Jacques Jordaens

Anonymous sale, Berlin, Rudolph Lepke, 11 November 1913, lot 77 (as Jacob Jordaens);

Private collector, Vienna;

From whom acquired by the father of the present collector, 1990.

Bold and confident brush strokes define this large and expressive head study of an old man by Jacques Jordaens. With a furrowed brow and slightly opened mouth, the sitter, gazing downward, tightly grasps his thick grey beard with his left hand. Jordaens returned to this powerful composition with a nearly identical head study of the same figure, closely comparable in size and composition, that is today in the Musée de Picardie in Amiens.¹ The most notable difference between these two versions can be found in Jordaens’s handling of the man’s garment, which has more definition and fluidity in the present work, particularly visible in the lower left corner. Jordaens employed a similar painterly touch in the brown mantel of his head study of Abraham Grapheus in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels.²

¹ Inv. no. M.P. Lav 1894 – 101; oil on panel, 64.5 x 48.4 cm.

² Inv. no. 121; oil on canvas, 59 x 48 cm.