Sir Anthony van Dyck

Possibly Princess Louisa Henrietta of Orange, by descent to her husband;
Possibly Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia, whence presumably by descent;
To Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, Berlin (inv no. 5453);
Hugo L. Moser, Berlin and later New York;
By whom (anonymously) sold Parke-Bernet, New York, November 28, 1962, lot 22, for $5,500, to the New Art Center (as Portrait, Said to be of Suzanne Fourment);
The Pierce Rosenberg Trust;
By whom sold Christie's, London, 2 April, 1976, lot 22;
Where  acquired by the present owners.

Berlin Akademie der Schönen Künste  [Pictures from the Collection of the German Emperor], 1897;
Zurich, Kunsthaus, 1933;
Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum, 1936;
Baltimore, Baltimore Museum of Art, 1940

A. von Wurzbach, Niederländishes Künstler-Lexikon auf Grund archivalischer Forschungen, reprint of 2nd edition, Amsterdam 1968,  vol. I, p. 456;
S. J. Barnes, N. de Poorter, O. Millar and H. Vey, Van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, New Haven and London 2004, p. 133, cat. no. I.153 (as location unknown), reproduced and p. 19 note 13.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is on a fairly heavy piece of canvas and the cracking to the gesso layer has become raised and could be improved considerably if the lining canvas were removed and the lining reexamined. The paint layer has become yellow with a varnish applied probably in the last 50 years, and the paint layer is slightly abraded. The abrasion to the figure is almost entirely confined to very deep, thin transparent glazes in the black of the sitter's dress and the brown of her bodice. There are a few retouches which have been applied in the darkest colors of her black dress and around pentimenti of the fingers of both hands. In her face some of the soft glazes have been abraded and restorations have been applied here and there in an attempt to even out these glazes. In our opinion the immediacy which defines Van Dyck's work is perhaps stifled by this past restoration and in this area particularly the restoration could be greatly improved. If the painting is to be restored it would be important to carefully knit together some of the slightly compromised black and brown glazes in the figure and background, and to reexamine the restorations in the face, and has been already noted, to reexamine the lining. With this work it should be possible to bring back balance to the image.
"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."

Both the subject and technique of this lovely portrait mark it as an early work by Van Dyck, painted in Antwerp shortly before his first trip to England in October 1620.  The sitter was once thought to be Susannah Fourment, the sister of Rubens's first wife, but that idea has been rejected and now we must rely on what we can glean from the painting itself.  She is a young married woman, wearing a wedding ring on her right index finger and dressed in the fashion of a well-to-do Antwerp resident of around 1620.  Her costume consists of a traditional vlieger – a sleeveless dark mantle, dark skirt and stomacher, here decorated in red and gold – along with a large "millstone" ruff, elaborate lace cuffs and a small bonnet. 

There are very few dated portraits by Van Dyck from this period.  The earliest are four panels from 1618, the year he enrolled as a master in the Antwerp painters' guild.  They are conceived in a style very indebted to the works of Rubens, in whose studio he was working as an assistant.  For example, in the Portrait of a 58 Year Old Woman ( I.119), in the collection of the Princes of Liechtenstein, Vaduz, Van Dyck works in short, relatively small brush strokes, carefully blending the transitions, to create a fully realized three-dimensional portrait.¹  The work is almost monochromatic; the prevailing dark tones of the background and sitter's costume set off her pale face and hands, and her delicate ruff and cuffs. 

Although Van Dyck continued to work with Rubens on large history paintings between 1618 and 1620, his services as a portrait painter were in great demand.  In order to meet the needs of his clients and also, no doubt, in response to his own imagination, he began to develop a different style of painting as is evidenced in the Portrait of a Lady.  It is a technique quite different from his more detailed portraits on panel and carries with it a remarkable freedom and suggestion of speed. He applied the paint more thinly across the surface of the canvas and the individual strokes are thicker and flatter than before.  They begin to take on a life of their own, creating a delicate and intricate pattern.  This is perhaps clearest in the stomacher where he painted the embroidered pattern in a series of strokes of goldish-red on top of a thin layer of shimmering white.  The woman's jewelry and cuffs are similarly drawn, suggesting rather than describing the elaborate beauty of the decoration.  In handling and composition, the Portrait of a Lady is similar to portraits of women in The El Paso Museum of Art and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco (I.152 and I.154).  All show young women in similar clothing and include a red curtain in the background.  In terms of positioning and gesture the El Paso picture is closest to the present work, and the stomachers in the two portraits are nearly identical.  The beauty of his portraits resulted in an ever increasing number of commissions, and soon Van Dyck's reputation spread beyond Antwerp.  He soon caught the attention of the Earl of Arundel, which resulted in his invitation to the English Court and the beginning of a new phase in the artist's life.  

The authors of the 2004 monograph on Van Dyck had not seen The Portrait of a Lady when they included it in their catalogue and were therefore uncertain that the provenance could be traced back to Kaiser Wilhelm II.²   However, on the back of the picture there are labels with the Kaiser's inventory number, 5453, and the number of the room in the Berlin palace where it was kept, 653.³  The painting was probably bought directly from the Kaiser by Hugo L. Moser, a dealer then in Berlin who had acquired a number of other works from him, including Lancret's La Carmargo Dancing, in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the portrait of Mary Queen of Hungary, attributed to Jan Vermeyen, in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.  By 1944 both he and the present work were in New York, as is attested by an annotation on the photograph of the painting given to the Frick Library on 13 March of that year. In 1962 he sold the painting at Parke-Bernet and it was, no doubt, he who  provided the early exhibition history. 

We are grateful to Susan Barnes, who examined The Portrait of a Lady in person, for confirming the attribution to Van Dyck and dating it to about 1619.  She notes "that the painting is entirely by Van Dyck's hand -- a statement we can make with decreasing confidence as he matured and demand for his works increased in the 1620s and 1630s". ⁴  

1.  The reference numbers here and following are from S. Barnes et al., see Literature above. 
2.  Ibid., p. 133.
3.  There is a third number, possibly 32, which we have yet to identify.
4.  S. Barnes in a letter to the present owner, 18 March 2011.