Follower of Quentin Massys (Louvain c.1465 - Antwerp 1530) ...

Hammer

£5,800

Follower of Quentin Massys (Louvain c.1465 - Antwerp 1530)
Portrait of a Man, bust length, in a black hat and a fur trimmed coat
Oil on panel, gold ground
30.5 x 22.5cm (12" x 9")

Provenance:
Presented to Gunther Henle, 1964
English Private Collection
With William Thuillier, 14 Old Bond Street, London
Tony Chapman Collection, West Yorkshire

A letter from William Thuillier to Tony Chapman reads:

Strange attributed this picture to the Master of the Holy Kinship, Horst Vey proposed an attribution to the Master of Frankfurt.

Although an attribution to Quentin Massys is plausible and this portrait is clearly closely related to those of Massys, no portraits can be given to this Master with certainty, and those that have been attributed to him show some disparity. Wilenski in Flemish Painters (London 1960) lists The Banker and his Wife of 1514 in the Louvre, Profile of an Old Man of 1513 in the Musee Jaquemart Andre, Paris, Portraits of Erasmus and Aegidius of 1517 which are presumed to be in the Corsini collection, Rome, and at Longford Castle. The Antwerp dealer H.de Neyt owned in 1642 An old Man with a young girl and a Fool by 'Quinten', while the Chicago Art Institute has A Man with a Pink Painter attributed to by some Massys, and also mentioned by Wilenski.

The artist of our panel may not even have been Netherlandish since Massys' influence was pervasive in the area of the Lower Rhine and Westphalia, and the painter of this portrait could possibly have been from that region, perhaps from the circle of Barthel Bruyn the Elder.