FRENCH SCHOOL, CIRCA 1700 | PORTRAIT OF A PAGE IN PROFILE, WEARING A TURBAN

Julius Held, New York;

Thence by descent to the present collector. 

The author of this fascinating painting of an African page has continued to elude scholars, though it was mostly likely painted in France in the early 18th century. A man of African descent is depicted in full profile, dressed in colorful, fanciful costume which both contrasts with and brings attention to the shiny, silver collar around his neck. 

Rubens was amongst the earliest artists to depict images of black men in his paintings, and he included them in his work more often than any other European artist of the period, often as characters in many of his bacchanalian scenes but also in religious compositions.¹ The present composition has traditionally been associated with another 17th-century artist, Claude Vignon, though more recently scholars have placed it later, into the 18th century, when images of black pages depicted in exotic dress and slave collars started to appear more often. This motif first began in France in the second half of the 17th century and then became more popular in the 18th century. 

1. For further discussion of Rubens’s depiction of black figures, see E. McGrath, “Black Bodies and Dionysiac Revels,” in C. van Wyhe, ed.,  Rubens and the Human Body, Turnhout 2018, pp. 291-316.