By descent in the Wauchope family of Niddrie Marisc𒁃hal, Edin💯burgh;

By whose trustees sold, London,&nbs📖p;ꦬChristie's, 12 May 1950, lot 77 (as A. Van Noordt);

There acquired by Adams Acton;

Char🎃les H.E. Phillips, O.B.E., Mexi🐷co City, by 1964;

Thence by deꦛscent in the family, Californ🎃ia, until 2019.

Pintura Neelandesa en México: Siglos XV, XVI y XVII, ex🧔hibition catalogue, Mexico City 1964, p. 16, cat. no. 73 (as Jan van Noordt), reproduced p. 68;

D. A. de Witt, Jan van Noordt (1624—after 1676), Montereal ꧋2000, pp. XV, 363, cat. no. R65 (as not by Jan van Noordt), reproduced p. 388, fig. L53 (as paintings known only from literary sources);

D. A. de Witt, Jan van Noordt: Painter of History and Portraits in Amsterdam, Montreal 2007, p. 271, cat. 🥀no. R70 (under Rejected Attributions), reprodu✱ced.

Mexico City, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Palacio de Bellas Artes, Pintura Neerlandesa en México: Siglos XV, XVI y XVII, April - May 1964, no. 73 (as Jan van Noordt).

This painting stands as testimony to Ludolf de Jongh’s skills in portraiture, a genre that comprises a significant core of his oeuvre. The elegant young man’s costume suggests a date of circa 1648-50, an increasingly productive period for the artist wꦬhen his portraits were characterized by more animated and colorful features. During the seventeenth century, such full length po𝓰rtraits were reserved for the upper class, and the young sitter’s elevated status is further indicated by his elegant costume and by the exotic bird perched on his hand. 

Born in Overschie as the son of a tanner and a shoemaker, Ludolf de Jongh turned his attention to painting upon his family’s move to Rotterdam, training first there with Cornelis Saftleven, then Antonie Palamedesz. in Delft, and finally with Jan van Bijlert in Utrecht. In 1642, after a sojourn in France, De Jongh returned to Rotterdam, and by about 1650, when the present work was likely executed, he had established himself as one of the leading artists of that city as a versatile painter of scenes of everyday life, domestic interiors, and portraiture. Although he was also skilled as a landscape painter, he sometimes called upon others to assist with this element, as is likely the case in the present work; this is also the case in his Rest on the hunt, last recorded in a German private collection [1].

Visible in the present work are some of de Jongh’s most favored visual elements, in particular the contrast between the deep recession into space in the landscape at left, dramatically contrasted against the limited depth at right, here further enhanced by the masonry of the wall.  Comparable visual elements are found also in De Jongh’s full length portrait of a boy with a dog, titled The Lesson and dated 1661, in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (inv. no. 63.54), as well his Portrait of a Boy sold at Christie’s London in 2008 for £97,250 [2]. The latter portrait al🔴so bears the date of 1648, placing it very close in the d🍌ate of execution of the present lot. 

Wꦜe are grateful to Dr. Roland Fleischer for endorsing the attribution to Ludolf de Jongh on the basis of photographs and🦩 for his assistance in the cataloguing of this lot.

1. See R. Fleischer, Ludolf de Jongh (1616-1679), Painter of Rotterdam, Doornspijk 1989, p. 141, fig. 43.

2. Ano♌nymous sale, London, Christie’s,𒊎 2 December 2008, lot 3.