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Lot Essay
The drawing depicts a self-portrait of the Dutch painter Adriaen Van Ostade. He is portrayed as a well-dressed middle-aged man (he was supposedly forty-six), wearing a dark hat, a coat, and a white collared shirt.
The same image is known, in reverse, through a mezzotint by Jacob Gole, a pupil of Cornelis Dusart in Haarlem who was well acquainted with Ostade's work. On the print Ostade is mentioned as the draftsman - A. van Ostade del. effigies - but it would seem that Gole based his work on an intermediary watercolor, presumably copied after an original self-portrait by Ostade, now in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1895-12-14-104; A.M. Hind, Catalogue of Drawings by Dutch and Flemish Artists preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, III, London, 1926, p. 102, no. 1, plate LIII). The same portrait is also known in an engraving by Arnold Houbraken (1660-1719) published in the first volume of his collection of artists’ biographies in 1718 (De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen or The Great Theatre of Dutch Painters and Paintresses). The multiple uses of this portrait attest how it was considered the most accurate effigy of the painter.
In the present watercolor, the portrait itself is executed on a small square fragment of paper, at the center of the composition, and bears the date 1656 and Adriaen van Ostade’s monogram on the lower right. The drawing is mounted into a larger square sheet with a handwritten Latin inscription identifying the image as a self-portrait of Ostade. Interestingly, a similar presentation can be found in a watercolor portrait of Adriaen’s son, Isaac Van Ostade, in the Boijmans Museum in Rotterdam traditionally attributed to Cornelis Dusart (fig. 1; inv. H62; B. Schnackenburg, Adriaen Van Ostade. Isack Van Ostade Zeichnungen und Aquarelle. Gesamtdarstellung mit Werkkatalogen, Hamburg, 1981, I, no. F 232). The two portraits share the same collecting history throughout the 18th Century, and until the first half of the 19th Century, when the portrait in Rotterdam was acquired by Franz Koenigs and the present one by Max Goldstein.
For a long time scholars considered this drawing the original self-portrait by Adriaen Van Ostade from which his likeness was propagated through prints, yet most likely it is a later composition executed after the now lost original self-portrait.
Two clippings with the name of Adriaen Van Ostade are mounted beneath the drawing. The writing appears to be from the middle of the 17th Century and the fragments were presumably cut out from letters or old mounts mentioning the Ostade name.
Fig. 1. Cornelis Dusart, Portrait of Isaac Van Ostade. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam.
The same image is known, in reverse, through a mezzotint by Jacob Gole, a pupil of Cornelis Dusart in Haarlem who was well acquainted with Ostade's work. On the print Ostade is mentioned as the draftsman - A. van Ostade del. effigies - but it would seem that Gole based his work on an intermediary watercolor, presumably copied after an original self-portrait by Ostade, now in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1895-12-14-104; A.M. Hind, Catalogue of Drawings by Dutch and Flemish Artists preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, III, London, 1926, p. 102, no. 1, plate LIII). The same portrait is also known in an engraving by Arnold Houbraken (1660-1719) published in the first volume of his collection of artists’ biographies in 1718 (De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen or The Great Theatre of Dutch Painters and Paintresses). The multiple uses of this portrait attest how it was considered the most accurate effigy of the painter.
In the present watercolor, the portrait itself is executed on a small square fragment of paper, at the center of the composition, and bears the date 1656 and Adriaen van Ostade’s monogram on the lower right. The drawing is mounted into a larger square sheet with a handwritten Latin inscription identifying the image as a self-portrait of Ostade. Interestingly, a similar presentation can be found in a watercolor portrait of Adriaen’s son, Isaac Van Ostade, in the Boijmans Museum in Rotterdam traditionally attributed to Cornelis Dusart (fig. 1; inv. H62; B. Schnackenburg, Adriaen Van Ostade. Isack Van Ostade Zeichnungen und Aquarelle. Gesamtdarstellung mit Werkkatalogen, Hamburg, 1981, I, no. F 232). The two portraits share the same collecting history throughout the 18th Century, and until the first half of the 19th Century, when the portrait in Rotterdam was acquired by Franz Koenigs and the present one by Max Goldstein.
For a long time scholars considered this drawing the original self-portrait by Adriaen Van Ostade from which his likeness was propagated through prints, yet most likely it is a later composition executed after the now lost original self-portrait.
Two clippings with the name of Adriaen Van Ostade are mounted beneath the drawing. The writing appears to be from the middle of the 17th Century and the fragments were presumably cut out from letters or old mounts mentioning the Ostade name.
Fig. 1. Cornelis Dusart, Portrait of Isaac Van Ostade. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam.