Attributed to Sir Anthony van Dyck

(Antwerp 1599-1641 London)

Portrait of a man in profile facing to the right, in a white ruff, black tunic and gold chain, within a painted oval

Footnotes

Provenance
The Collection of Jules Strauss
With Thos Agnew's, London, 1968, from where purchased in 1997
Private Collection, UK, until offered
Sale, Bonhams, London, 5 July 2017, lot 35, where purchased by the present owner

Exhibited
Yokohama, Sogo Museum of Art, Anthony van Dyck, August-September 1990, cat. no. 5 (as van Dyck, circa 1617-19)
Shizuoka, Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, Anthony van Dyck, October- November 1990, cat. no. 5 (as van Dyck, circa 1617-19)
Osaka, Museum of Art, Kintetsu, Anthony van Dyck, November-December 1990, cat. no. 5 (as van Dyck, circa 1617-19)
London, Kenwood House, Clerics and Connoisseurs: An Irish Art Collection through three centuries, 19 October 2001- 27 January 2002, cat. no. 77

Literature
E. Larsen, L'Opera completa di Van Dyck, 2 vols., Milan 1980, no. A22 (not by van Dyck)
E. Larsen, The Paintings of Anthony van Dyck, Freren, 1988, vol. II, p. 418, no. A16 (not by van Dyck), ill.
(ed) Anthony van Dyck, exh. cat., Japan, 1990, cat. no. 5
(ed) A Laing and N. Turner, Clerics and Connoisseurs: An Irish Art Collection through three centuries, London, 2001, exh. cat., pp. 281-2, cat. no. 77, ill.

Whilst Larsen had previously rejected the attribution of the present work to van Dyck, suggesting that it may be by another master such as Jan Boeckhorst, subsequent research has drawn attention to its similarity to a series of sketches of civic dignitaries shown bust length in oval stone frames, painted by van Dyck in preparation for a group portrait of the 1627/8 Brussels city council. The final portrait was lost in the 1695 French bombardment of Brussels. Horst Vey noted that the series of portraits was painted in a 'strikingly spontaneous manner', with none of the sitters 'looking at the viewer' (see 'Van Dyck's Two Lost Group Portraits for the Brussels Town Hall', Van Dyck, 1599-1999: Conjectures and Refutations, ed. by H. Vlieghe, pp. 65-75). Other sketches in the series are in the Metheun Collection, Corsham Court, Wiltshire, and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

The connection of the present portrait to the series is further endorsed by the old inscription which gives the sitter's office as 'shepen' (magistrate), with the number '4', suggesting it was part of a sequence. The sitter may then be identified as A. R. Shut, or Schutt.