MICHIEL VAN MUSSCHER | PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN, THREE-QUARTER-LENGTH, IN A JAPANESE ROBE, STANDING BEFORE A GARDEN, A STATUE OF MERCURY BEYOND

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 10 February 1928, lot 97 (as Caspar Netscher, and signed and dated 1682), for £19–19s to Lawson;

Anonymous sale, Prague, Hugo Feigla, 13 December 1935, lot 50 (as Attributed to van Musscher);

With Franke, Leipzig, 1940;

Anonymous sale, Cologne, Van Ham, 28–31 October 1987, lot 1646 (as van Musscher), when acquired.

Rotterdam, Kunsthal, At Home in the Golden Age, 9 February – 18 May 2008, no. 152.

The SØR Rusche Collection has been exhibited extensively over the last two decades. Please click here for further information.

H.-J. Raupp (ed.), Niederländische Malerei des. 17. Jahrhunderts der SØR Rusche-Sammlung, vol. I, Portraits, Münster/Hamburg/London 1995, pp. 104–05, reproduced in colour (as van Musscher);

M.E. Wieseman, Caspar Netscher and Late Seventeenth-century Dutch painting, Doornspijk 2002, p. 385, cat. no. C243 (as signed and dated 1682, and closer to van Musscher than to Netscher);

W. Pijbes, M. Aarts, M. J. Bok et al., At Home in the Golden Age, exh. cat., Zwolle 2008, p. 138, cat. no. 152, reproduced in colour (as van Musscher).

Born in Rotterdam, Michiel van Musscher received an eclectic training – initially with the obscure history painter Martin Saagmolen in 1660; then with the Leiden history and portrait painter Abraham van den Tempel from 1661; next with Gabriel Metsu, whose work was to have a profound influence, in 1665; and finally in Haarlem under Adriaen van Ostade in 1667. By 1668 he had settled in Amsterdam, where he developed a successful practice as a portrait painter, portraying his sitters in landscape settings, as here, or in opulent interiors.

When this painting was offered in 1928 the portrait bore a beard and a moustache; by the time it was sold again in 1935, these features had been removed. We are grateful to Dr. Robert Gerhardt for his help in the cataloguing of this lot.