…; 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

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.¹¹M. 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

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

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