FOLLOWER OF SIR ANTHONY VAN DYCK | PORTRAIT OF ADAM DE COSTER

M. Kann;

By whom sold, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 9 June 1911, lot 21;

Sale, Paris, Palais Galliera, 5 December 1964, lot 12;

Sale, Paris, Palais Galliera, 14 March 1970, lot 9;

Anonymous sale, Paris, Ader Picard Tajan, 15 June 1979, lot 18 (all the above as Van Dyck).

Based on the grisaille oil sketch that Van Dyck made for the Iconography,¹ the ambitious series of portrait prints designed by him in the early 1630s. Adam de Coster was born in 1586 in the Flemish city of Mechelen, a province of Antwerp, and appears to have spent much of his career in Antwerp, becaming a Master of the Guild of Saint Luke around 1607. In the Iconography, he is described as 'pictor noctium', signaling that his reputation as a painter of night scenes had firmly been established in Northern Europe by this period.

¹ https://rkd.nl/en/explore/images/48288