Portrait of a young gentleman, three-quarter-length, standing next to a table with a hat and a watch

Details

GERARD TER BORCH II (ZWOLLE 1617-1681 DEVENTER)
Portrait of a young gentleman, three-quarter-length, standing next to a table with a hat and a watch
oil on canvas
19 3⁄8 x 16 ½ in. (49.3 x 41.9 cm.)

Provenance

Prince Serge Wladimirowitch Koudacheff (1863-1933), St. Petersburg.
Arthur Kay (1861-1939), Glasgow, 1895.
with F. Kleinberger, Paris.
Ludwig J. Mandl (1860-1916), and Albine Mandl (1864-1941), Wiesbaden, by 1910.
Anonymous sale [Par ordre d'un éxecuteur testamantaire]; Frederik Muller & Cie, Amsterdam, 10 July 1923, lot 130, where presumably unsold, and reoffered,
[M..., de Wiesbaden]; Frederik Muller & Cie, Amsterdam, 13 July 1926, lot 658.
Dr. Cornelis Johannes Karel van Aalst, Hoevelaken (1866-1939), and by descent to his son,
Dirk Johannes van Aalst (d. 1965), from whose heirs acquired in October 1965 by,
with Hans Cramer, The Hague, until at least 1979, where acquired by the seller at the following,
Anonymous sale [The Property of a Lady]; Sotheby's London, 4 July 2013, lot 184.

Literature

Vingt-cinq Tableaux de la Collection du Prince Serge Wladimirowitch Koudacheff à St Péterbourg (Mokhowaja 6.), St Petersburg, 1902, p. 6.
C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century, London, 1912, V, p. 102, no. 331.
W.R. Valentiner and J.W. von Moltke, Dutch and Flemish Old Masters in the Collection of Dr. C.J.K. van Aalst, Verona, 1939, p. 294, pl. LXX.
S.J. Gudlaugsson, Katalog der Gemälde Gerard ter Borchs, The Hague, 1959, I, p. 376, no. 249, illustrated; II, 1960, pp. 206, 220-221, no. 249, under no. 222.
'Notable Works of Art now on the market: Supplement', The Burlington Magazine, CVIII, June 1966, n.p. pl. VII.
J. Rosen, 'The Scottish Collector Arthur Kay (1861-1939) and His Influence on the Canon of 17th-century Dutch Painting', Predella Journal of Visual Arts, LIII, 2023, pp. 156 and 163, note 40.

Exhibited

London, British Institution, Exhibition of Works by the Old Masters, and by Deceased Masters of the British School, 1895, no. 70, lent by Arthur Kay.
Wiesbaden, Nassauischer Kunstverein, Ausstellung Alter Gemälde aus Wiesbadener Privatbesitz, 20 February-31 March 1910, no. 72, lent by Frau A. Mandl.

Conditions of sale

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Lot Essay

The identity of the sitter remains unknown but the same gentleman was painted by Ter Borch adopting the same pose in another portrait, signed and dated 1668 (Kunsthaus, Zurich, inv. no. R48). On the basis of the shape of the hat, Gudlaugsson (op. cit. p. 221) dates the present work to around 1670, two years after the Zurich picture, which accounts for the similar age of the sitter in both portraits. Gudlaugsson also notes that the Zurich painting originally had a pendant, probably of the gentleman’s father who may have been a widower, previously in the Berlin Museum but destroyed in 1945 (Gudlaugsson, op. cit., no. 223).

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