Portrait of a Man, Probably Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668)

Entry

According to the late nineteenth-century inscription on the verso, this is a portrait of the Haarlem painter Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668). Although it is impossible to confirm the identity of the sitter with certainty, the same man is portrayed in Visscher’s drawing in the Louvre, Paris (inv. no. 23120),² which was engraved as a portrait of Wouwerman by Nicolas Dupuis (c. 1698-1771) circa 1734 (e.g. British Museum, London, inv. no. 1910,0610.72). If an image of the present sheet is overlaid with an image of the Louvre drawing, the structure of the man’s face, with his long nose, widely spaced, slightly droopy eyes and parted hair, is identical.³ By contrast, the sitter in the Amsterdam drawing is less comparable to the man depicted in the so-called red chalk Self-portrait of Wouwerman in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1836,0811.586).⁴

The present drawing is a free copy after a signed sheet in the Groninger Museum (inv. no. 1931.0239).⁵ In that drawing, details, such as the tassels under the man’s flat collar and the embroidery on his manchettes, are more carefully rendered than in the Amsterdam version, whose handling of line and hatching in the sitter’s face are, moreover, less refined. Perhaps the present sheet was made as a training exercise in the artist’s studio. The copyist started off well with the sitter’s face, but he went wrong with the cloak wrapped around the man’s body, which appears flat and awkwardly modelled. He probably tried to correct his mistake by emphasizing the folds with some pen and ink and grey wash. However, vellum barely absorbs ink, which makes it impossible to create the velvety nuances Visscher achieved in black chalk.

What appears to be an eighteenth-century copy after the Groningen drawing is in the Leiden University Library (inv. no. PK-T-3643).

Bonny van Sighem, 2000/Marleen Ram, 2019