Portrait of the artist, bust-length, in a cap

The Jordaens scholar Roger d’Hulst heralded Jordaens as one of ‘the trio of painters who conferred lustre on seventeenth-century Antwerp’, along with Sir Peter Paul Rubens and Sir Anthony van Dyck (op. cit., 1982, p. 314). Of the five self-portraits that Jordaens executed in oil over the course of his career, this is the earliest and one of only two remaining in private hands. D’Hulst dated it to circa 1640, a decisive moment in the artist’s career when, following the deaths of both Rubens and van Dyck, Jordaens became the greatest living painter in the Southern Netherlands (ibid.). While there is no documentary evidence of its earliest ownership, Nora de Poorter suggests that it was probably painted for the artist himself and kept in his collection until his death (Antwerp, op. cit., 1993, p. 188). In the late-eighteenth century, it formed part of the collection of the Confrerie Pictura (the artistic brotherhood) in The Hague and was included in the seminal Jordaens exhibition in Antwerp in 1993 (op. cit.). Most recently, it has been on long-term loan at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in the Wilhelmshöhe Palace, Kassel, which boasts the largest holding of works by Jordaens in Germany.

Jordaens became an independent master in circa 1615, following his training under Adam van Noort, who also taught Rubens, and in 1621, at the age of twenty-eight, was appointed dean of Antwerp’s Guild of Saint Luke. By 1634, he was working under Rubens’ direction on the decoration for the ‘Joyous Entry’ of Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand of Austria, the new governor of the Spanish Netherlands, and collaborated with him again in 1637-38 on paintings intended for Philip IV’s hunting lodge near Madrid, the Torre de la Parada. The fact that Jordaens was able to acquire a stately residence in Antwerp large enough to accommodate a busy workshop in 1639 is a clear indication of his growing success and prosperity. Following the deaths of Rubens in 1640, and of van Dyck the following year, Jordaens became the most important painter of the Southern Netherlands; demand for his work intensified and his clientele grew. Already in 1639-40, Jordaens was engaged by Sir Balthasar Gerbier, King Charles I’s agent in Brussels, to paint a series of pictures narrating The Story of Psyche for the Queen’s House at Greenwich, London. Other royal, princely and ecclesiastical commissions followed, and as his reputation grew beyond the confines of the Southern Netherlands, he began to attract young artists from abroad who wanted to study with him, including from Poland and Sweden.

Both d’Hulst (ibid.) and De Poorter (ibid.) have dated this portrait to this pivotal moment in the artist’s career when he was working at the height of his powers and attracting more elevated patrons in circa 1640. Other scholars have dated the work to the 1630s, believing the sitter to be in his thirties, rather than his forties (Eckardt, op. cit., p. 73; Held, op. cit., p. 23, note 18; Raupp, op. cit., p. 126, note 404; and Meier, in Lange, op. cit., pp. 21-2). However, a full judgement is somewhat impeded by the fact that none of the subsequent self-portraits, to which the sitter’s relative age might be compared, are dated.

Prior to executing this first standalone self-portrait in oil, Jordaens incorporated his likeness into group portraits with his parents, brothers and sisters (c. 1615-16; St Petersburg, Hermitage Museum); with his master, Adam van Noort’s family, almost certainly on the occasion of his engagement to van Noort’s daughter, Catharina, in 1616 (Kassel, Staatliche Museen); and again, following his marriage, with his now wife Catharina and their daughter Elizabeth, in circa 1621-22 (Madrid, Prado; fig. 1). A drawing now in Berlin (Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz; fig. 2), showing Jordaens in the same jacket and hat, was probably executed around the same time as this painting. This was followed by a portrait of Jordaens thought to date to the mid-1640s (Angers, Musée des Beaux-Arts; fig. 3) in a black cloak and wide-brimmed black hat, holding a sculpture of Venus and Cupid (roughly corresponding with an ivory by Georg Petel in the Ashmolean, Oxford), previously thought to represent the Flemish sculptor François Duquesnoy. Jordaens probably painted a portrait of himself playing the bagpipes around this date (Antwerp, Rubenshuis). Two further self-portraits are thought to show the artist in his mid-fifties, and therefore date to the late-1640s: the first showing the sitter in the same gold-trimmed jacket with gold buttons as the present, but excluding the cap and holding a rolled scroll of parchment (Munich, Alte Pinakothek; engraved by Pieter II de Jode); the second ‘somewhat weaker portrait’, according to d’Hulst (Antwerp, op. cit., 1993, p. 242, under no. A78), presents the sitter in a related pose, but against a background with columns and drapery, holding an open piece of parchment (recorded in the collection of Thomas Harris in 1953 and now untraced). Jordaens also appears almost like a caricature of himself in several of his many-figured genre scenes, such as in As the Old Sang, So the Young Pipe (Munich, Alte Pinakothek).

In this portrait, the sumptuous hat decorated in gold ribbon, and buttoned smock trimmed in the same fashion, point to Jordaens’ success and affluence, yet his demeanour remains humble and dignified. It was the likeness of the artist that Joachim von Sandrart chose for his celebrated dictionary of art, Teutsche Academie der edlen Bau-, Bild-und Malereikünste (The German Academy of the Noble Arts of Architecture, Sculpture and Painting), when it was updated with illustrations in print by Richard Collin in 1679. Von Sandrart explained that ‘only now’, following Jordaens’ death in 1678, had he gained access to this self-portrait for the engraving (op. cit.). The image is shown in reverse, in an oval frame, excluding the artist’s hand and parchment (fig. 4).

This portrait was originally paired with a pendant of Jordaens’ wife, Catharina van Noort (now untraced), with both works owned by the painter Gerard Copius and included in his estate sale in 1786, from which they were acquired by the painters’ association Confrerie Pictura (Bredius, op. cit.). Martinus Schouman made copies of the association’s collection of artists’ portraits, including the present work in 1788, held today in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Another copy after this portrait of Jordaens also exists in the Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie at Besançon, bearing an inscription ‘G. Flinck pinxit 1642’, with dimensions slightly larger than the current canvas (73 x 55 cm.) and the composition extending to include the hands and sheet of paper. Nora De Poorter, in the catalogue to the 1993 exhibition, suggested that this may reflect the original state of the present painting before it was trimmed (op. cit.). Recent examination of the painted canvas, however, confirms the presence of cusping along the lower edge, indicating that the original did not extend to include the hands and that this was in fact an elaboration by the copyist.