Portrait of a Man, possibly Walterus Fourmenois (1596-1653)

Entry

A young man is seated in a luxurious chair of carved wood and embroidered upholstery. He is wearing sumptuous and fashionable clothes with a collar and cuffs made solely of needlepoint lace. In his left hand he has a pair of gloves, the cuffs of which are decorated with satin ribbons.⁵

Like the preceding paintings, this work comes from Kasteel Popkensburg. The inscription on the back, which probably dates from the 18th century, identifies the young man as a son of Margarita Courten (SK-A-2073) and Matthias Boudaen, which means that he is a brother of Pieter Boudaen Courten (SK-A-2068).⁶ However, this identification is very probably wrong. Pieter had three brothers, Matthias, Jacob and Willem, who were born in 1584, 1586 and 1589 respectively, and were thus between five and ten years older than him. This man, though, looks younger than Pieter. Moreover, it is doubtful that Matthias, Jacob and Willem were still alive in 1620, for not one of them is mentioned in the family chronicle that Pieter Boudaen Courten started in 1618.⁷

That being said, the sitter should indeed probably be sought in Pieter Boudaen Courten’s circle. In the 18th century, this painting hung in a room with all the portraits of the family of Pieter Boudaen Courten and those related to him by marriage.⁸ There has been speculation based on stylistic arguments that the portrait is English,⁹ which would suggest that the sitter belonged to the English branch of the Courten family. That, though, is not very convincing. Moreover, the chair on which the man is sitting, which was of very recent Dutch manufacture,¹⁰ makes it much more likely that the painting was made in Holland.¹¹

On the basis of his probable age and a certain resemblance to Boudaen Courten’s wife Catharina Fourmenois (SK-A-2069), it has also been suggested that the man is her brother, Walterus Fourmenois (1596-1653).¹² Recent research has revealed that Walterus was born in 1596.¹³ This means that he was 24 in 1620, which seems to match the age of the sitter. Even stronger arguments in favour of this identification can be put forward. In the 17th century Walterus was referred to as ‘Lamme Courten’ (Lame Courten), so he was probably disabled. That could explain his stiff pose in this portrait and the fact that he is seated, which was an unusual pose for a young man in 17th-century painting.¹⁴ The provenance from Kasteel Popkensburg also fits in with this theory, for it was thanks to Walterus Fourmenois that the castle came into the family.¹⁵ Because his marriage to Maria Romans was childless, he bequeathed the castle, which was bought in 1631, to his sister Catharina. A note by Jacob van Citters, who lived in Popkensburg in the 18th century, states that there was a coat of arms of Walterus Fourmenois hanging in the castle,¹⁶ and it is likely that there was also a portrait of him there. It is impossible to say whether his features match those of this sitter, since there are no known portraits of him, but he does remain the most likely candidate.

This slickly painted work with the soft outlines and the sitter’s rather stiff pose has been associated with the painter Salomon Mesdach, as have several other portraits from the circle around the Boudaen Courten family.¹⁷ In view of the similarity between this and the other paintings as regards style and structure of the paint layers, it can be taken that they are by the same hand. The attribution to Mesdach has therefore been retained.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2007

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This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 178.