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Lot Essay
Sweerts was one of the most fascinating, if enigmatic, of all 17th century artists. He is first documented in Rome in 1646, where he was both an Aggregato of the Academy of Saint Luke and one of the Virtuosi al Pantheon. In 1656 he is documented in Brussels, and in 1658 he moved to Amsterdam, before departing for the island of Goa in the East Indies as a lay member of the French order of missionaries. He was not to return, and died there in 1664.
We are grateful to Mr. Malcolm Waddingham, Lindsey Shaw-Miller and Dr. Rolf Kultzen, for confirming the attribution of this hitherto unpublished painting (Dr. Kultzen from a photograph only). Waddington and Shaw-Miller date the picture to Sweerts' Brussels period, circa 1656 or later, when he opened a drawing academy in that city. Kultzen compares the painting to Sweerts's portraits of young boys in the Stedelijk Museum, Groningen, the M.H. De Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford and in a private collection, France (R. Kultzen, Michael Sweerts, 1996, pp. 118-20, nos. and plates 95, 96, 98 and 100 respectively). Shaw-Miller also compares the present painting to Sweerts's The Neapolitan Concert in the Louvre (ibid., pp. 100-01, no. 45, plates 45 and 45a-b) noting the similarity of the boy's face in the lower right of the Louvre Concert, and the treatment of the man's hair silhouetted against the light of the doorway of that painting; and to the Portrait of a Man (self portrait of the artist?) in the Alfred Bader collection, Milwaukee (ibid., p. 116, no. 90, plate 89).
The technique of silhouetting the undulating waves of the sitter's dark hair against a dramatically lit background, as shown in the present picture, is characteristic of the varied and unusual effects Sweerts explored in his painting, and perhaps best seen in his Self-Portrait as a Painter, in the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, Ohio (ibid., pl. 88).
We are grateful to Mr. Malcolm Waddingham, Lindsey Shaw-Miller and Dr. Rolf Kultzen, for confirming the attribution of this hitherto unpublished painting (Dr. Kultzen from a photograph only). Waddington and Shaw-Miller date the picture to Sweerts' Brussels period, circa 1656 or later, when he opened a drawing academy in that city. Kultzen compares the painting to Sweerts's portraits of young boys in the Stedelijk Museum, Groningen, the M.H. De Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford and in a private collection, France (R. Kultzen, Michael Sweerts, 1996, pp. 118-20, nos. and plates 95, 96, 98 and 100 respectively). Shaw-Miller also compares the present painting to Sweerts's The Neapolitan Concert in the Louvre (ibid., pp. 100-01, no. 45, plates 45 and 45a-b) noting the similarity of the boy's face in the lower right of the Louvre Concert, and the treatment of the man's hair silhouetted against the light of the doorway of that painting; and to the Portrait of a Man (self portrait of the artist?) in the Alfred Bader collection, Milwaukee (ibid., p. 116, no. 90, plate 89).
The technique of silhouetting the undulating waves of the sitter's dark hair against a dramatically lit background, as shown in the present picture, is characteristic of the varied and unusual effects Sweerts explored in his painting, and perhaps best seen in his Self-Portrait as a Painter, in the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, Ohio (ibid., pl. 88).