Jacob Jordaens

With Fernand Fiévez, Brussels;
Armand Colle, Ghent, by 1978;
Thence by descent.

Brussels, Exposition d'art Belge ancien et moderne, 1928, no. 141;
Copenhagen, Carlsberg Glyptotek, Udstillingen af Belgisk Kunst fra XV.-XX. Aarhundrede, 26 April - 25 May 1931, no. 13;
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Tentoonstelling van Oude Kunst, 1936, no. 81;
Cologne, Kunsthalle, Weltkunst aus Privatbesitz, 18 May - 4 August 1968, no. F19;
Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Jordaens in Belgisch bezit, 24 June - 24 September 1978, no. 8.

J.S. Held, "Jordaens' Portrait of His Family", in The Art Bulletin, June 1940, pp. 79-80 and 82, reproduced fig. 12;
G. Marlier, "Die zweite Kunst- und Antiquitätenmesse in Brüssels", in Die Weltkunst, vol. XXVII, no. 11, 1 June 1957, p. 5;
M. Vandenven, Jordaens in Belgisch bezit, exhibition catalogue, Antwerp 1978, p. 35, cat. no. 8, reproduced;
R.-A. d'Hulst, Jacob Jordaens, London 1982, p. 331, note 1.

The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has an old lining and stretcher. It appears possibly to be a fragment, with a long insert about two inches wide in the lower left background, from a horizontal line in the middle of the background across to the figure running down for six to eight inches following the sloping outer edge of the shoulder. Some of the other edges may possibly be original including the top and right edges, although both perhaps slightly trimmed. There is a band of retouching along the base edge from the left corner up to the white drapery. The left half of the white collar was added, apparently covering red drapery, with a few patches of fairly rough retouching also in the folds of the white collar on the right. However the white drapery on the right has much remarkable fine fresh original brushwork especially higher up towards the neck and shoulder. Whether this sketch once included other figures or was itself included in a wider painting is hard to tell as it is. The head is beautifully luminous in films of free, liquid brushwork. There are one or two little old lines of lost upper surface flakes, down the cheek and by the eyebrow, but essentially the very personal treatment of the head is finely preserved, with the lovely details of the hair perfectly intact. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
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Julius Held was the first to recognise in this sketch-like study the features of Jordaens' wife, Catharina van Noort, daughter of his teacher Adam van Noort.  She is to be seen in at least two formal portraits by Jordaens, of which the earliest is his self-portrait with the Van Noort family in Kassel, Gemäldegalerie, in which Catharina's head is seen in three-quarter profile, as it is here (detail, fig. 1).¹  She is portrayed again in his family self-portrait of circa 1621-2 in the Prado, Madrid, formally dressed and posed seated with her daughter Elizabeth.²  Her unmistakable physiognomy, with her prominent nose and narrow slit eyes, occurs in a number of Jordaens' history paintings, for example as the maid in versions of The Satyr and the Peasant, in Gothenberg and Munich.³

Jordaens married Catharina van Noort on 15 May 1616, a few days before her 23rd birthday (she was almost four years older than her husband).  The Kassel portrait probably dates from 1615 or 1616, and thus may precede the marriage, although D'Hulst saw it as a betrothal portrait.  Jordaens had been living in the Van Noort family house in Everdijstraat in Antwerp, and the young couple continued living in the same street, where Van Noort owned two properties, until 1618, when they bought a house in the Hoogstraat.

Jordaens has here portrayed his wife by the light of an unseen candle or lamp, and the nocturnal setting which highlights the colour in her face, and the reflections of the light source rendered with impasto highlights, heighten the informal and tender mood.  This study may predate Catharina's first confinement, which resulted in the birth of a daughter, Elizabeth, who was baptised on 26 June 1617, and it probably predates the Madrid family group of four or five years later.   That Jordaens seems around 1620 to have started to paint from life a group of figural and facial oil sketches might argue for a slightly later dating around the turn of the decade, and Marc Vandenven dates it slightly later still, to circa 1620-25.⁴

1. See Held, under Literature, 1940, and B. Schnackenburg, Staatliche Museen Kassel. Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister.  Gesamtkatalog., Mainz 1996, vol. 1, pp. 151-2, no. GK 107, reproduced vol. 1, p. 157 (colour), and vol. 2, plate 47.  Marc Vandenven in the 1978 exhibition catalogue suggested that Catharina is also portrayed in Jordaens' self-portrait with his parents and family in St. Petersburg, the Hermitage, but this would appear to be incorrect.
2. See D'Hulst, under Literature, 1982, pp. 268, reproduced pp. 89, 269, fig. 234.
3. See D'Hulst, op. cit., p. 89, the Munich picture reproduced in colour p. 99, fig. 62.
4. See Vandenven, op. cit..