Sir Anthony van Dyck

By family tradition, Pieter Paul Rubens (1577-1640);
His son from his first marriage to Isabella Brandt (1591-1626); Nicolaas Rubens (1618-1655), married Constance Helman;
Their son Albert Rubens (1642-1672), married Marie-Catherine Vecquemans (1649-1711);
Their daughter Marie-Constance (1672-1710), married Alexandre Goubau, Seigneur de Melsen (1658-1715);
Their son Georges Alexandre Goubau, Seigneur de Melsen (1697-1760), married Isabelle Madeleine Bosschaert (1703-1764);
Their daughter Isabelle (1728-1783), who married Jean-Charles de Borrekens (1730-1800);
Their daughter Isabelle (1758-1836), who married in 1780 Arnould van der Cruisse (1749-1825):
Thence by direct descent.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is on quite a thick panel from a single piece of oak. It has slight bevelling on all sides and original chiselling and stamp on the back, from which some previous cross bars have recently been removed. While the large expanse of the centre and right of the panel has clearly remained constantly stable and flat, the left side (presumably slanting into a slightly tangential cut) has apparently often had a tendency to move, with a succession of past lost flakes repaired down the left edge and a little way in to the lower left drapery (perhaps three inches at one point) and the upper left background near the top corner (about two inches), where there is slightly raised paint near old repairs. Finely retouched past flaking lower down the far left side in the drapery appears to have long been stabilised and to be calm and secure. Elsewhere in the main body of the painting there are just one or two rare insignificant little retouchings. The magnificently fresh, free, impasted brushwork of the head is perfectly intact, as is the main central and right areas of the drapery, where strokes are sometimes scumbled thickly over more liquid underlayers, and dense paint is almost clotted beneath the chin. Brown broadly brushed priming can be seen around the outline of the head, under the smooth sweep of the background, which is also finely preserved (apart from the lost flakes at the left side referred to above) adding to the luminosity and immediacy of the portrait. 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 intense and psychologically penetrating portrait of a monk of the Carmelite order is a hitherto unknown work thought to be by the youthful Van Dyck, dating from his years in Rubens' studio, where it was certainly painted, probably circa 1617-20.

It has hitherto only been known from a photograph in Ludwig Burchard's archive taken about 100 years ago, and from a copy after it, also known from a photograph in the Burchard archive (see fig. 1).¹  These record it as a work by Rubens.  By tradition in the family of the present owner, it has always been known as the "Confesseur de Rubens", and since they are directly descended from Rubens' family, circumstantial evidence lends some support to the notion that it is by him. This traditional attribution to Rubens also finds support in the portraits of Carmelites among other members of monastic orders, including those known both in the original and from copies, which Rubens painted circa 1615-21.²

While Rubens' portraits (at any rate those of adults) often show his sitters in relaxed poses, they are always, including his monastic portraits, formally composed.  monastic portraits.  While they are often freely and swiftly painted, they are never so sketch-like in their handling as here.  The young monk in this picture has his head to one side, and it is turned slightly away to us to the sitter's right.  The right side of his head is thus silhouetted, with only his ear protruding, while his left side is in shadow, with his left ear blocked in with a few brush strokes.  A comparison with Rubens' Portrait of a Carmelite Prior of circa 1616 in The Barber Institute, Birmingham (see fig. 2), in which Rubens is more skizzenhaft than in most of his monastic portraits, makes the difference in approach and handling clear.³  In the Birmingham picture the Prior is motionless in prayer, his head and body held in an upright bearing, gaze fixed away from the viewer.  In it Rubens uses thin washes of grey over reddish ground in the background: here the backgound is more solidly covered with grey-green paint.  Something similar is also seen in his Portrait of a Carmelite, possibly Gaspar Rinckens, in Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, which is also ultimately more formal as well as more finished in character.⁴

The characteristics of the present picture, and its brushwork, which is clearly legible throughout most of the painting, are more reminiscent of Anthony van Dyck, when he was working in Rubens studio, than of his teacher, although this work is more strikingly Rubensian than most of Van Dyck's paintings.  Of the scholars who have had the opportunity to study this picture at first-hand, including at the Rubenianum in Antwerp on two occasions, three independently recognised Van Dyck as its author straightaway, and most agree with the attribution to him: those who do not prefer to retain the attribution to Rubens himself, and no scholar with whom we have discussed it thinks that it is likely to be by any artist other than Van Dyck or Rubens.

