19th-century follower of Sir Anthony van Dyck

Acquired by the present owner in 2023.

This vivacious and rapidly executed portrait sketch depicts Lucas van Uffel, a Dutch merchant born in Amsterdam in 1586. He travelled to Italy with his parents who were active as merchants in the Mediterranean, and probably travelled widely himself, at least in the Italian peninsular. He settled in Venice by 1618 where he amassed a fortune as a merchant and assembled a significant and celebrated art collection, which included paintings by Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, Ribera, Reni and Guercino as well as Van Dyck, and Raphael’s Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione. Van Uffel remained in Venice until his return to Amsterdam in 1627.¹ He was a friend of Van Dyck, who painted his portrait twice on canvas, and once, later on, on a small panel as a modello for an etching, and their friendship is attested to be the dedication to Van Uffel, 'patrone at singularis^mo amico, in segno d’affectione et inclinatione amorevole' on the 3^rd state of Van Dyck’s etching of Titian and his Mistress. They may have met in Venice in 1622, but certainly early in 1623, because Lucas van Uffel and his brother David wrote his name on a letter to be carried to Palermo dated 14 January.

The sitter's likeness derives from Van Dyck’s three-quarter-length portrait of Van Uffel now in Braunschweig, Herzog Anton-Ulrich-Museum, and probably in the collection of Duke Anton Ulrich of Braunschweig-Wolffenbüttel by 1714.²

¹ His collection was auctioned in Amsterdam in sales in 1637 and 1639.

² S.J. Barnes, in S.J. Barnes, N. De Poorter, O. Millar and H. Vey, Van Dyck. A complete catalogue of his paintings, New Haven and London 2004, p. 208, no. II.68, reproduced; https://www.pubhist.com/w12662