Bearded Man with a Beret

c. 1630

Jan Lievens

Associated Names
Jan Lievens
Painter, Dutch, 1607 - 1674
Shown from the shoulders up, a bearded man with wrinkles lining his pale-skinned face looks up and to our left, toward a bright light source, in this vertical portrait painting. His shoulders are angled to our left, and he tips his head slightly back so his face turns toward us. He looks up from the corners of his gray eyes under bushy brows. A soft gray cap, pushed back high over the crown of his head, frames his face over a few tuffs of charcoal-gray hair on his high forehead. His brows are furrowed and his hollow cheeks ruddy. He has a silvery gray mustache, and his long, full beard falls to his chest. Lines have been incised in the gray and white paint of his beard to reveal an underlayer of rust orange. His slate-gray tunic is streaked with fawn brown to create highlights. The background is painted with blended strokes of leather brown and touches of golden orange, and it lightens around the man’s head.

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Toward the end of his early Leiden period, Jan Lievens created a series of tronies, or head studies, of older men and women. Even though he based them on the features of live models, these tronies were character studies rather than formal portraits. Looking up to the left, an old man has parted his lips as if he has been interrupted in mid-sentence. The man’s beret may indicate that Lievens meant to depict a scholar or artist. By 1631 tronies by Lievens had already found their way into prominent collections, including that of Frederik Hendrik (1584–1647), Prince of Orange. Constantijn Huygens (1596–1687), quintessential Renaissance man and secretary to the Prince of Orange, thought so highly of Lievens’ ability to render the human face that he urged Lievens to specialize in portraiture.

Daring and innovative as a painter, draughtsman, and printmaker, Lievens created character studies, genre scenes, landscapes, formal portraits, and religious and allegorical images that were widely praised and highly valued during his lifetime. In the 1620s Lievens and his Leiden colleague Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) developed a close, symbiotic relationship that influenced both artists in terms of style and subject matter. They appear as models in each other’s paintings and may have shared a studio. By the early 1630s their manners became so similar that even contemporaries were unsure of the correct attributions of their paintings.

On View
West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M51

Artwork overview

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century: Bearded Man with a Beret, c. 1630

This horizontal painting shows a group of eight light-skinned musicians and onlookers gathered closely around a rectangular, carpet-covered table. The front edge of the table runs parallel to the bottom edge of the painting, and seems close to us. Shown from about the waist up, the men and women’s vivid lapis-blue, coral-red, buttercup-yellow, lilac-purple, and moss-green garments fall in crisp folds. Bright reflections on the fabric suggest a satin-like material. Two women wear feathers in their hair and one man’s hat is plumed. One man, wearing crimson red and black, sits with his back to us to our left on the near side of the table. He holds the neck of a bass viol, about the size of a cello, with his left hand, and points to pages of an open music book with the bow in his right hand. The other people cluster on the far side of the table. A man to the left plays a violin; a woman at the center plays a guitar-sized bandora, and a woman to our right plays a lute. The musicians, along with a man who leans over the table from between the two women, look down at the music books. A young man behind the woman at the center holds up a glass of pale liquid with his right hand as he touches his left forefinger to his smiling lips. A man and woman stand close together in the background to our right, in the top right corner of the canvas.

Scholarly Series:  Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Estate of Marion Louise Nichols, Cambridge, Massachusetts;[1] private collection, Boston, from 1975; consigned by (Michael Filades, Boston) to (Hoogsteder-Naumann, Ltd., New York);[2] sold 6 June 1986 to George M. [1932-2001] and Linda H. Kaufman, Norfolk; transferred 31 August 2005 to the Kaufman Americana Foundation; gift (partial and promised) 2006 to NGA; gift completed 2010.

[1] According to information provided by Otto Naumann to the Kaufmans (copy in NGA curatorial files), Marion Louise Nichols inherited the painting from her father, who presumably brought it to the United States in the early twentieth century.

[2] Otto Nauman, e-mail to Jennifer Henel, 30 August 2011, in NGA curatorial files.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1990

  • Great Dutch Paintings from America, Mauritshuis, The Hague; The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1990-1991, no. 39, repro.

2008

  • Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Milwaukee Art Museum; Museum Het Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam, 2008-2009, no. 20, repro.

Bibliography

1983

  • Sumowski, Werner. Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler in vier Bänden. 6 vols. Landau, 1983:3:no. 1253, repro.

1990

  • Broos, Ben P. J., ed. Great Dutch Paintings from America. Exh. cat. Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The Hague and Zwolle, 1990: 318-321, no. 39, color repro. 219.

2008

  • Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. Jan Lievens: a Dutch master rediscovered. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington; Museum Het Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam; Milwaukee Art Museum. New Haven, 2008: no. 20, 120-121.

  • Doyle, Margaret. Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered. Exh. brochure. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2008: unpaginated, fig. 2.

2014

  • Wheelock, Arthur K, Jr. "The Evolution of the Dutch Painting Collection." National Gallery of Art Bulletin no. 50 (Spring 2014): 2-19, repro.

2022

  • Gifford, E. Melanie. "Rembrandt and the Rembrandtesque: The Experience of Artistic Process and Its Imitation." In Tributes to Maryan W. Ainsworth, Collaborative Spirit: Essays on Northern European Art, 1350-1650. Edited by Anna Koopstra, Christine Seidel and Joshua P. Waterman. London/Turnhout, 2022: 335, 336, color fig. 3a.

Wikidata ID

Q20177100

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