Quality in Detail. The Juli and Andrew Wieg Collection
Quality in Detail. The Juli and Andrew Wieg Collection
Adam de Colonia the Elder
Portrait of a boy, aged 7 3/4 , half-length, wearing a grey-black satin costume with lace collar and cuffs
Lot Closed
March 24, 02:39 PM GMT
Estimate
15,000 - 20,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Adam de Colonia the Elder
Antwerp circa 1572 - 1651 Rotterdam
Portrait of a boy, aged 7 3/4 , half-length, wearing a grey-black satin costume with lace collar and cuffs
dated and inscribed with the age of the sitter upper left: AETITS.7 3/4 / 1631
oil on oak panel
unframed: 31.3 x 25.5 cm.; 12 1/8 x 10 in.
framed: 45.1 x 40 cm.; 17 3/4 x 15 3/4 in.
His sale, Amsterdam, 29 July 1845, lot 239 (as J. de Bray);
Mr. Kneppelhout van Sterkenburg, Huize Sterkenburg near Doorn, before 1897;
Thence by descent to Mrs C. Kneppelhout van Sterkenburg, 1968;
Whence bought by a private collector, U.S.A.;
Anonymous sale ('The Property of a Lady'), Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 9 May 2006, lot 24 (as Dutch school, 1591);
With David Koetser, Zurich (as Wybrand de Geest), from whom acquired in 2009.
E.W. Moes, Iconographia Batava, vol. I, Amsterdam 1897, p. 355, no. 2964/1 (as a portrait of Hugo de Groot attributed to Hendrick Goltzius);
E.A. van Beresteyn, Iconographie van Hugo Grotius, The Hague 1929, pp. 9-10 and 56, no. 38 (as a portrait of Hugo de Groot as a youth);
R. Ekkart, 'The Scottish painter Adam de Colone identified as the Dutch painter Adam de Colonia', in The Burlington Magazine, vol. CLIV, no. 1307, February 2012, p. 94, reproduced p. 93, fig. 4;
D. Thomson, ‘Letter: Adam de Colone’, in The Burlington Magazine, vol. CLV, no. 1321, April 2013, p. 260.
The Hague, Grotius-tentoonstelling te 's-Gravenhage, 13-28 June 1925 (according to Van Beresteyn, see Literature).
The Dutch Golden Age in Holland was key to the rise in popularity of the genre of child portraiture, as the emergence of the middle class meant that wealth and learning became a reality for a much broader part of society. Children were depicted with a far greater degree of both realism and informality than in the work of previous generations, though the purpose of such portraits remained to a large degree to show off the wealth and status of the child's family, depicting the young sitter - as in the present work - in their finest and most fashionable garb.
The date of this portrait was previously read as 1591, following the belief that it was a likeness of the humanist Hugo de Groot (1583-1645): his age at the time (seven years old) matched that of the little boy in the picture. However, it was discovered after cleaning that the date in the inscription is in fact 1631 (which had possibly been falsified to match the identification of the sitter with De Groot).
The rediscovery of the date as 1631, though it discounted the identity of the sitter, did lead to the identification of the artist - Adam de Colonia. In his article of 2012, Rudi Ekkart identified the Dutch painter Adam Lowijsz de Colonia with Adam de Colone, a leading portrait painter in Scotland in the 1620s, and court painter to James VI. Duncan Thomson, who first extensively studied De Colone’s corpus and activity,1 contested this association and argued for two separate painters: De Colonia (c. 1572-1651), a Dutch artist, and De Colone (active in Scotland c. 1622-28), a painter born and raised in Scotland, though of Dutch origins. Carla van de Puttelaar argues that, based on additional archival material, the Scottish painter Adam de Colone and the Rotterdam painter Adam de Colonia are almost certainly one and the same.2
This portrait should be compared to that of a nine-year old boy by De Colonia (whereabouts unknown), of larger dimensions (68.5 x 54 cm.), but dated (1626) and inscribed in exactly the same way.3 This work is De Colonia's last dated painting to have been identified. It is probable that upon returning to Rotterdam, the artist found increased competition in the art market for commissions from artists such as the leading portraitist Jan Daemen Cool (c. 1589-1660), and younger painters including Hendrick Maertensz. Sorgh (1610-70) and Ludolf de Jongh (1616-79).
We are grateful to Carla van de Puttelaar for her help in the cataloguing of this lot.
1 D. Thomson, The life and art of George Jamesone, Oxford 1974, pp. 54-59 and 14-49; and D. Thomson, in Painting in Scotland 1570-1650, exh. cat., Edinburgh 1975, pp. 50-55.
2 See Carla van de Puttelaar’s forthcoming book: Scottish Portraiture 1644-1714 (Brepols Publishers 2021), for more information.
3 See Ekkart 2012, p. 93, reproduced p. 92, fig. 3.