Portrait of a Man, Probably Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668)

…;  sale, Johann August Gottlieb Weigel (1773-1846, Leipzig), Stuttgart (H.G. Gutekunst), 15 May 1883 sqq., no. 1120 (‘Cornelius Visscher. Junger Mann im Mantel, die Rechte augestreckt. Brustbild en face. L. 31 cm, Br. 24½ cm. Schwarze Kreide und Tusche auf Pergament. Prachtstück’), fl. 351, to the dealer F. Muller, Amsterdam;¹¹Copy RKD; according to an inscription on the drawing. …; bequeathed by Daniel Franken Dzn (1838-98), Amsterdam and Le Vésinet, to the museum (L. 2228), 1898

ObjectNumber: RP-T-1898-A-4019

Credit line: D. Franken Bequest, Le Vésinet

According to the late nineteenth-century inscription on the verso, this is a portrait of the Haarlem painter Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668). Although it is impossible to confirm the identity of the sitter with certainty, the same man is portrayed in Visscher’s drawing in the Louvre, Paris (inv. no. 23120),²²F. Lugt, Musée du Louvre: Inventaire général des dessins des écoles du Nord: École Hollandaise, 3 vols., coll. cat. Paris 1929-33, II (1931), no. 866. which was engraved as a portrait of Wouwerman by Nicolas Dupuis (c. 1698-1771) circa 1734 (e.g. British Museum, London, inv. no. 1910,0610.72). If an image of the present sheet is overlaid with an image of the Louvre drawing, the structure of the man’s face, with his long nose, widely spaced, slightly droopy eyes and parted hair, is identical.³³Information courtesy of Jane Turner. By contrast, the sitter in the Amsterdam drawing is less comparable to the man depicted in the so-called red chalk Self-portrait of Wouwerman in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1836,0811.586).⁴⁴A.M. Hind, Catalogue of Drawings by Dutch and Flemish Artists Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, 5 vols., coll. cat. London 1915-32, IV (1931), no. 1; F.J. Duparc, ‘Philips Wouwerman, 1619-1668’, Oud Holland 107 (1993), no. 3, p. 259 (fig. 1). The traditional identification of this drawing as by Wouwerman and as a self-portrait was recently questioned by A. Stefes, ‘Did Philips Wouwerman Draw with Red Chalk?’, Master Drawings 57 (2019), no. 4, pp. 455-74.

The present drawing is a free copy after a signed sheet in the Groninger Museum (inv. no. 1931.0239).⁵⁵J. Bolten, Dutch Drawings from the Collection of Dr C. Hofstede de Groot, Utrecht 1967, no. 113; oral communication John Hawley, 30 August 2016. In that drawing, details, such as the tassels under the man’s flat collar and the embroidery on his manchettes, are more carefully rendered than in the Amsterdam version, whose handling of line and hatching in the sitter’s face are, moreover, less refined. Perhaps the present sheet was made as a training exercise in the artist’s studio. The copyist started off well with the sitter’s face, but he went wrong with the cloak wrapped around the man’s body, which appears flat and awkwardly modelled. He probably tried to correct his mistake by emphasizing the folds with some pen and ink and grey wash. However, vellum barely absorbs ink, which makes it impossible to create the velvety nuances Visscher achieved in black chalk.

What appears to be an eighteenth-century copy after the Groningen drawing is in the Leiden University Library (inv. no. PK-T-3643).

Bonny van Sighem, 2000/Marleen Ram, 2019

Getekende Nederlandsche portretten, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet) 1905, no. 55 (as Cornelis Visscher); M.D. Henkel, ‘Ausstellung von Handzeichnungen Holländischer Meister aus dem Besitz von Dr. C. Hofstede de Groot in der Tuchhalle in Leiden’, Kunstchronik 27 (1915-16), no. 35 (1916), p. 342 (as Cornelis Visscher); F. Lugt, Musée du Louvre: Inventaire général des dessins des écoles du Nord: École Hollandaise, 3 vols., coll. cat. Paris 1929-33, II (1931), p. 53, under no. 866 (as Cornelis Visscher); H. van Hall, Portretten van Nederlandse beeldende kunstenaars, Amsterdam 1963, no. 6, p. 355, under no. 11 (as Cornelis Visscher); J. Bolten, Dutch Drawings from the Collection of Dr C. Hofstede de Groot, Utrecht 1967, p. 129, under no. 113 (as Cornelis Visscher); A. Stefes, ‘Did Philips Wouwerman Draw with Red Chalk?’, Master Drawings 57 (2019), no. 4, p. 472 (n. 15)

B. van Sighem, 2000/M. Ram, 2019, 'anonymous, Portrait of a Man, Probably Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668), c. 1650 - c. 1700', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.63771