Self-Portrait of an Artist Seated at anEasel

ca. 1653

Attributed to Cornelis Bisschop (Dordrecht 1630

29.7 x 24.8 cm– 1674 Dordrecht)

LS-100oil on panel with arched top© 2017 The Leiden Collection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." In The Leiden Collection Catalogue.
Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017.
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© 2017 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, theartist is portrayed with an air of immediacy and informality. Except for asmall table in 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 entering from the left creates sharp highlights on the man’s
mustard-colored blouse and 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 palette and brushes in his left hand, the viewer
has not interrupted his work, as he does not hold a brush in his right hand
and the palette is bare except for the small, smudged remnants of whiteand red pigments.
The attribution of this handsome portrait is a conundrum.[2] The painting
was once associated with Frans van Mieris the Elder (1635–81), probably

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
Imagesbecause of the panel’s arched format and the smooth and careful
rendering of the sitter’s features and clothes. However, most Leidenartists, including Van Mieris and Gerrit Dou (1613–75), added allegoricalaccoutrements in their self-portraits—lacking here—that served toenhance the artist’s intellectual prestige and social status. For example,
Dou’s Self-Portrait from the mid-1630s (fig 1) portrays the artist resting hisarm on a plaster cast and situates him in an elegant, curtain-drapedinterior.[3] This artist’s simple dress and the unadorned view of his studioseem entirely different from that pictorial tradition. Closer in character to its
half-length composition and informal pose is Judith Leyster’s (1609–60)
Self-Portrait of the early 1630s (fig 2). Nevertheless, the clarity of theimage and the light tonalities of the palette are characteristic of works

Fig 2. Judith Leyster,Self-Portrait, ca. 1630, oil oncanvas, 74.6 x 65 cm, National
Gallery of Art, Washington,1949.6.1

produced later in the century. The shape of the artist’s beret and the short
cut of his hair are typical of styles from the early 1650s.
Self-portraiture was not confined to artists from Haarlem and Leiden, as
can be amply attested by the example of Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69)
during his long career in Amsterdam. As with Rembrandt’s example,attributions of artist self-portraits are often based on the sitter’sappearance, and taking that approach, in this instance, may yield results.
Given the young artist’s probable age of around 20–25 years old, one canpostulate that he must have been born around 1630. Cornelis Bisschop(1630–74) would appear to be a prime candidate.[4] Bisschop was aFig 3. Cornelis Bisschop, SelfPortrait, 1668, oil on canvas, 117© 2017 The Leiden CollectionSelf-Portrait of an Artist Seated at an Easel
Page 4 of 7

Dordrecht artist who, according to Arnold Houbraken, studied withFerdinand Bol (1616–80).[5] He spent his entire career in Dordrecht, where

x 98.6 cm, Dordrechts Museum,Dordrechts, DM/887/308

he executed portraits, genre subjects and history scenes, but hisreputation rested primarily on his illusionistic paintings, often candlelit
scenes.[6] His fascination with trompe l’oeil illusionism is evident in a selfportrait from 1668 in Dordrecht, depicting him lifting a curtain from apainting, a direct visual association to the ancient painter Parrhasius(fig3). Parrhasius was renowned for fooling his contemporary Zeuxis bypainting 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, theFig 4. Cornelis Bisschop, TheArtist 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

sitter looks at the viewer with an open expression with his eyebrowsarched and his 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 in each portrait.[9] Aside from such similarities in the sitter’s
physical appearance, the Leiden Collection painting is executed in amanner that resembles the style of Bisschop’s paintings of the 1660s. For
example, the smooth handling of paint and the harmonious balance
between ochers and grays in the self-portrait anticipate qualities seen in
Bisschop’s Girl Peeling an Apple, 1667, in the Rijksmuseum (fig 5).
Unfortunately, not enough is known about Bisschop’s paintings from the1650s; hence these connections, while intriguing and evocative, are notsufficient to attribute the Leiden Collection painting firmly to this Dordrecht
artist.

Fig 5. Cornelis Bisschop, GirlPeeling an Apple, 1667, oil on
panel, 70 x 57 cm, Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam, SK-A-2110-Lara Yeager-Crasselt© 2017 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: Portraitof 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 vanVelsen (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 to bear little resemblance to Van Velsen’s work, nor does it appear toembody the artistic traditions of Delft. For Van Velsen, see Walter Liedtke, ed.,Vermeer andthe 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 theRotterdam artists Hendrick Maertensz Sorgh, Cornelis Saftleven, and Jan Olis, as well as aself-portrait by the Flemish artist David Teniers the Younger. See, for example, Cornelis
Saftleven, Self-Portrait before an Easel, 1629, 31 x 23 cm., Paris, Musée du Louvre; andDavid Teniers the Younger, Self-Portrait, Vienna, Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der Künste.
For a discussion of artist self-portraits 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: Master
Painter 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 self-portraits of Leiden artists, but I was not able to locate the Leiden Collection painting.
5. See Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlandse konstschilders en
schilderessen, 3 vols. (Amsterdam, 1718–21; rev. ed., The Hague, 1753; reprint,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; rev. ed., The© 2017 The Leiden CollectionSelf-Portrait of an Artist Seated at an Easel
Page 6 of 7Hague, 1753; reprint, 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 Picture
Gallery; 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 thefigure’s drapery and hat. A narrow gap between the background and the figure’s head exposes
the light, warm underlayer.
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© 2017 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Self-Portrait of an Artist Seated at an Easel
Page 7 of 7with a repeating L-shaped pattern in his proper right hand. The palette was added after theproper left hand and sleeve were executed and the artist may have originally held brushes in hishand. The figure’s face appears to have originally been that of a somewhat older person with alonger narrower face and sharper features than in the final painted composition, which depicts ayoung 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.

© 2017 The Leiden Collection