Portrait of a Gentleman 1690; Attributed to Michiel Van Musscher.

Small oil on canvas in a carved and giltwood frame. The fine quality frame was expensively restored and regilded by the previous owner, using both oil gilding and water gilding for different colour areas.

Dated 1690 and indistinctly signed centre right.

The fashionable and expensively dressed sitter looks confidently out of the frame as if surveying his extensive lands. The open book signifies that he is an intellectual.

His luxurious wig (from which fashion came the expression 'big-wig' for someone important), his silks, his costly table carpet, the very expensive Indian tea gown and particularly his pose, all make this the archetypal Baroque portrait.

The pose and treatment of the material are typical of van Musscher.

This type of portrait was usually on a larger scale e.g. 50 x 40 inches; the fact that this is 'in small' suggests that it was for the 'cabinet'...the intimate room for favoured possessions that was so fashionable during the Baroque period. Perhaps painted for a wife or lover?

MICHIEL VAN MUSSCHER (1645 – 1705) was a Dutch Golden Age painter. was born in Rotterdam in January 1645 and was later baptized on 27 January.

According to Houbraken, he showed a talent for drawing at a young age, and had many teachers, of which he kept a record. His first teacher was Martinus Saeghmolen in 1660 for two months, and in 1661, he took lessons from Abraham van den Tempel. In 1665 he took seven lessons with Gabriel Metsu, and in 1667 he spent three months in Haarlem to take lessons with Adriaen van Ostade. Though his entire education spanned several years, Houbraken was astonished that he became so skilled with so few hours of professional study, and concludes that he must have had a great natural talent that he practiced extensively on his own.

Houbraken wrote that van Musscher moved to Amsterdam to work for Jonas Witsen, a wealthy art lover who introduced him to all of his friends as a portrait painter.

In Amsterdam, during the second half of the 17th-century, the top name in portraiture was Michiel van Musscher.

He married twice, first to Eva Visscher in 1678 in Buiksloot (Amsterdam), and the second time in 1693 to the widow Elise Klanes. His pupils were Ottmar Elliger the Younger and Dirk Valkenburg.

He died on June 20, 1705 in Amsterdam and was buried on June 25 in the Nieuwe Kerk.

SIZE:26.5 x 23 inches including frame.

PROVENANCE: Christie's London, where purchased by the previous owner.

Sibton Park, Suffolk, and by descent.

Verso: old auction catalogue entries.