.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Werner van den Valckert was probably born in The Hague and became a member of the city's painters guild at some point between 1600 and 1605. He was certainly resident in Amsterdam by 1614, the year in which his daughter was baptized in the city's Nieuwe Kerk. With Thomas de Keyser, Cornelis van der Voort and Nicolaes Eliasz. Pickenoy, van den Valckert rapidly ascended to become one of the city's leading portraitists in the years before Rembrandt's arrival there. Van den Valckert is last documented in Amsterdam in 1627. A pottery painter of the same name is recorded as having died in Delft in 1644, though it is not clear if the two are one and the same person.
At the time of its 2010 sale, this painting bore an erroneous attribution to the Dordrecht portraitist Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp on the basis of a spurious 'JC' monogram, which came off during a recent conservation treatment. Following treatment, Dr. Walter Liedtke was the first to propose an attribution to van den Valckert, an attribution that was subsequently and independently endorsed by Dr. P.J.J. van Thiel. As here, van den Valckert's portraiture is characterized by a delicate sense of shading, a convincing use of highlights and a plastic solidity. Moreover, the highly illusionistic quality of the rapier slung over the man's shoulder finds parallels in works such as van den Valckert's Portrait of a man with a lay figure of 1624 (Speed Art Museum, Louisville).
Fencing enjoyed enormous popularity in Amsterdam in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. In or around 1610/11 the fencing master Gerard Thibault, brother-in-law of the wealthy Amsterdam banker Guilielmo Bartolotti, arrived in the city and promulgated a new approach, which, following his decisive victory at a fencing competition in Rotterdam, gained currency in the Netherlands. Thibault's success in the Netherlands led him to be called to the court in Cleves in 1615 before he returned permanently to the Netherlands in 1622. His approach to fencing was disseminated in a lavishly illustrated publication entitled Academie de l'Espée, posthumously published in Leiden in 1630. Van Thiel has perceptively suggested that the present sitter, who, in addition to the rapier, wears fencing gloves, was likely a fencer or fencing master operating in this social milieu.
At the time of its 2010 sale, this painting bore an erroneous attribution to the Dordrecht portraitist Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp on the basis of a spurious 'JC' monogram, which came off during a recent conservation treatment. Following treatment, Dr. Walter Liedtke was the first to propose an attribution to van den Valckert, an attribution that was subsequently and independently endorsed by Dr. P.J.J. van Thiel. As here, van den Valckert's portraiture is characterized by a delicate sense of shading, a convincing use of highlights and a plastic solidity. Moreover, the highly illusionistic quality of the rapier slung over the man's shoulder finds parallels in works such as van den Valckert's Portrait of a man with a lay figure of 1624 (Speed Art Museum, Louisville).
Fencing enjoyed enormous popularity in Amsterdam in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. In or around 1610/11 the fencing master Gerard Thibault, brother-in-law of the wealthy Amsterdam banker Guilielmo Bartolotti, arrived in the city and promulgated a new approach, which, following his decisive victory at a fencing competition in Rotterdam, gained currency in the Netherlands. Thibault's success in the Netherlands led him to be called to the court in Cleves in 1615 before he returned permanently to the Netherlands in 1622. His approach to fencing was disseminated in a lavishly illustrated publication entitled Academie de l'Espée, posthumously published in Leiden in 1630. Van Thiel has perceptively suggested that the present sitter, who, in addition to the rapier, wears fencing gloves, was likely a fencer or fencing master operating in this social milieu.