Self-Portrait of an Artist Seated at an Easel
Attributed to Cornelis Bisschop(Dordrecht 1630 – 1674 Dordrecht)

ca. 1653
oil on panel with arched top
29.7 x 24.8 cm
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Self-Portrait of an Artist Seated at an Easel
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How to cite
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “Self-Portrait of an Artist Seated at an Easel” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 4th ed.
Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. and Elizabeth Nogrady with Caroline Van Cauwenberge. New York, 2023–.
https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/self-portrait-of-an-artist-seated-at-an-easel/ (accessed November 10, 2024).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive is managed by apermanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

© 2024 The Leiden CollectionSelf-Portrait of an Artist Seated at an Easel
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Seated before a panel painting resting on his easel, a young painter turns

Comparative Figures

toward the viewer with his arm casually propped on the back of hischair.[1] With slightly parted mouth and searching, wide-eyed gaze, the artist
is portrayed with an air of immediacy and informality. Except for a small tablein the left background, the studio is bare and unadorned, its simplicity evident
even in the worn, mottled wood of the artist’s chair. A strong light enteringfrom the left creates sharp highlights on the man’s mustard-colored blouseand violet beret, and illuminates the thin ties of his cyan blue painter’s robe
where it hangs over the back of the chair. Although the artist grasps a paletteand brushes in his left hand, the viewer has not interrupted his work, as hedoes not hold a brush in his right hand and the palette is bare except for thesmall, smudged remnants of white and red pigments.
The attribution of this handsome portrait is a conundrum.[2] The painting wasonce associated with Frans van Mieris the Elder (1635–81), probably
because of the panel’s arched format and the smooth and careful renderingof the sitter’s features and clothes. However, most Leiden artists, including

Fig 1. Gerrit Dou, Self-Portrait, ca.
1635–38, oil on panel, arched top,
18.3 x 14 cm, Cheltenham Art
Gallery and Museum,
1899.1.25, © Cheltenham Art
Gallery & Museums,
Gloucestershire, UK / Bridgeman
ImagesVan Mieris and Gerrit Dou (1613–75), added allegorical accoutrements intheir self-portraits—lacking here—that served to enhance the artist’sintellectual prestige and social status. For example, Dou’s Self-Portrait fromthe mid-1630s (fig 1) portrays the artist resting his arm on a plaster cast andsituates him in an elegant, curtain-draped interior.[3] This artist’s simple
dress and the unadorned view of his studio seem entirely different from that
pictorial tradition. Closer in character to its half-length composition andinformal pose is Judith Leyster’s (1609–60) Self-Portrait of the early 1630s (fig 2). Nevertheless, the clarity of the image and the light tonalities of thepalette are characteristic of works produced later in the century. The shapeof the artist’s beret and the short cut of his hair are typical of styles from theFig 2. Judith Leyster, Self-Portrait,ca. 1630, oil on canvas, 74.6 x 65
cm, National Gallery of Art,Washington, 1949.6.1

early 1650s.
Self-portraiture was not confined to artists from Haarlem and Leiden, as canbe amply attested by the example of Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69) during
his long career in Amsterdam. As with Rembrandt’s example, attributions ofartist self-portraits are often based on the sitter’s appearance, and taking
that approach, in this instance, may yield results. Given the young artist’s
probable age of around 20–25 years old, one can postulate that he musthave been born around 1630. Cornelis Bisschop (1630–74) would appear to
be a prime candidate.[4] Bisschop was a Dordrecht artist who, according toArnold Houbraken, studied with Ferdinand Bol (1616–80).[5] He spent his
entire career in Dordrecht, where he executed portraits, genre subjects andFig 3. Cornelis Bisschop, Self© 2024 The Leiden CollectionSelf-Portrait of an Artist Seated at an Easel
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history scenes, but his reputation rested primarily on his illusionistic
paintings, often candlelit scenes.[6] His fascination with trompe l’oeil

