托馬斯·德·凱澤

Edward Vernon Utterson (1777–1856);
His deceased sale, London, Christie's, 27 Febuary 1857, lot 810 (as De Keyser, 1639 – A gentleman in a brown dress, seated at a table, on which are silver vessels and drawings), for 10 Guineas, to Smith, presumably on Botfield's behalf;
Beriah Botfield (1807–63);
Bequeathed by the above to the unborn 2nd son of John Alexander Thynne, 4th Marquess of Bath;
By descent until sold ('By Order of the Trustees of the Longleat Chattels Settlement'), London, Christie's, 14 June 2002, Lot 593, for £644,650;
Acquired at the above sale by Richard Green, London;
Acquired from the above by the present owner on 12 December 2007, for £850,000.

 

London, Royal Academy, Dutch Pictures 1450-1750, 1952–53, p.85, no. 448.

B. Botfield, Catalogue of Pictures at Norton Hall, London 1863, p.17 (A Dutch Silversmith. From the collection of E.V. Utterson Esq.);
J. G. van Gelder, 'Dutch Pictures st the Royal Academy', in The Burlington Magazine, vol. XCV, February 1953, p. 34;
J.W. Frederiks, Dutch Silver, The Hague 1958, p. 62, reproduced plate 53 (as depicting Christian van Vianen);
H. van Hall, Portreiten van Neederlandse Beeldende Kunstenaars, Amsterdam 1963, p. 350, no. 1,2290 (as depicting Christian van Vianen);
D. de Wit-Klinkhamer, 'Een Vermaarde Silveren Beker', in Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, 17, 1966, pp. 79–103, reproduced p. 97;
T. Crombie, 'Beriah Botfield and his Dutch pictures at Longleat', in Apollo, vol. CV, February 1977, p. 1004, reproduced fig. 4;
J.R. ter Molen, Van Vianen een Utrechtse familie van Zilversmeden met een internationale faam, Lieden University doctoral dissertation, 1984, vol. I, p. 38 (as depicting Christian van Vianen);
A. Jensen Adams, The Paintings of Thomas de Keyser: A study of Portraiture in Seventeenth Century Amsterdam, Harvard PhD thesis, 1985, vol. I, p. 97, vol. III, p. 55, no. 26 (as depicting Simon Andries Valckenaer (1609–72);
O. Ydema, Carpets and their dating in Netherlandish Painting 1540–1700, Leiden 1991, p. 163, no. 499; pp. 10 and 163, cat. no. 499, reproduced fig. 4.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's: Thomas de Keyser. Portrait of a Silversmith. Monogram and Date 1630 on the Drawing on the table. This painting is on a fine flat oak panel. This is widely bevelled at the left edge, scarcely bevelled at all at the base and with some generalised bevelling on the right. There are two joints, neither of which appears to have been reglued. The left hand joint has some minor retouching in places near the top and down the edge of the door, but it appears to have remained stable overall. The joint on the right has narrow retouching in the upper background above the figure, but the head is perfectly pure and untouched. Occasional very minor narrow lines can be seen under ultra violet light, for instance in the ruff, also down the coat and in the shadow of the lower drapery down to some touches scattered in the foreground. This right hand joint has been backed with quite a wide band of strong mattress ticking. In the top left corner a briefer patch of strong canvas has been added behind to support some narrow damage at the top left edge. Remnants of older canvas remain behind both of the bevelled side edges. There are various old labels on the back: I.M.Smith Bond St conservators, could possibly be late nineteenth century to very early 20th, Holder and Sons, Bath 1947 (perhaps connected to conservation for the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1952-3) Richard Green. Early 21st Century. The various supports behind were presumably connected to these as well as past cleaning and revarnishing. Past retouching is not visible under ultraviolet light, for instance in the top left corner. Recent retouching is visible in a few minute touches down the joints, in the cuffs, rare touches in the foreground particularly near the foot on the left, and mainly in a multitude of minuscule touches in the background. Overall the condition is exceptionally fine. The richly intact treatment of the carpet and the still life on the table, as well as the poignancy of the portrait, is beautifully preserved in every detail. This report was not done under laboratory conditions
"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."

This is one of a group of ground-breaking small, full-length portraits painted by Thomas Keyser in the late 1620s and early 1630s that propelled Dutch portraiture forward from the static, formal approach of the preceding decades (exemplified in the work of, amongst others, Pickenoy and Mierevelt) towards a more informal and personal representation of the sitter. A silversmith sits casually astride a chair, interrupted momentarily from his study of two silver salt cellars and related designs on paper. De Keyser’s introduction of this style of portraiture coincided with his social elevation via his marriage in 1626 to Machtel Andries, the niece of the Amsterdam goldsmith Loef Frederiks, whose portrait he painted in that year (Mauritshuis, The Hague). This new social circle provided a rich source of business for him, and he painted at least three group portraits of the confraternity of goldsmiths, one undated and two in 1627.¹

The identity of the silversmith has been the cause of some debate since he was first identified, by Frederiks in 1958, as Christian van Vianen, son of Adam van Vianen. The large auricular salt on the table bears a very close resemblance to a design published by Christian van Vianen in 1650 in Modelles Artificiels. The hexagonal salt cellar he holds in his right hand is of an earlier style from the beginning of the seventeenth century, perhaps the design of his father Adam, while the elaborate example on the table behind is his own work conceived in the very latest fashion.² This identification is seemingly lent further weight by the sitter’s similarity to the young figure standing in the middle, at the back, of De Keyser’s group portrait of the Amsterdam Silversmith’s Guild of 1627 (formerly Strasbourg, now destroyed). His hand rests on the shoulder of the elder silversmith, seated in the centre, who has been identified as Adam van Vianen (who died in that year), both on the basis of his resemblance to the portrait etched in Modelles Artificiels by Theodor van Kessel, after John Smith, of Adam van Vianen; and because of the prominent inclusion in the portrait of a ewer made by Adam in 1614, widely considered his masterpiece. The figure identified as Christian holds the ewer’s cover in his left hand.

In 1995 however, Ann Jensen Adams proposed a different theory, identifying the sitter of the present portrait as Simon Andries Valckenaer (1609–72). She accepts that the standing figure in the rear of the ex-Strasbourg group portrait is the same as the sitter of the present work, but considers the group portrait as a posthumous tribute to Andries Frederiks (1566–1627), an Amsterdam silversmith who was the half-brother of Loef Frederiks and Thomas de Keyser’s father-in-law, and Valckenaer’s father. While plausible as an identification, it should be noted that Valckenaer is recorded as a maker of engraved beakers and coffin shields and is not noted at all for great auricular silver. The identification of the sitter as Christian van Vianen therefore seems to hold more weight.

As Ydema has observed, the carpet that covers the table is the same as portrayed in De Keyser’s Portrait of a scholar, dated 1631, and in another pair of portraits from the same year.³

PROVENANCE
The painting entered the collection of the Thynne family, Marquesses of Bath, in 1863 when Beriah Botfield, a bibliophile from Shropshire, left his collection to the unborn second son of John Alexander,  4^th Marquess. He did so believing in a shared lineage dating back to William Thynne, a sixteenth century editor of Chaucer, and brother of the ancestor of the Thynnes of Longleat. The present painting hung at Longleat itself from after the Second World War until its sale in 2002.

1 Whereabouts unknown; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg (destroyed World War II); and Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio (see Jensen Adams 1985, nos 16, 17 and 18).
2 See Ter Molen 1984, p. 38.
3 See Ydema 1991. Mauritshuis, The Hague, and Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.