…; sale, Antonius Wilhelmus Mari Mensing et al. [section Hermanus Philippus Gerritsen (1850-1917, The Hague)], Amsterdam (F. Muller), 29 (1 December) November 1939 sqq., no. 98, with over 2,100 other objects, bought in at fl. 3,000;¹¹Copy RKD. from the auction house F. Muller, fl. 3,725, en bloc, to the dealer P. Brandt, Amsterdam, for the museum, 1940, with support from the F.G. Waller-fonds

Object number: RP-T-1940-465

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the F.G. Waller-Fonds

This is a copy of a portrait drawing of Jan de Bray (1627-1697) by his brother Dirck de Bray (c. 1635-1694), possibly the sheet in black and white chalk on blue paper in the Noord-Hollandsarchief, Haarlem (inv. no. 49350),²²Cf. https://www.geschiedenislokaal023.nl/bronnen/jan-de-bray/. which is inscribed on the mount, JAN DE BRAY SCHILDER, Zoon van Salomon de Bray. / Dirck de Bray pinx: 1675. Possibly either that drawing or the present copy was later used as the basis of a wood engraving (1841-42), in reverse, by the German Monogrammist M (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-31.668). If the Noord-Hollandsarchief drawing is by Dirck, it may have served him for his depiction of Jan holding a drawing pad on the left of Jan’s signed and dated painting of that year, the Portrait of the Governors of the Haarlem Guild of St Luke, in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. SK-A-58). For his part, Jan was responsible for the portraits of four of the seven sitters, including that of his brother Dirck (seated at the far right of the picture).

Jane Shoaf Turner, 2025

J. Shoaf Turner, 2025, 'anonymous, Portrait of Jan de Bray, 1800 - 1900', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200140943