A characteristic of Van Dyck's very personal style at this date is his use of thick, almost congealed paint to denote highlights in the sitter's habit, applied with a sturdy brush.  It gives the impression that it is almost too sticky to leave the brush, so that on the lower monk's cowl, one has the impression that Van Dyck had to move the brush around on the dried paint underneath to get it to adhere.  On the edge of the cowl Van Dyck has loaded a brush with the creamy paint, and has made a very few long slow strokes (perhaps smoothed with a palette knife), causing the paint to be deposited in a rough curving line punctuated with random lumps of coagulated paint.⁵  This is a characteristic to be found in some of Van Dyck's Apostles series of approximately the same date, such as in the red robe of Saint James the Great, on loan to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and in some of the Prado Apostles.⁶

The grey inner garment underneath the cowl, by contrast, is filled in with a few broad strokes of liquid dark and light grey paint giving an astonishing contrast of texture.  The face is painted with the same vigour as the rest of the work.  The liquid handling of the eyes, especially the right eye, will be familiar to anyone who has looked at Van Dyck's portraits, including the Cornelis van der Geest.  Short strokes of a well-laden brush indicate the highlights in the lower lip and along the bridge of the nose, and Van Dyck has used a light tone of pink, rather than a paler highlight, to model the curvature of the forehead (contrasted with the grey half-tones of the temple), where the reflection is more diffuse.

A characteristic of the present portrait is the hatching painted with short diagonal strokes of the brush, starting in the beard, and running up the shaded part of the sitter's cheek and temple and running into the hastily sketched ear.  That it is not easy to find clear parallels in the portraits of either Van Dyck or Rubens may perhaps be explained by the sketch-like character of this work, since such hatching would not be likely to be so evident in a fully-worked up portrait.   Among the few studies of heads that are sketches and not portraits that we know of Rubens, only the Head of a Bearded Man in profile in New Haven, where the ear turned towards us is very rapidly sketched in, and the Head of a Negro in the Hyde collection, Glens Falls, which is datable circa 1618-20, reveal anything remotely comparable.⁷ 

THE PANEL
This is formed of an unusually wide plank of Western European oak, roughly shaped on the reverse with an adze (see fig. 3).  The unusual width of the single plank has certainly been a factor in the tendency of the panel to twist.  It has not been altered or cut down from its original size, but four parallel battens, since removed, were once glued to the reverse, presumably in an attempt to keep it flat.   A dendrochronological report done by Ian Tyers in August 2010 (and independently reviewed by Pascale Fraiture) shows that the latest heartwood ring is from 1543, giving an earliest possible date of felling of 1551.⁸ This is unusually early for a panel that was most likely first used in the second decade of the 17^th Century, but Tyers notes that if the planks were, for example, quarter-sawn, the outermost heartwood ring found may not be the outermost ring at the time of felling, which may have been later.  Moreover, the tree-ring series in this panel is closely related to those found in planks used in four separate panels painted by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, of which three appear to use boards deriving from a single tree, or at the very least suggest trees growing in the same immediate area and sharing closely similar characteristics.⁹  Their latest heartwood rings are from 1574, suggesting that the present outermost heartwood ring is not the last, and two of these panels are dated: 1618 and 1620.¹⁰  A report by Simon Bobak on the condition of the present panel notes that the brand of the Antwerp Panelmakers' Guild applied to the reverse is of the type known as "Brand 3", which was in use from 1618 to 1626.¹¹  These two pieces of technical evidence are far from conclusive, but they point to a date towards the end of Van Dyck's Antwerp period, circa 1618-20.

CONDITION AND HISTORY OF CONSERVATION
Most of the painted surface of this picture, including the head, cowl and all the central and right hand parts are in remarkably good original condition.  The single-plank panel has had (and has still) an inherent tendency to twist, which has led to significant flaking of paint near its left edge.  This resulted in a large area in the lower left being overpainted long ago, perhaps because it was felt easier to do this than to infill individual losses.  This area of overpaint was carefully removed by Isabelle Leegenhoek in the summer and autumn of 2010, revealing both losses and passages of original paint with well-preserved impasto.  Photographs record its appearance before cleaning (fig. 4), and after cleaning but before restoration (fig. 5), and an X-Ray (fig. 6) reveals no changes to the design, but is an aid in reading both the brushwork and the condition of the painting.  A synopsis of the work done by Mme Leegenhoek, a detailed condition report by Sarah Walden, and a report on the panel by Simon Bobak, are available both online and upon request from the Old Master Paintings Department.

