frame by a later hand. It has been suggested that they may have been from-the-life studies for Van Dyck’s most prestigious commission, the group portrait of 23 Brussels city councillors, destroyed in 1695.
The sitter cannot be identified but the portrait belongs to the artist's second Flemish period (c.1630), when he painted a number of heads which are loosely finished and many of them, like this one, set in a fictive oval frame by a later hand. It has been suggested that they may have been from-the-life studies for Van Dyck’s most prestigious commission, the group portrait of 23 Brussels city councillors, destroyed in 1695.
