ATTRIBUTED TO FERDINAND BOL (1616-1680)

PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN
Pen and brown ink and brown wash, with framing lines in brown ink, on laid paper
6.1 x 7.2 cm
 
PROVENANCE:
Private collection, England;
Anonymous sale, Gloucestershire, Prinknash Abbey Park, Chorley’s Auctioneers, 25.07.2023, lot 720 (as 'Dutch School, 18th Century').
 
 
 
 
The cautious attribution of the present sheet to Ferdinand Bol is based on stylistic and technical similarities to a handful of small-scale portrait drawings by the artist, most notably a drawing of a man in the collection of the Ossolineum in Wroclaw, Poland (see fig. I above), which is in turn a study for Bol’s half-length painted Portrait of a Man, signed and dated 1647, in the Staatliches Museum in Schwerin. Other comparable drawings by Bol include 'A Scholar Seated in his Study' in the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in Munich, 'An Old Man Seated at a Table', also in Munich, and a 'Young Woman Playing the Lute' in the Liberna Collection at the Draiflessen Collection in Mettingen, Germany.


We are grateful to Martin Royalton-Kisch for his first-hand study of the present sheet and his assistance in determining its tentative attribution to Bol. Dr. Royalton-Kisch has dated this drawing to c.1635-1642; a time in which Rembrandt had a large number of pupils and assistants working in his style, of which Bol was among the most gifted.