PROVENANCE
Although this painting was almost certainly painted in Rubens' workshop, and by family tradition it remained in Rubens' possession and was inherited by his descendants, their ancestors, it cannot be identified, either by subject or by artist, with any painting listed in his inventory of 1640, or that is otherwise recorded as in his possession.¹⁰  In fact, no work by Van Dyck is listed in Rubens' inventory.  Its provenance thus cannot be stated with certainty earlier than the late 18th Century when it passed by marriage from the Borrekens family to the direct ancestors of the present owner; thereafter it is secure.

1.  We are grateful to Ben van Beneden for his help in researching this picture, and for granting us access to the Rubenianum archives.
2.   For example the Portrait of a Carmelite Friar in Birmingham, Barber Institute of circa 1616, oil on panel, 79.5 by 63.5 cm.; see R. Verdi, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, London 1999, unpaginated, no. 48, reproduced.  For further examples of Rubens' monastic portraits known in the original and in copies, see H. Vlieghe, Rubens Portraits of unidentified sitters in Antwerp, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, Part XIX, (II), pp. 52-4,  75-6, 127-8, 148, 181-2, nos. 73, 74, 87, 116, 125-6, 130, 145, reproduced figs. 31-4, 6-7, 138-9, 153-8, 162-6, 210-2.  Although most of Rubens' portraits are of members of the Shod (Calced) Carmelite Order, for whom whose church in Brussels he painted a large altarpiece in 1616, for obvious reasons it cannot be determined if the present sitter is of this or Unshod (Discalced) Carmelite order.
3.  Inv. no. 99.1; see Verdi, loc. cit.
4.  Inv. no. 1739; see Vlieghe, op. cit., p. 148, no. 130, reproduced fig. 162.
5.  Something similar can be observed, for example, in the edges of the ruff in Van Dyck's Portrait of Cornelis van der Geest, in The National Gallery, London (see N. De Poorter, in S.J. Barnes, N. de Poorter, O. Millar, H. Vey, Van Dyck.  A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, New Haven & London 2004, pp. 98-9, no. I.104, reproduced.
6.  Idem, p. 79, no. I.75, reproduced.
7.  See J. Held, The Oil Sketches of Peter Paul Rubens, Princeton 1980, vol. 1, pp. 609, 612, nos. 442 & 447, reproduced vol. 2, plates 430 & 435.
8.   Dendrochronological Consultancy Ltd, Report 375.  To be posted online, and available on request.
9.  Three of these are versions of The Village Lawyer, of which the trwo on panels appearing to derive from the same tree are: Norwich, Castle Museum, inv. NWHCM: 1975.272; Bruges, Stedelijke Musea, Groeningemuseum, inv. O.16061.  See K. Ertz, Pieter Brueghel der Jüngere (1564-1637/38, Lingen 2000, vol. 1, p. 503, no. E 498 (Norwich), p. 504, no. E 504, (Bruges); see also P. van den Brink (ed.), Brueghel Enterprises, exhibition catalogue, Maastricht 2001, p. 181, no. 43 (Norwich) and no. 38 (Bruges), both reproduced in colour.  The fourth picture, the third example with a panel perhaps from the same tree, is a Kermesse of Saint George with the Dance around the Maypole, sold London, Sotheby's, 7^th July 2010, lot 9 (unpublished).
10.  The Norwich picture is dated 1618; the Bruges example, 1620.
9.  To be posted online and available on request.
11.  Compiled in French, entitled Specification des Peintures trovvees a la Maison Mortvaire dv Fev Messire Pierre Pavl Rvbens, Chevalier..., printed by Jan van Meurs in the late autumn or winter of 640, and translated into English in manuscript form, entitled An Inventory of Pictures found in the howse if the late Sr Peter Paul Rubens Knt..., and sent by Sir Balthazar Gerbier to Charles I of England on July 14^th 1640.