Attributed to Nicolaes Maes Dordrecht 1634 - 1693 Amsterdam

Collection J.P.B. Le Brun, Paris;
Collection Sir Walter Farquhar,London, by 1894;
Sir C.L. Eastlake and others, their sale, Christie's, London, 2 June 1894, lot 115, for £703:10s. to M.H. Colnaghi;
With C. Sedelmeyer, Paris, 1895;
Collection C. de Beistegui, Paris;
With T. Lawrie and Co., London;
Collection W.A. Coats, Esq., Dalskairth, Scotland by 1901 until at least 1923;
With Knoedler, London, 1929;
Collection B.F. Jones, Esq. of Sewickly, Pennsylvania, by 1935;
Collection Goekoop de Jong, The Hague;
Mrs. E.S. Borthwick Norton, her sale, Christie’s London , 15May 1953, lot 83, to Webley for £5,000 (as Rembrandt);

London, Forbes and Paterson, February 1902, No. 5;
The Galleries of the Society of British Artists, 1927;
The Hague, Kleykamp, 1927.

J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters, vol. VII, London 1836, p. 168, cat. no. 526;
Catalogus van de Sedelmeyer Gallery, vol. II, Paris 1895, no. 29;
W. Bode, C. Hofstede de Groot, The complete work of Rembrandt, Vol. VI, Paris 1901, p.194, No. 481;
A Collection of Pictures by Dutch Masters of the XVIIth Century, Forbes and Paterson, London 1902, p. 4, no.5.
Catalogus van de verzameling van W.A.Coats, Glasgow 1904, Afb.29;
A. Rosenberg, W. A. Valentiner, Klassiker der Kunst Rembrandt, Stuttgart and Berlin 1908, cat. no. B.481, reproduced p.491;
A. von Wurzbach, Niederlandisches Kunstler-Lexicon, Vol. II, Vienna and Leipzig 1910, p. 397;
C. Hofstede de Groot, A catalogue raisonne of the works of the most eminent Dutch Painters of the seventeenth century, vol. VI, London 1916, pp. 251-52, cat. no. 497;
D.S.Meldrum, Rembrandt's Paintings, London 1923, p.200, reproduced plate 364².
K. Bauch, Rembrandt Gemalde, Berlin 1966, p.26, reproduced plate 525;
P. Lacaldana, L’Opera pittorica completa di Rembrandt, 1969, p.130, reproduced;
A. Bredius (rev. H. Gerson), Rembrandt, the complete edition of the paintings, London 1969, cat. no. Br. 393, reproduced p.301;
J. Bruyn et al. (Rembrandt Research Project), "Letter - Missing Rembrandts", in Burlington Magazine, vol. CXII, no. 805, April 1970, p.239, reproduced p.241, fig. 63.

Only recently rediscovered, the present work had been sought in April 1970 by Dr. Ernst van de Wetering and his colleagues, working on the Rembrandt Research Project (since published, J. Bruyn, B. Haak., S.H.Levie, P.J.J. van Thiel, E. van de Wetering, Stichting Foundation, Rembrandt Research Project, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, The Hague, Boston, London 1982-89) requesting any help from readers of the Burlington Magazine (see Literature) as to the whereabouts of a number of paintings attributed to Rembrandt.

After recent first hand inspection Dr. van de Wetering has now suggested an attribution to Nicolaes Maes, finding it close in style to his work of circa 1651-2.  He notes that both the canvas and the groundlayer are very similar to An old man wearing a linen head band (previously Count Wachtmeister collection, Sweden) also produced in Rembrandt's studio at the start of the 1650s¹.  This view is tentatively supported by Dr. Léon Krempel who compares the present work to Maes' Frau mit drei Kindren in a private collection in the Netherlands and which he dates to circa 1653².

A copy of a technical analysis conducted by C.M Groen of the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage in Amsterdam is available for inspection and accompanies this lot.

¹ see A. Bredius, Rembrandt Gemälde, Vienna 1935, no. 263;
² see L. Krempel, Nicolaes Maes, Petersberg 2000, cat. no. D40, reproduced plate II and fig. 5.