Sir Peter Paul Rubens

Prince Ernst von Sachsen-Meiningen, Germany, until 1929;
With Dr. Curt Benedict and Co., Berlin and Paris, 1929;
With Galerie van Diemen, Berlin, until 1931;
From whom acquired by Paul Rodman Marbury, Los Angeles;
Gift of Paul Rodman Marbury Bequest to The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1939, (acc. no. 39.12.20).

Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Loan Exhibitions of Paintings by Rubens and Van Dyck, November 19-December 22, 1946, no. 13;
New York, Wildenstein and Company, A loan exhibition of Rubens, under the high patronage of His Excellency, Baron Robert Silvercruys, Ambassador of Belgium, for the benefit of the Public education association, February 20-March 31, 1951, no. 6;
Padua, Palazzo della Ragiere; Rome, Palazzo dei Conservatori;  Milan, Palazzo Reale, Esposizione Delle Opere Di Pietro Paolo Rubens (1577/1640), March-October 1990.

W.R. Valentiner, "Rubens' Paintings in America", in Art Quarterly, vol. 9, Spring 1946, cat. no. 29;
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Loan Exhibitions of Paintings by Rubens and Van Dyck, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles 1946, cat. no. 13;
J. Goris and J.S. Held, Rubens in America, Antwerp 1947, p. 30, cat. no 25, reproduced, plate 8;
Wildenstein and Company, A loan exhibition of Rubens, under the high patronage of His Excellency, Baron Robert Silvercruys, Ambassador of Belgium, for the benefit of the Public education association, exhibition catalogue, New York 1951, p. 14, cat. no. 6, reproduced, plate 6;
P. Wescher and E. Feinblatt, Los Angeles County Museum, Catalogue of Paintings II: Catalogue of Flemish, German, Dutch and English Paintings, XV-XVIII Century, Los Angeles 1954, p. 13, reproduced;
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Liechtenstein, the princely collections, exhibition catalogue, New York 1985, p. 322;
S. Schaefer, et al. European Painting and Sculpture in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles 1987, p. 88, reproduced;
M. Jaffé, Catalogo Completo Rubens, Milan 1989, p. 222, cat. no. 396, reproduced;
P. Sutton and M. E. Wieseman, Drawn by the Brush.  Oil Sketches by Peter Paul Rubens, New Haven and London 2004, p. 101.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has been recently restored. It is originally made from three pieces of oak joined vertically through back of the hand in the lower left; the joins are stable and secure. The panel is flat. In the past it has been thinned and lightly cradled, which seems to be a reasonable method of support. The paint layer is clean and lightly varnished. Very few retouches have been applied. There is a restoration along the original panel join to the left of the head, which slightly interferes with the beard. There is another slight crack which has developed on the upper edge above the head, running for approximately 2 ½ inches, and a very slight suggestion of the crack in the upper right corner where another original panel join exists. There are a few slightly discolored retouches in the center of the right background, around the top of the head and in the background above the head. The retouches which address the original join on the left side are not particularly accurate. The picture should be cleaned and the restorations readdressed. Although they do not clearly show under ultraviolet light, they are not numerous and most of the beard and the face itself are clearly in lovely and fresh condition.
"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."

Rubens must have painted this engaging study of a Head of a Bearded Man at the beginning of the second decade of the seventeenth century.   It is very closely related, in terms of subject and technique, to a panel in the Collections of the Prince of Liechtenstein, Vaduz (Held 445), which Reinhold Baumstark has dated to circa 1612.¹  Rubens shows the same sitter in both, though from a slightly different angle, and his treatment is both energetic and evocative.  He paints the beards in series of bold comma-like strokes set against a thinly painted background.  The rows of curls are set in different directions, one on top of another, to create the long, full whiskers. The pigment for the flesh is more heavily applied, particularly in the highlights on the nose and cheeks, where the artist has built up the colors in layers.  He uses a reddish tone to shadow the deeply set eyes and adds a short white horizontal line along the top edge of the lower lid as an accent.  The sitter's hand in the present work is not painted with the same confidence as the the rest of the picture.  It has been suggested that it is unfinished or the work of another artist and, on balance, the latter seems more likely.  Since The Head of a Bearded Man was intended to be used in the studio, it is very likely that at some point one of the assistants added or retouched that portion of the picture.   All these similarities between The Head of a Bearded Man and the Vaduz painting suggest that the two were made within a short period of time, an hypothesis reinforced by the fact that the sitter seems to be wearing the same clothing in both works. 

The Vaduz painting was traditionally thought to be a portrait of Theodore Rombouts, but now both works are recognized as study heads.  Held has described Rubens' oil sketches as  original compositions executed in oil colors made in preparation for works, and he regards the study heads as a distinct sub-category of  oil sketches, which were painted from life and then kept as part of the general studio repertory.²  There they could serve as models for Rubens and his assistants to be used in current or future  compositions.   According to Van Mander, Frans Floris was the first Flemish artist to make study heads, but it was a method of composition that fell out of use in Flanders.    Held suggests that Rubens revived the technique  because of his exposure to Italian workshop practices, but only made these oil studies from about 1608 to 1620.³

Two other study heads have been identified as being taken from the same sitter:   a Head of a Bearded Man, Profile to the Left, in Prague and a Head of a Bearded Man in Lost Profile from the collection of  Dr. Lewis S. Fry, Manuden, Essex.⁴  The studies have, in turn, been related to figures in dated compositions, which provide a terminus ante quem for their creation.  The Prague panel is a model for Nicodemus in the Antwerp Descent from the Cross of 1612. Both the Emperor and the man standing to the left of St. Ambrose in St. Ambrose and the Emperor Theodosius, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, of circa 1615-16, also appear to have the features of the same sitter, though no specific study for them has been identified.  However, given Rubens extraordinary invention and imagination, it is not hard to think that once he captured the features of a sitter in an oil sketch and thus in his mind, he could not then recreate them from a different angle or in a different context. 

Rubens painted The Head of a Bearded Man on three joined oak planks.  Dendrochonological tests have determined that two were from the same tree, of Netherlandish or near Netherlandish origin, whose last rings were from the late 1580s.  That would suggest the tree was felled around 1600 to 1610, which would make it consistent with the dating of the study.  The third panel had too few rings to test.  Although this combining of various pieces of wood would be unusual in a formal commission, Rubens commonly did so for his study heads and works that he painted for his own enjoyment. (A full dendrochronological report by Ian Tyers is available on request .  We are extremely grateful to him for his help in evaluating the age of the panels.)

1.  R. Baumstark, Liechtenstein, The Princely Collections, New York 1985, pp. 322-23, no. 203.
2.  J. Held, The Oil Sketches of Peter Paul Rubens, A Critical Catalogue, Princeton 1980, pp. 3 and 597.  p. 3.
3.  Ibid., p. 597.
4.  This panel was attrubted to Van Dyck by Michael Jaffé, Anthony van Dyck's Antwerp Sketchbook, London 1966, vol. I, p. 94, no. 58, pl. IV.  R. Baumstark, Op. cit.,, p. 322, disputes that attribution.