Rijksmuseum

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 113.8 cm × width 85.5 cm

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: I. Verslype / Z. Benders, RMA, 26 May 2009

Conservation

W.A. Hopman, 1885: lined
L. Marchand: treatment unknown
H.H. Mertens, 1960: retouched

Provenance

…; anonymous sale [? S.L. Cobetz, Middelburg], Amsterdam (Roos), 31 December 1884, no. 241, as unknown (‘Portrait of a painter’), fl. 26, to the dealer Rotteveel, for the museum;¹ on loan through the DRVK, since 1953

Object number: SK-A-847

Copyright: Public domain

Entry

The present portrait is seemingly a copy, perhaps from the later decades of the seventeenth century, of the central part of a large picture at Augsburg² which shows the artist full length seated at his easel. The status of the prototype is itself uncertain; traditionally attributed to Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641),³ doubts were rightly cast on the attribution of this work as early as 1912 and it has subsequently been little discussed in the literature on Van Dyck.⁴ By comparison with the engraved portrait in Van Dyck’s Iconography, it can certainly be stated that the sitter is the Antwerp marine painter Andries van Eertvelt (1590-1652);⁵ there the sitter is similarly depicted, but in the opposite direction, without a sword and half-length standing before open sea.

Until the status of the Augsburg portrait is clarified, the present work is best described as from the southern Netherlands.

Gregory Martin, 2022

Literature

E. Larsen, The Paintings of Anthony van Dyck, 2 vols., Freren 1988, no. A. 187

Collection catalogues

1888, p. 39, no. 312 (as after Van Dyck); 1903, p. 91, no. 859; 1976, p. 210, no. A 847 (as after Anthony van Dyck)

Citation

G. Martin, 2022, 'anonymous, Portrait of Andries van Eertvelt (1590-1652), Southern Netherlands, c. 1650 - 1700', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.7031

(accessed 28 May 2024 00:03:54).