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View full screen - View 1 of Lot 27. WILLEM CORNELISZ. DUYSTER | A young officer in profile.

WILLEM CORNELISZ. DUYSTER | A young officer in profile

Auction Closed

May 8, 12:10 PM GMT

Estimate

20,000 - 30,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

Property from the SØR Rusche Collection

WILLEM CORNELISZ. DUYSTER

Amsterdam 1599 - 1635

A young officer in profile


oil on panel, oval

30.2 x 22.7 cm.; 11⅞ x 9 in.

Von Gruner collection, Berlin, before 1879;

Wilhelm Gumprecht, Berlin, 1879;

His sale, Berlin, Paul Cassirer, 21 March 1918, lot 40;

With Jacques Goudstikker, Amsterdam, 1918;

Philips collection, 1936 (according to an annotation on an old photograph at the RKD, The Hague);

With D.A. Hoogendijk, Amsterdam, 1948;

Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Christie’s, 7 December 1982, lot 157.

Raupp 1996, pp. 102–05, cat. no. 23, reproduced in colour;

Rotterdam 2008, pp. 34–35, cat. no. 3, reproduced in colour.

The Hague, Pulchri Studio, Sammlung Goudstikker, 3 – 31 October 1918, no. 11;

Amsterdam, Arti et Amicitiae, Collectie Goudstikker, November – December 1918, no. 20;

Arnhem, Artibus Sacrum, Collectie Goudstikker, May 1918, no. 8;

Rotterdam 2008, no. 3.


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

This painting of a single, military figure standing in contemplation against an entirely plain background is a very rare image in Dutch art of this time, and all the more arresting as a result. One can almost draw parallels with the corresponding ideas, though entirely different styles, in the works of Diego Velázquez, and later Édouard Manet. Duyster specialised in military scenes and group portraits, and this figure reappears almost exactly in his painting in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, where the soldier considers a woman kneeling in remorse;(1) and a downward-looking cavalier is also found in Duyster's depiction of officers looking at jewellery, in the Kunstmuseum, Basel.(2) Another small full-length portrait of an officer by Duyster, also oval and of similar dimensions, was sold at Sotheby's Amsterdam, 11 November 1992, lot 1, though in that work a boy kneels to attend to the figure's boot and the background incorporates more details. 


1 Inv. no. 1229; see J. Rosen, Soldiers at leisure: the guardroom scene in dutch genre painting of the Golden Age, Amsterdam 2010, pp. 17–18, reproduced in colour fig. 7.

2 Inv. no. 1340; see C. Geelhaar, Kunstmuseum Basel: the history of the paintings collection and a selection of 250 masterworks, New York 1993, p. 78, reproduced in colour fig. 54.