SIR PETER PAUL RUBENS* (1577-1640)

Details

SIR PETER PAUL RUBENS* (1577-1640)

Portrait of a Lady, seated three quarter length, wearing a black dress with a ruff

oil on canvas
48½ x 40in. (123 x 101.5cm.)

Provenance

Miss Henrietta Hay; sale (for the benefit of the British Red Cross Society and Order of St. John of Jerusalem), Christie's, London, July 12 and 19, 1940, lot 849, as 'Rubens, Portrait of Isabella of Austria' (6gns. to Rothmann)
witj Dr. Fritz Rothmann, Wokingham
with Frederik Rosendaal, London
Charles Clore, London, purchased from the above early in 1941
Anon. Sale; Christie, London, April 22, 1988, lot 64

Literature

J. Müller Hofstede, Bildnisse aus Rubens' Italienjahran, Jahrbuch der Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen in Baden-Württemberg, II, 1965, pp. 128-9 and figs. 77 and 79 (detail)
F. Huemer, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XIX, Portraits I, 1977, pp. 36 and 185, no. 54, and fig. 132

Exhibited

Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Peter Paul Rubens, October 15-December 15, 1977, katalog I, pp. 72 and 300, no. 80, illustrated pp. 73, fig. E43 and 301

Lot Essay

The above lot is sold with a photostat of a letter from Dr. Ludwig Burchard dated November 29, 1940, accepting the attribution to Rubens and suggesting a date of 1604. Müller Hofstede, loc. cit, 1965, dates the present work to 1602 and in the 1977 exhibition catalogue suggests that it was painted in Genoa or Mantua in the first half of that year. The attribution is doubted by Huemer, loc. cit., on the basis of a photograph.