Gottfried von Wedig
Portrait of a Gentleman holding a Letter
Oil on panel. 63 x 48.5 cm.
Inscribed, monogrammed and dated (on the letter): “Alle tagh mus man Lehren unnd soll man zum AB widder kehren GDW.F 1623”, as well as dated upper right: Anno. 1623.
Alongside the Flemish artist Geldorp Gortzius, Gottfried von Wedig was the most important portrait painter in his native city of Cologne in the early 17th century. The present work, depicting an anonymous gentleman, is among the earliest of around two dozen known portraits by the artist. It depicts the young man in the narrow frame typical of von Wedig's bust-length portraits, dressed in a black doublet with pink and grey iridescent slit sleeves. A large fly sits on the right of the sitter's starched millstone collar - a motif that also appears frequently in Wedig's still lifes.
Provenance
Former estate of the Dukes of Saxe-Meiningen, Meiningen. – Lempertz auction 735, Cologne, 23.11.1996, lot 1102. – Hauswedell & Nolte auction 385, Hamburg, 27.5.2005, lot 154. – Auctioned by Bonhams, London, 8.12.2010, lot 55. – Italian private collection.
Literature
C. F. Foerster: Katalog der Herzoglichen Gemälde-Gallerie zu Meiningen, Meiningen 1865, no. 57 (as Caspar de Witte). – Rudolf Arthur Peltzer: Bilder rheinischer Barockmaler in Bayern, in: Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 6, 1930, p. 248, note 8. – Horst Vey: Gottfried von Wedig, in: Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 24, 1962, p. 295-320, p. 317, no. 4. – Exhib. cat. “Gottfried von Wedig 1583-1641. Stilleben und Porträts”, ed. by Ekkehard Mai, Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum and Darmstadt, Hessisches Landesmuseum 1998/99, p. 88, no. P6 (Catalogue raisonné by Horst Vey from 1962, revised and expanded by Andreas Schumacher).