Portrait, 1668, oil on canvas, 117 x
98.6 cm, Dordrechts Museum,Dordrechts, DM/887/308

illusionism is evident in a self-portrait from 1668 in Dordrecht, depicting him
lifting a curtain from a painting, a direct visual association to the ancientpainter Parrhasius (fig 3). Parrhasius was renowned for fooling his
contemporary Zeuxis by painting a curtain so real that Zeuxis attempted to lift
it to view the painting he believed the curtain covered.[7]A self-portrait by Bisschop in Detroit executed in the mid-1660s, slightly
earlier than the Dordrecht self-portrait, exhibits facial characteristics
remarkably similar to those in Self-Portrait of an Artist Seated at anEasel (fig 4).[8] In both the Detroit and Leiden Collection paintings, the sitter
looks at the viewer with an open expression with his eyebrows arched andhis mouth slightly opened. His curly, dark brown hair falls gently to the side of
his roundish face. The sitter’s nose is also similarly shaped ineach portrait.[9] Aside from such similarities in the sitter’s physicalappearance, the Leiden Collection painting is executed in a manner thatFig 4. Cornelis Bisschop, The
Artist in His Studio, ca. 1665–70,
oil on canvas, 90.8 x 76.8 cm,
Detroit Institute of Arts, Gift ofAnna Scripps Whitcomb, 38.29,
photo © 2015, Detroit Institute ofArts

resembles the style of Bisschop’s paintings of the 1660s. For example, thesmooth handling of paint and the harmonious balance between ochers andgrays in the self-portrait anticipate qualities seen in Bisschop’s Girl Peelingan Apple, 1667, in the Rijksmuseum (fig 5). Unfortunately, not enough isknown about Bisschop’s paintings from the 1650s; hence these connections,while intriguing and evocative, are not sufficient to attribute the Leiden
Collection painting firmly to this Dordrecht artist.

- Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 2017

Fig 5. Cornelis Bisschop, Girl
Peeling an Apple, 1667, oil onpanel, 70 x 57 cm, Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam, SK-A-2110© 2024 The Leiden CollectionSelf-Portrait of an Artist Seated at an Easel
Page 5 of 7Endnotes

