Sir Anthony van Dyck

Possibly Nicholas Rockox;¹
Probably Van Rotterdam sale, Ghent, July 6, 1835, lot 155 (as Rubens);
Probably Schamp d'Aveschoot sale, Ghent, September 14, 1840, lot 244  (as Rubens), to l'Épine;
Binoit de l'Épine, Valenciennes, by 1840;
L. Cottreau;
His sale Paris, Drouot, May 30, 1870, lot 10 (as Rubens);
With Galerie Louis Manteau, Brussels by 1930;
Elizabeth Lindsay Corbett, Nowata County, Oklahoma, by 1989;
By whose estate sold, New York, Christie's, May 31, 1989, lot 123 (with commentary based on a manuscript by Julius S. Held);
Where purchased by the present collector.

Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, Anthony van Dyck, November 11, 1990-February 24, 1991, no. 100;
Antwerp, Rockox House, 4X Antoon van Dyck, 4X Nicolaas Rockox, 15 June-18 July 1999, reproduced no. 35

M. Rooses, Rubens, Sa vie et son oeuvre, Antwerp 1890, vol. IV, p. 242, cat. no. 1035 (as Rubens, on the basis of the sales catalogues of 1835 and 1840);
A. Wheelock, S. Barnes, J. Held et al, Anthony van Dyck, exhibition catalogue, Washington D.C. 1990, pp. 360-61, cat. no. 100, reproduced p. 361
J. A. Spicer, "Anthony van Dyck's Iconography:  An Overview of Its Preparation" in Van Dyck 350, (Studies in the History of Art, 46), Washington, D.C. 1994, p. 363;
C. White and C. Crawley, The Dutch and Flemish Drawings of the Fifteenth to the Early Nineteenth Centuries in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, Cambridge 1994, p. 236;
F. Baudouin, 4 x Antoon van Dyck, 4 x Nicolaas Rockox: een keuze uit de portretgalerij van burgemeester Nicolaas Rockox, exhibition catalogue, Antwerp 1999, pp. 49-50, note 24, reproduced p. 35;
S. Turner, compiler, and C. Depauw, editor, Anthony van Dyck, part 2 (The New Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, 1450-1700), Rotterdam 2002, p. 198

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 beautiful panel is painted on a single piece of oak which is flat and unbroken. The paint layer is stable. The condition of the picture seems to be unusually good, with hardly any of the kind of thinness and abrasion which is so often visible in these quick, grisaille sketches. Under ultraviolet light there are a few tiny retouches which have been applied around the extreme edges to address some frame abrasion and there are half a dozen tiny retouches in the forehead on the right side, addressing a few tiny cracks. There do not appear to be any other retouches. The inscription on the right side, although reading darkly under ultraviolet light, does not appear to have been strengthened and although the varnish is slightly dull, this picture should be hung as is.
"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."

When this intimate painting of Nicholas Rockox was rediscovered in 1989, it was a significant addition to Van Dyck's oeuvre, for it revealed a new facet of his art.  The scale of the picture is markedly smaller – almost that of a miniature – than that of the majority of the artist's paintings, while the application of paint is thinner and more summary than that of his formal portraits.  Julius Held immediately included The Portrait of Rockox  in the Washington exhibition of the artist's work and, in his catalogue entry, emphasized its relationship to Van Dyck's Iconography, a series of more than 100 portrait engravings of famous people, all after designs by the artist.²  While the connection to the series and more specifically to an engraving in reverse by Paulus Pontius, one of  Van Dyck's printmakers, is clear, the emphasis on The Iconography perhaps overshadows other important aspects of  the present work.  Furthermore, recent microscopic examination of the picture has shown that the date and the inscription noting the sitter's age were added by another hand after the completion of the picture, calling this date of 1636 into question.

Nicholas Rockox (1560-1640) was a magistrate and burgomaster in Antwerp as well as a collector, numismatist and philanthropist.  He was also a friend and patron of Rubens and Van Dyck who both painted him on a number of occasions.  Julius Held and later scholars have considered a black chalk drawing of Rockox at Windsor to be the model for this small panel.³ The sitter is shown in the same costume and taken from the same point of view, but the drawing depicts the sitter in three-quarter length, his right hand at his waist and his left resting on an antique bust.  Most scholars believe that the Windsor drawing was made sometime between 1627 and 1632, when both Rockox and Van Dyck were in Antwerp.³  This would put the sitter is his late sixties or early seventies, which would accord with the sunken checks and creased forehead that we see in the small roundel.  Furthermore, the Windsor drawing is closely related to the series of black chalk preparatory drawings that Van Dyck made for The Iconography, all depicting the various notables in three-quarter or half-length.  Working from these ddrwings Van Dyck and his assistants made thinly painted oil sketches to serve as models for the engravings.  As Van Dyck was most involved in the designs for The Iconography before he left for England in 1632, that would further support our proposed dating of the Portrait of Rockox. 

However the present work was an independent composition, not a design for The Iconography.  Although Pontius made an engraving based on the roundel, it appeared only in later editions of the series printed after Van Dyck's death, and it is very different in format from the other portraits.  Pontius's print shows a bust-length figure in an oval frame rather than half- or three-quarter length in a defined space.  Furthermore, in comparison to the compositional oil sketches prepared for The Iconography, the paint here is more thickly applied; the pigment on the drapery is denser and the features of the face are more finely worked. There is also a bit more color than is typical of Van Dyck's grisailles. 

The very intimacy of the scale and the relationship between Van Dyck and Rockox suggest that Van Dyck painted this portrait for Rockox himself.  Perhaps he was inspired by the so-called Kapsel portraits of the early sixteenth century, which were about the same size, circular in format and intended for private viewing.  An inventory of Rockox's office after his death records "a small round painting in a round frame, being the likeness of the deceased"  (Een cleyn rondt schilderyken in een rondt lystken wesend 't conterfeysel van den overledene in desen), which Baudouin has identified with the present work.⁴   Although it cannot be proven that the painting in the inventory is identical with the prresent picture, there are no comparable works by Van Dyck and The Portrait of Nicolas Rockox occupies a unique place in the artist's oeuvre.

1.  See, F. Baudouin under Literature.
2.  See J. Held in Wheelock et al., p. 360 under Literature.
3.  Ibid.; H. Vey, Die Zeichnungen Anton van Dycks, Brussels 1962, no. 168; and C. White and C. Crawley, p. 236 under Literature.
4.  White and Crawley, Op. cit.
5.  F. Baudouin, Op. cit.