JOACHIM VON SANDRART
(Frankfurt am Main 1606 - 1688 Nuremberg)
Portrait of a Gentleman aged 30, half length, in dark dress with a lace collar and cuffs
Signed and dated 'J. Sand: f / 1639.' (lower left); inscribed 'Æ t: 30 . t' (upper right)
Oil on panel
92.5 x 69.7 cm
Provenance:
(Possibly) Anon. Sale, Amsterdam, 10 October 1848, lot 70 'Een deftig Mansportret ter halver lijve in satijnen kleeding met eene geborduurde kraag, en eene Dame met rijker kanten en sieraden gekleed; beiden fraai geschildert. Paneel 90 x 69'.
With Galerie Sedelmeyer, Paris (seal on the reverse).
Robert Hosea, New York; sale, American Art Association, New York,
3 February 1938, lot 54.
The Sylvester Family, Sylvester Manor, Shelter Island, New York, from whose estate sale purchased by the last owner.
Literature:
C. Klemm, Joachim von Sandrart: Kunst-Werke u. Lebens-Lauf, Berlin, 1986, p. 72, no. 17, illustrated, and pp. 129-30, under no. 51.
Sandrart's training included an apprenticeship in engraving with Peter Isselburg in Nuremburg from 1620 and a short period with Aegidius Sadeler II in Prague from 1622. It was the latter who advised him to turn to painting, and he travelled to Utrecht to study with Gerrit van Honthorst in 1625. There in 1627 he met Rubens, whom he accompanied on a tour of Holland. Sandrart was much influenced by his exposure to the collections of Charles I and the Dukes of Buckingham and Arundel during his and Honthorst's visit to England in 1628, and by his experiences during the five years from 1629 which he spent in Italy, travelling to Venice and Florence before settling in Rome. After a brief period in Frankfurt from 1635, the newly married Sandrart and his wife, Johanna Milkau, moved to Amsterdam in 1637 to avoid the destruction of the continuing Thirty Years War. There their introduction into prominent social and literary circles was aided by their relatives Michel Le Blon (1587-1656) and Johann de Neufville (1615-1663). Among the most important of his patrons of this period were the prominent merchant family of Bicker. They commissioned a number of portraits, the most ambitious being Cornelis Bicker with his Company of Marksmen in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.1 It has been suggested that the present portrait could be a member of the Bicker family, possibly a relative of Jacob Bicker van Engelenburg (1612-1676) and his brother Hendrik (1615-1651) whose portraits were painted by Sandrart in the same year.2 The painting was sold in 1938 with a pendant portrait of a young lady of similar size but signed and dated 1643;3 it has been untraced since then.4
Sandrart returned to Germany in 1645 and the painting of altarpieces dominated his pictorial output thereafter. In 1673, after the death of his wife, he settled in Nuremberg, where he began the career as a writer on art for which he is most celebrated, publishing his Teutsche Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste between 1675 and 1680.
1. Klemm 1986, no. 22, illustrated.
2. Klemm 1986, nos. 18 and 20, both illustrated, both with pendants depicting their wives.
3. Ibid., no. 51, illustrated.
4. Although it seems likely that that painting was the pendant to the present work until after the 1848 sale, the lady was sold separately as follows:
With Colnaghi, London, 1896.
Charles Butler (1822-1910), of 3 Connaught Place, London, and Warren Wood, Hertfordshire; his posthumous sale, Christie's, London, 26 May 1911 [=2nd day], lot 212 (52 guineas to Asher Wertheimer).
With Theron J. Blakeslee (d. 1914), Blakeslee Galleries, 665 Fifth Avenue, New York; his posthumous sale, American Art Association, New York, 21 April 1915, lot 71.
Anon. Sale, Kirby-Bernet, New York, 29 January 1921, lot 83.