FERDINAND BOL | PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN, FACING RIGHT, IN FRONT OF A RED CURTAIN, WITH A LANDSCAPE BEYOND

Ferdinand Bol, one of Rembrandt’s most talented students, painted this mature and elegant portrait in 1661, at the height of his success within the genre. The handsome sitter, with his engaging eyes and pleasing countenance, looks towards the audience with an air of familiarity. His features are softly modeled by a light that illuminates the scene from the upper left, casting shadows that define his face and hands as well as the fabric of his costume. His powerful and confident pose with his right arm akimbo and his left arm resting upon a ledge, is nearly identical to that found in Bol's portrait from 1650 of Roelof Muelenaer, Amsterdam's postmaster (fig. 1) [1]. While nearly a decade separates the two portraits from each other, together they serve to illustrate the development of Bol's style. By the 1660s, when he executed the present work, his more elegant and independent style had clearly emerged—one that could be distinguished from that of his master.  

Bol was born in Dordrecht to Balthasar Bol, a prosperous surgeon, and is thought to have been apprenticed there to Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp (1594–1651), the father of the landscape painter Aelbert Cuyp, who was at that time the most prominent and versatile artist in Dordrecht. When Bol was nearly twenty years of age, he eschewed the customary trip to Italy expected of a young painter and left for Amsterdam, where he entered Rembrandt’s studio. Bol was apprenticed to his famous master between 1635 and 1641, and, unsurprisingly, this was to be a formative influence upon his subsequent career. Upon the death of his father and his ensuing inheritance, Bol established himself as an independent artist at the age of 25, and his first signed and dated works appear from 1642 onward.

In composition and handling, the present portrait can be also compared to a portrait of a lady sold recently in these rooms [2]. In both works, the sitters are garbed in similar heavy fabrics and they are set before a red curtain that opens to reveal a landscape. The rich red drapery provides a sense of gravitas to the scene and enlivens the dark fabrics that adorn the figures. At the same time, the present portrait seems to foreshadow the compositions Bol would complete later in the same decade, such as his famed life-sized portraits of Michiel de Ruyter from 1667 [3].  

1. Oil on canvas, 118 by 96.5 cm, signed and dated F. Bol. fec. 1650, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. SK-A-683.

2. Oil on canvas, 101 by 90.5 cm. Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby's, 31 January 2019, lot 251 (sold for $212,500).

3. This composition is known in a number of versions, including one in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. no. SK-A-44, oil on canvas, 157 by 138 cm, signed and dated FBol. fecit. 1667.