The support consists of three vertically grained oak panels and is bevelled on all sides. The ground is grey in colour. The condition of the painting makes it impossible to comment on the original paint layers.

Poor. Much of the original paint in the figure’s face and collar has been scraped off. About ninety percent of the existing paint is not original. The coats of arms and the date were painted in in the 19th century.

…; sale, Dr Hendrik Jan Broers (1815-76), Utrecht (J.L. Beijers), 8 March 1873 sqq., no. 3128, as Portrait of Joris Cats, fl. 50, to Engelberts, for the museum¹¹RANH, ARM, Kop, inv. 39, pp. 124-25 (17 March 1873); RANH, ARM, IS, inv. 31, no. 97 (16 March 1873).

Object number: SK-A-328

Since at least the 1873 sale where the painting was purchased by the museum, the sitter in this terribly mutilated bust-length portrait has been identified as Joris van Cats (c. 1590-1654), successively Captain (from 1621), Commodore (from 1640) and Rear-Admiral (from 1647) of the Admiralty of Amsterdam. This identification was probably based on the Cats family coat of arms in the upper left corner of the painting and the gold chain of honour worn by the sitter.²²The coat of arms in the upper right corner has not been identified. This coat of arms, however, is a later addition to the painting, probably from the 19th century. There are no secure portraits of Joris van Cats, and the identification should, therefore, be treated with scepticism.

The work was recorded under Van Ravesteyn’s name in the museum’s late 19th-century collection catalogues, the 1887 catalogue including Abraham Bredius’s conviction in a note that Evert Crijnszn van der Maes was the actual author.³³Moes I, 1897, p. 172, no. 1507, also attributed it to Van Ravesteyn. Only about ten percent of the paint layer is original, however, making an attribution futile. The 1621 date inscribed at bottom right is not original, but does accord well with the sitter’s ruff.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 422.

1876, p. 160, no. 318 (as Jan Anthonisz van Ravesteyn, Portrait of Joris van Cats); 1880, p. 254, no. 286 (as Jan Anthonisz van Ravesteyn, Portrait of Joris van Cats); 1887, p. 139, no. 1165 (as Jan Anthonisz van Ravesteyn, Portrait of Joris van Cats); 1903, p. 19, no. 198 (as Portrait of Joris van Cats); 1976, pp. 658-59, no. A 328 (as Portrait of Joris van Cats); 2007, no. 422

J. Bikker, 2007, 'anonymous, Portrait of a Man, possibly Joris van Cats (c. 1590-1654), c. 1621', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20025876