Portrait of a Gentleman Wearing a Fancy Ruff

1627

Thomas de Keyser

Painter, Dutch, 1596 - 1667

Shown from the chest up, a bearded man with pale skin and flushed cheeks wears a chestnut-brown jacket with a thick, lace-trimmed, pleated, cream-white collar in this octagonal portrait painting. The man’s body is angled to our right, and he cuts his light brown eyes back to look at us. Wrinkles line the corners of his eyes under dark brows, and he has a straight, narrow nose and high cheekbones. His red lips are closed and almost lost in the shadow of his full, trimmed beard. His dark brown hair is combed back from a receding hairline and falls around his ears. The dense, ruffled collar comes up to the earlobe we can see. His brown vest has a row of gold buttons down the front, and there are more gold buttons down the sleeve. He is lit from our left so the far side of his face is in shadow. The dark brown background lightens slightly around his face.

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Amsterdam artist Thomas de Keyser created this appealing portrait in 1627, when he was at the height of his artistic powers. It is a commanding yet sympathetic image. The gentleman’s frank gaze and angular cheekbones endow him with a sense of strength, while his receding hairline and crow’s-feet, which reveal his age, lend him a certain softness. De Keyser rendered these features as well as the man’s facial hair and the magnificent collar with remarkable sensitivity. Carefully articulating the hair with delicate highlights and building up impastos around the lace-tipped ruff, he masterfully evokes their different textures. De Keyser pictures the unknown sitter in an understated brownish-red wool jacket with rows of beaded buttons down the front and sleeves.

As with many of his finest works, De Keyser chose a copper panel and an octagonal shape as a framing device. The copper’s smooth, rigid surface allowed De Keyser to paint with an extraordinarily controlled brush, and its inherent luminosity enabled him to use light to model and define the figure’s form.

The identity of the sitter is not certain, but the painter Pieter Lastman (1583–1633) is a likely possibility. A contemporary poem celebrates a portrait of Pieter Lastman by De Keyser, and an entry in Lastman’s inventory of 1632 lists a portrait of or by Lastman in an octagonal frame.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 50-B

Artwork overview

More About this Artwork

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

Scholarly Article:  Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century: Portrait of a Gentleman Wearing a Fancy Ruff, 1627

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Henri Louis Bischoffsheim [1828-1908], Bute House, London; (his estate sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 7 May 1926, no. 48); Martin. (Frederik Muller & Co., Amsterdam); sold 8 December 1926 to Count Gerard Joseph Emile d'Aquin [born 1865], as a self-portrait by De Keyser; by descent in his family; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, New York, 25 January 2012, no. 13); purchased by NGA.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

2021

  • Clouds, Ice, and Bounty: The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Collection of Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Paintings, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2021, no. 11, repro.

Bibliography

1985

  • Adams, Ann Jensen. "The Paintings of Thomas de Keyser (1596/7-1667): A Study of Portraiture in Seventeenth-century Amsterdam." 4 vols. in 2. Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1985: 1:68-69, 3:21, no. 6.

2006

  • Dudok van Heel, Sebastien Abraham Corneille. De jonge Rembrandt onder tijdgenoten: Godsdienst en schilderkunst in Leiden en Amsterdam. Rotterdam, 2006: 52, 54-55, 100, fig. 25, as _ Mogelijk Portret van Pieter Lastman_.

2012

  • Melikian, Souren. "The Classics of Yore Are Back." Art + Auction 35, no. 8 (April 2012): 67-68, color repro.

Inscriptions

center left, in monogram: TDK. ANo 16[2]7

Wikidata ID

Q20177068

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