Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney

American, 1875 - 1942

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A man with pale skin, wearing a gold-embroidered amber-yellow jacket and tomato-red pants, stands in front of a rocky outcropping with a distant view beyond in this vertical portrait painting. At the center of the composition and taking up most of it, the man stands with his body facing us, but he turns his head slightly to our left and looks off in that direction with slate-blue eyes under curving brows. His smooth cheeks are lightly flushed in his oval face. His full pink lips are closed and are framed by a mustache and small, pointed goatee under his lower lip. His wavy brown hair falls in bangs across his forehead and down to his shoulders. One longer lock has been braided and tied with a yellow and red bow, which rests on the front of his left shoulder, to our right. A wide, lace collar extends from his neck to drape over his shoulders, overlapping a piece of metal armor around the neck, called a gorget. His yellow jacket, a doublet, is embroidered with gold along the hems and where it hangs open down the front to show a white shirt beneath. The silver sleeve we can see is cut with a long slit along the forearm to also show the white linen beneath, and both cuffs have layers of lace at the wrists. A crimson-red coat or cape hangs over his left arm, on our right. His red pants are covered all over with gold stitching above ivory-white, calf-high boots. He holds a wide-brimmed, black hat adorned with plumes of red, white, and marigold-orange feathers in his right hand, on our left. An armored breastplate rests at his feet. He stands on a dirt ground with a tall boulder immediately behind him to our right. The landscape in the distance to our left has a sky filled with steel-gray clouds above trees and hills.
Sir Anthony van Dyck, Henri II de Lorraine, c. 1634, oil on canvas, Gift of Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, 1947.14.1

Henri II de Lorraine

Sir Anthony van Dyck · c. 1634 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1947.14.1

Bibliography

1942

  • The New York Times 18 April 1942: 15:1 [obituary].

1996

  • Turner, Jane, ed. The Dictionary of Art. 34 vols. New York and London, 1996: 33:150.