Elderly Man, Head and Shoulders

anonymous, c. 1650

Een oude man met witte baard. Buste, en face, in een geschilderd ovaal, met een hoed op het hoofd.

  • Artwork typepainting
  • Object numberSK-A-947
  • Dimensionsouter size: height 29.9 cm x width 26.2 cm x depth 4.8 cm (support incl. frame), support: height 17 cm x width 12.8 cm
  • Physical characteristicsoil on panel

anonymous

Elderly Man, Head and Shoulders

Southern Netherlands, c. 1650

Scientific examination and reports

  • technical report: M. van de Laar, RMA, 24 januari 2006
  • dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 18 februari 2010

Provenance

…; from Jonkheer Jacob Eduard van Heemskerck van Beest (1828-94), Utrecht, The Hague and Dalfsen, with the rest of his collection, en bloc, fl. 20,000, to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague, 1878; transferred to the museum, 1885

Object number: SK-A-947


Entry

The painting came to the museum as the work of an unknown master and its status remains uncertain; it may well date from about the middle of the seventeenth century and have been executed in the southern Netherlands. The quality is indifferent; the artist was perhaps inspired by David Teniers II’s (1610-1690) renderings of peasants, for instance, the pair in a private collection (ex-The Earls Spencer, Althorp), dated by Klinge to the mid-1640s.1M. Klinge, David Teniers de Jonge. Schilderijen, tekeningen, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1991, nos. 46A/B. The support of Baltic oak would have been long since available for use.

Gregory Martin, 2022


Collection catalogues

1976, pp. 692-3, no. A 947 (as Southern Netherlands? second quarter of the seventeenth century?)


Citation

G. Martin, 2022, 'anonymous, Elderly Man, Head and Shoulders, Southern Netherlands, c. 1650', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20027017

(accessed 22 December 2025 00:03:12).

Footnotes

  • 1M. Klinge, David Teniers de Jonge. Schilderijen, tekeningen, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1991, nos. 46A/B.