Lot 1554 Dα

This portrait of a bearded man, hitherto unknown to research, was recently discovered in a German private collection. Dr Bernhard Schnackenburg inspected the painting early on and supervised the expert restoration of the excellently preserved work. We would like to thank him for confirming the work's authenticity and assisting with its cataloguing. In addition, we thank Dr David de Witt, Amsterdam, for valuable information in the cataloguing of this lot.

This depiction of an elderly bearded man was painted around 1630, in the late phase of Lieven's Leiden period, when the painter was already at the peak of his artistic creativity, before he moved to London in 1632. It was during this Leiden period that the remarkable artistic exchange between Lievens and Rembrandt took place, with both artists inspiring each other, possibly even sharing a studio, becoming friends, but also competing for the favour of the art-buying public. In his memoirs, Constantin Huygens describes how he met the two artists as young men. He writes that Rembrandt was the more introverted character of the two, while Jan Lievens seems to have been more extroverted, even ambitious: "His youthful spirit has only the sublime and grand in mind, and so he does not so much want to reach the measure of his subjects as to surpass them" (quoted from Bernhard Schnackenburg: Jan Lievens. Freund und Rivale des jungen Rembrandt, Petersberg 2016, p. 150). Our painting is one of those works by the still young painter that show his mature, unmistakable style in his engagement with Rembrandt.

Lievens was one of the pioneers in the development of the tronie, those head and character studies that was established as an independent genre of painting in the course of the 17th century. This profile view of an elderly man looking to the left also belongs to this genre. It is probably the prototype, the first version to the "Bust of an Elderly Man Facing Left" painted shortly afterwards in a somewhat more monumental form, which was acquired by Catherine II in 1797 and is now in the State Hermitage in Saint Petersburg (cf. Schnackenburg, op. cit., no. 198, pp. 393ff). During this period Lievens repeatedly produced two versions of the same motif, which can differ from each other in their painterly treatment, for example the two versions of the "Bust of an Old Man with Velvet Beret", each in private ownership (cf. Schnackenburg, loc. cit., no. 199 and no. 200, p. 396).

Our painting is executed with powerful, impasto brushstrokes and richly varied colouring. It shows the sitter with an alert mind and strikingly detailed facial features. In the beard and hair, Lievens scratches his brushstrokes into the wet paint, defining individual hairs, enlivening the surface and creating an intricate pattern of light and dark. The face, hair and beard are strongly lit from the left, while the dark background, especially on the left edge of the picture, forms a powerful contrast to the figure. Jan Lievens shows an astonishing technical variety in the present painting, from the smooth rendering of the monochrome coat and background on the one hand to the discernible brushstrokes of the brightly lit facial features on the other.