1. When this painting was sold at Sotheby’s in London on 4 December 2008, no. 144, it wasidentified as: “Dutch School,” ca. 1640–50.
2. Records at the Frick Art Reference Library, which note that the painting was once in thecollection of Thomas Giffard, Chillington Hall, describe it as “Netherlandish school: Portrait of
an Artist,” and alternatively, “attributed, with question, to Frans van Mieris the Elder; possibly
a youthful self-portrait.” In 2009 Jack Kilgore suggested an attribution to Jacob van Velsen(ca. 1597–1656), a Delft artist who depicted an artist in his studio on several occasions(correspondence in the Leiden Collection). However, the Leiden Collection painting seems tobear little resemblance to Van Velsen’s work, nor does it appear to embody the artistic
traditions of Delft. For Van Velsen, see Walter Liedtke, ed., Vermeer and the Delft School(Exh. cat. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art) (New Haven, 2001), 349–51. The
2008 Sotheby’s catalogue states that this painting resembles works by the Rotterdam artists
Hendrick Maertensz Sorgh, Cornelis Saftleven, and Jan Olis, as well as a self-portrait by theFlemish artist David Teniers the Younger. See, for example, Cornelis Saftleven, Self-Portrait
before an Easel, 1629, 31 x 23 cm., Paris, Musée du Louvre; and David Teniers the Younger,Self-Portrait, Vienna, Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der Künste. For a discussion of artist selfportraits produced during this period, see Hans-Joachim Raupp, Untersuchungen zu
Künstlerbildnis und Künstlerdarstellung in den Niederlanden im 17. Jahrhundert (Hildesheim,1984), 234–36, nos. 141, 143, 144.
3. For this work and Dou’s place in Leiden, see Ronni Baer, Gerrit Dou, 1613–1675: MasterPainter in the Age of Rembrandt, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Exh. cat. Washington D.C.,
National Gallery of Art; London, Dulwich Picture Gallery; The Hague, Mauritshuis) (NewHaven, 2000), no. 7.
4. I would like to thank Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. for his guidance in discussing this work, and forsuggesting its possible attribution to Cornelis Bisschop. Guido Jansen kindly brought myattention to the auction catalogue of the Leiden burgomaster, Johan van der Marck Aegidiusz,
an auction that occurred in Amsterdam on 25 August 1773. This sale contained 98 selfportraits of Leiden artists, but I was not able to locate the Leiden Collection painting.
5. See Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlandse konstschilders enschilderessen, 3 vols. (Amsterdam, 1718–21; revised edition published in, The Hague, 1753;
reprinted in Amsterdam, 1980), 2:220.
6. Bisschop’s paintings were acquired by King Louis XIV of France, and he was invited tobecome court painter for the Danish king, but he was never able to fulfill that role because ofillness that led to his early death. See Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh derNederlandse konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols. (Amsterdam, 1718–21; revised edition© 2024 The Leiden CollectionSelf-Portrait of an Artist Seated at an Easel
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published in The Hague, 1753; reprinted in Amsterdam, 1980), 2:221–22.
7. For an account of the story of Parrhasius and Zeuxis as it relates to Gerrit Dou, see Ronni
Baer, Gerrit Dou, 1613–1675: Master Painter in the Age of Rembrandt, ed. Arthur K.
Wheelock Jr. (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; London, Dulwich PictureGallery; The Hague, Mauritshuis) (New Haven, 2000), 20.
8. The attribution of the Detroit work has been alternatively given to Frans van Mieris the Elder(1635–81), Jan van Mieris (1660–90), and Michiel van Musscher (1645–1705).
9. It is interesting that the Detroit painting was also formerly attributed to Frans van Mieris theElder, and that the sitter is likewise portrayed within an arched format.

ProvenanceThomas Giffard (d. 1823), Wolverhampton, Staffordshire.
Sir Ernest Trollope Bt., by descent to Louisa Charlotte Trollope (1858–1966), thence bydescent (sale, Sotheby’s, London, 4 December 2008, no. 144 [Johnny van Haeften, Ltd.,
London]).
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2008.

Technical Summary
The support, a vertically oriented, rectangular composite panel with an arched upper edge, iscomprised of two, unequally sized, horizontally grained oak planks.[1] The horizontal join crosses
below the figure’s proper right elbow and the upper edge of artist’s palette. The upper plank is ofeastern Baltic origin and derives from a tree felled after 1604. The lower plank is a tangential
section and contains too few rings to date.[2]The arched upper edge and lower horizontal edge are irregularly cut, which suggests they havebeen modified. The panel is uncradled and has no bevels, but does have horizontal hand tool
marks and vertical machine tool marks along the reverse. There is one paper label, but no wax
collection seal, import stamps, stencils or panel maker’s marks.
A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied, followed by paint applied smoothly
along the light gray background, easel, and palette and with low brushmarkings along the figure’s
drapery and hat. A narrow gap between the background and the figure’s head exposes the light,warm underlayer.
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Self-Portrait of an Artist Seated at an Easel
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No underdrawing is evident with infrared images captured at 780–1000 nanometers, but theimages and X-radiograph do reveal compositional changes. The figure originally held an object
with a repeating L-shaped pattern in his proper right hand. The palette was added after the proper
left hand and sleeve were executed and the artist may have originally held brushes in his hand.
The figure’s face appears to have originally been that of a somewhat older person with a longer
narrower face and sharper features than in the final painted composition, which depicts a young
man with a round face and an open-mouthed, slightly startled expression.
The painting is unsigned and undated.
The painting was consolidated, cleaned, and restored in 2009, and remains in a good state ofpreservation.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. The characterization of the wood is based on Ian Tyers’s dendrochronology report.
2. According to Ian Tyers’s dendrochronology report.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection