Jacob Jordaens

Reputedly imported from Ghent after the Napoleonic Wars by Henry Richard Greville, 3rd Earl of Warwick (1779-1853);
Thence by descent until sold anonymously, London, Sotheby's, 3 July 1997, lot 91, where bought by the present owner.

London, British Institution, 1842, no. 162 (as "A Child with a Toy" by Rubens);
Manchester, Art Treasures, 1857, no. 578 (as a portrait by Rubens of his own daughter);
Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, Jacob Jordaens 1593-1678, 29 November 1968 - 5 January 1969, no. 47;
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, on loan 1983-97.

A. Graves, A Century of Loan Exhibitions 1813-1912, London 1914, vol. III, p. 1162 and p. 1165;
M. Jaffé, in Jacob Jordaens 1593-1678, exhibition catalogue, Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, 29 November 1968 - 5 January 1969, p. 98, cat. no. 47, reproduced on p. 275;
R.-A. d'Hulst, "Jordaens (Ottawa 1968-9)", in The Art Bulletin, vol. LI, 1969, pp. 378-88.

The identification of the sitter was first proposed by Michael Jaffé in the catalogue of the Ottawa exhibition in 1968-9.  Anna Catharina Jordaens was born on the 23rd October 1629, the last of Jordaens' three children from his marriage of 1616 to Catharina van Noort, the eldest daughter of his master Adam van Noort.  She married Johan Wierts II, a native of Antwerp and the son of one of her father's patrons, and later lived in The Hague where her husband was President of the Council of Brabant.  No other certain portraits of her at this age survive, but she appears at about the age of ten together with her mother and other members of Jordaens' family in the celebrated Le Roi boit of 1638-40 in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (reproduced in R.-A. d'Hulst, Jordaens, 1982, p. 169, fig. 139), and in the related preparatory study formerly with Cassirer in Berlin (reproduced in R.-A. d'Hulst, De Tekeningen van Jakob Jordaens, 1956, fig. 123), and again as the Young girl holding a basket of cherries in the Bute Collection (exhibited, Ottawa, 1968-9, no. 60).  As Jaffé observes the family resemblance to her elder sister Elizabeth at much the same age as she appears in the Prado Self-portrait of the artist with his wife and daughter of 1621-22 (exhibited Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum, Jordaens, 1993, no. A30) is quite striking.  In addition, the coral necklace with pendant crucifix worn by Anna Catharina in the present painting appears identical with that worn by Elizabeth in the Prado group portrait.  In suggesting a probable date of execution of circa 1635 for the Warwick picture, Jaffé notes that the prominent antique herms which appear behind the sitter were evidently popular accessories in Jordaens' other portraits of the same date, for example those of Rogier le Witer and his wife (Vorselaar, collection of Baron R. de Borrekens, reproduced d'Hulst, op. cit. pp. 272-3, figs. 236 and 237) and of John Wierts and his wife (Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, reproduced idem., pp. 278-9, figs. 241 and 242), the parents of Catharina's future husband Johan.  Although doubted by D'Hulst (see Literature), the attribution to Jordaens has more recently been supported by Hans Vlieghe, who concurs with a dating in the mid-1630s.