Jacques des Rousseaux

W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, vol. IV, Landau 1983, p. 2506, cat. no. 1676, reproduced p. 2512 (where listed as dated 1631).

"The following condition report has been provided by Henry Gentle, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. The oak panel is made up of three planks; there are two vertical joins which are stable but have been restored. There is some distortion to the joins leading to unevenness across the picture plane. There are one or two further restorations to be seen otherwise, beneath a very discoloured and degraded varnish, the paint surface is in a very good original untouched condition with well preserved paint texture and glazes. Offered in a carved gilt wood frame, with some losses."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

The sitter in this painting was used as a model by Rousseaux on several other occasions, for example in his Man with a Grey Beard in the Museum Bredius, The Hague.¹ These tronies were studies for the artist's religious works and we find the same sitter used as the model for the apostle in Rousseaux's Saint Paul, listed by W. Sumowski as location unknown.² Rousseaux's tronies are strongly influenced by the early work of Jan Lievens, and can be compared to the latter's Bearded Old Man in the Herzog-Anton Ulrich Museum in Brunswick.³ The brushwork and use of light in the present painting is so close to the work of Lievens that it was in fact attributed to him in the past by Horst Gerson.

1. W. Sumowski, op. cit., p. 2506, cat. no. 1675, reproduced p. 2509. 2. Ibid., p. 2506, cat. no. 1678, reproduced p. 2514.
3. Ibid., p. 1801, cat. no. 1263, reproduced p. 1902.