Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 205:
<p>Technical notes: The painting’s support is a thin
copper plate, less than ±1 mm thick, cut into an oval
shape with slightly irregular edges. The verso of the plate
shows signs of its manufacture in the form of circular
marks made by a planishing hammer and fine striations
from polishing with a steel brush. No coppersmith’s
mark is present; the verso is marked with an incised “X”
at the bottom centre.
</p><p>The support was prepared with an extreme.Ty thin,
brush-applied, white ground that probably contains some
chalk (calcium carbonate), after the surface of the plate
had first been roughened to provide better adhesion
between the support and the ground/paint layers. Small
protrusions occur throughout this white ground layer.
Paint is applied very thinly in the greenish grey background,
in the sitter’s hair and dark grey costume, more
thickly in the brilliant white lights in the face and costume,
the white lace collar, and the yellowish flesh tones
of the illuminated areas of the face, with much admixture
of lead white and with orange-red accents in the ruddy
cheeks. The sitter’s face and body were applied over a
light greenish grey underpaint, and the facial features
then outlined in brown using a very fine brush. As a
result of the non-absorbency of the support and the thinness
of the ground layer ridges of excess paint have
formed on the surface at the boundaries between thinly
and more thickly painted areas of colour. The brushwork
is quite sketchy, loose and free, considering the smallscale
format, for example, in the white lace collar, the
flesh tones and the individual strands of hair.
The painting is in excellent condition, with scattered
small losses of the paint and ground layers mainly confined
to the edges and the background, and only a few
pinprick losses in the sitter’s face and costume. A layer of
old varnish, only slightly discoloured, is present.
</p><p>Provenance: (Julius Böhler, Munich, by 1968).
Acquired through purchase in 1968.
The unidentified middle-aged male sitter of this bustlength
miniature portrait is depicted in nearly frontal
view before a neutral dark grey-green background,
turned very slightly towards the right. Light illuminates
the forehead and left side of his face. He has
long, centre-parted dark brown hair, a moustache and
tuft on the chin. He wears a black doublet over a white
chemise with a small, flat collar bordered with lace and
tied with a tasselled cord. The sitter’s hair style and
costume are those worn by officials at the Brussels
court of the Governor of the Spanish Netherlands,
Archduke Leopold Wilhelm.1 On the basis of costume
the portrait can be dated c. 1650.
</p><p>Among the rare portraits painted by Teniers, the
present painting, which is unsigned, may be compared,
by virtue of its style and fine execution, with the
small-scale, half-length portrait of an elderly woman
painted around ten years earlier, c. 1640, now in Paris
(Institut Néerlandais, Fondation Custodia, Coll. F.
Lugt).2 The serious, introverted expression of both
sitters is typical of the artist’s work. The painting is
truly like an easel painting in miniature, the brushwork
being surprisingly loose and free for this small
format. Miniature portrait painting in oils on metal
was practiced in the Netherlands in the 17th century,
notably in the northern provinces, but also by Flemish
artists including Gonzales Coques, who was employed
by the Dutch Stadtholder Frederick Henry, Prince of
Orange, at The Hague.3 Teniers occasionally chose a
copper support for small-scale portraits, for example,
his signed bust-length Portrait of a Young Man in
Brunswick (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum).4 Very
small format portraits in oils such as the present picture
were seldom painted by artists who confined
themselves to this genre. Indeed, there is no record of
any Netherlandish painter having devoted himself
exclusively to miniature portraiture in oils. Yet it
seems that from time to time many easel painters,
accustomed to working in large, allowed themselves to
be persuaded, either by friends or by patrons, to work
in a small format. Occasionally there were commissions
for small-scale replicas of large portraits: in the
collections of the House of Orange-Nassau at The
Hague there exists a bust-length miniature portrait in
oils of the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, earlier attributed
to Teniers I and painted c. 1652 after the artist’s
full-length portrait of the same date in Vienna (House
of Orange-Nassau Historic Collections Trust).5 The
portable miniature portrait, originally associated, in
the 16th century, with the various royal courts of
Europe, was of course pre-eminently suitable for
keeping alive the memory of a person for reasons of
diplomacy or affection.
CF
1 As seen in a series of pictures by David Teniers II of the early 1650s
depicting the Archducal picture gallery, of which there are examples at
Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, and at Petworth House, The
National Trust, both dated 1651; see Antwerp 1991, fig. 13, and cat. no.
76, illus.; London 2006/2007, fig. 2, and cat. no. 2, illus.
2 Oil on wood, 19.5 x 15.0 cm, signed, Paris, Institut Néerlandais, Fondation
Custodia, Coll. F. Lugt, inv. no. 6530B; see Antwerp 1991, cat. no.
19B, illus. (M. Klinge).
3 See K. Schaffer-Bodenhausen and M. Tiethoff-Spliethoff, The Portrait
Miniatures in the Collections of the House of Orange-Nassau, Zwolle 1993,
pp. 29–34.
4 Oil on copper, oval, 13.0 x 10.0 cm, Brunswick, Herzog Anton-Ulrich-
Museum, inv. no. 136; see Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig.
Verzeichnis der Gemälde, 1969, p. 565. Over a quarter of Teniers’ surviving
works are painted on copper, and it may be noted that he used small-scale
oval copper plates of almost exactly the same dimensions as NMB 1951
for a set depicting The Five Senses in Zurich, David Koetser Gallery; see
New York and Maastricht 1982, no. 54.
5 Oil on copper, oval, 7.3 x 5.7 cm, Vienna, House of Orange-Nassau Historic
Collections Trust, inv. no. m53; see Schaffers-Bodenhausen and
Tiethoff-Spliethoff 1993, no. 157, illus., as Southern Netherlands School.
Cf. the full-scale portrait in Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum; see London
</p>
2006, .[End]
<bdi><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:David_Teniers_the_Younger" class="extiw" title="w:en:David Teniers the Younger"><span title="Flemish painter (1610-1690)">David Teniers the Younger</span></a>
</bdi>
Unknown date<div style="display: none;">Unknown date</div>
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://collection.nationalmuseum.se/eMuseumPlus?service=ExternalInterface&amp;module=collection&amp;objectId=25896&amp;viewType=detailView">  Erik Cornelius / Nationalmuseum</a>