Jacques Vaillant (1625-1691)

The sitter was the third son of the Elector Ernst August of Hanover and his wife the Electress Sophia. He died unmarried in June 1726.

Jacques Vaillant (Lille 1625-1691 Berlin) was a brother and student of the more famous Wallerant Vaillant (Lille 1623-1677 Amsterdam). Jacques went to Rome around 1664 and worked there for a period of two years and was a member of the Dutch/Flemish 'Schildersbent', were he received the name 'Keeuwerik'. He travelled to Amsterdam and Rotterdam where he executed several works for the government at The Hague. In 1670 he travelled to Vienna to work for the Elector of Brandenburg. At this time he was introduced to the Elector Ernst August of Hanover. The Elector Ernst August instigated the building of the great Schloss Herrenhausen in the 1650s, commonly known as the ‘Versailles of the North’. He commissioned from Vaillant two large pendants for one of the main rooms at this Schloss (reproduced in M. Knoop, Kurfürstin Sophie von Hannover, 1999, pp.115, 256, fig. 12).  Painted in the early 1680s, these depict the flight of the Winter king Frederick V of Bohemia and his family after the battle of White Mountain near Prague on 8th November 1620, and an Allegory of Victory with the Elector on horseback, his wife Sophia of the Palatine in a golden chariot pulled by rearing grey horses, surrounded by their children. The latter picture was completed around July 1683. Both pictures where later moved to Schloss Marienburg but have only recently been reunited. The four portraits offered in the present sale are clearly connected to the 1683 painting of the family of the Elector, as all sons of the Elector are depicted similarly within the larger composition. Whether the present group of portraits represent preliminary ad vivum  likenesses of the Princes in preparation for the larger canvases, or whether their likenesses were later derived from it, is unclear. 

Provenance:
Herrenhausen Inv. Nr. 178;
Herrenhausen Anlage 1893 Inv. Nr. 1103;
Fideikommis – Galerie 1905;
Blankenburg circa 1929;
Cumberland-Galerie;
Georg Rex;
Ernst- August- Kunstgegenstände.