Portrait of a Man ca. 1645–50 Jacob Backer Dutch This sophisticated looking man is posing for a portrait. He leans back slightly, with his left elbow resting on a table and his right hand brought to his chest in an elegant, stately manner. His likeness was drawn in black, white and some red chalk by the Dutch artist Jacob Backer, a portraitist as well as a painter of historical subject matter. The drawing is an example of Backer’s mature style, in which the artist had adopted the manner of portraiture, popularized by his fellow townsman, Bartholomeus van der Helst (1613–1670) in the 1640s. It
Portrait of a Man ca. 1645–50 Jacob Backer Dutch This sophisticated looking man is posing for a portrait. He leans back slightly, with his left elbow resting on a table and his right hand brought to his chest in an elegant, stately manner. His likeness was drawn in black, white and some red chalk by the Dutch artist Jacob Backer, a portraitist as well as a painter of historical subject matter. The drawing is an example of Backer’s mature style, in which the artist had adopted the manner of portraiture, popularized by his fellow townsman, Bartholomeus van der Helst (1613–1670) in the 1640s. It is characterized by a certain degree of flamboyancy in the display of wealth and a bourgeois demeanor, as opposed to the more restrained and sober likenesses painted in previous decades. The sheet is a study, presumably used in preparation of one of Backer’s large group portraits. The sitter has long been thought to represent one of the ‘regenten’ or governors of the so-called Huiszittenhuis, a municipal charity organizations in Amsterdam. This group of seven men was majestically portrayed in a large scale painting by Backer around 1650.[1] Carlos van Hasselt identified the man in our portrait as Isaac Commelin, seen to the far left of the painting.[2] Werner Sumowski and Gerbrand Korevaar thought him to represent Rombout Kemp or Lucas Pietersz. Conijn, both seated to the far right.[3] In the 2008 exhibition catalogue on Backer, however, Peter van den Brink argued that both the pose and direction of this Portrait of a Man differ to such extent with the figures depicted in the painting, that a relationship between the two was deemed unlikely.[4] Although indeed there is no one to one resemblance with any of the governors of the Huiszittenhuis, nevertheless some striking similarities in poses between the sitters identified above cannot be denied. As the drawing concerns a loose preparatory drawing, made in the early stages of the preparation of a composition, the poss
Size: 2749px × 3071px
Photo credit: © MET/BOT / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords:
