Sir Anthony van Dyck

Georg Henrik Olof Hintze (1927–2009), Nupurböle, Finland, by 1974;

Anonymous sale ('Property from a Private European Collection'), London, Christie's, 2 December 2014, lot 16, for £494,500.

Helsinki, Sinebrychoff Art Museum, Hollantilaista taidetta friisiläisistä kokoelmista, 10 May – 16 June 1974, no. 14.

S. Alsteens, in Van Dyck: The Anatomy of Portraiture, S. Alsteens and A. Eaker (eds), exh. cat., New Haven and London 2016, p. 129, under no. 33, reproduced in colour p. 132, fig. 79;

C. White, Anthony van Dyck & the Art of Portraiture, London 2021, pp. 189 and 283, n. 13.

This relatively recently rediscovered head study is a preparatory sketch for Van Dyck’s celebrated group portrait of The Magistrates of Brussels, which was painted in 1634 for the city’s town hall, but destroyed during the French bombardment in 1695. Four other head studies for the group portrait are known: two are in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford;¹ one is in a private collection;² and the fourth was offered at Christie's London in 2014.³ These sketches would have been rapidly taken from life in Van Dyck's studio and employed when he came to execute the finished painting. They are all of almost identical dimensions to the present work and share the same unusual priming of the canvas; a scumbled grey wash applied over a layer of red bole, which enabled the artist to achieve a broad tonal range using only a limited palette and an economy of brushwork.

Before Van Dyck painted these individual head studies, the magistrates would have approved his idea for the portrait as a whole. The artist envisaged his composition in a sketch executed en grisaille, which is today in the collection of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris.⁴ This design shows the magistrates positioned around a personification of Justice, in a grandiose setting. The head study in a private collection can be connected with the seated figure second from left, by virtue of it showing the only magistrate to look directly towards the viewer, while the Christie's 2014 picture is thought to be a study for the figure on the extreme right. The Oxford studies have often been associated with the two seated men flanking the central figure of Justice, but the emergence of the present work would seemingly provide an alternative candidate for the sitter on the left. It could also have served as a study for the sole standing figure to Justice’s right or, indeed, that of the magistrate on the extreme left of the composition.

We are grateful to Professor Christopher Brown for endorsing the attribution to Van Dyck on the basis of digital images.

¹ Inv. nos A175 and A176; both oil on canvas, each: 52 x 46 cm.

² Oil on canvas, with paper extensions along the four sides, 63.5 x 49.5 cm.; original dimensions 52 x 42 cm. S. Barnes et al., Van Dyck: A complete catalogue of the paintings, New Haven and London 2004, p. 416, no. III.A33, reproduced.

³ Oil on canvas, 55.3 x 45.1 cm. London, Christie's, 8 July 2014, lot 18.

⁴ Inv. no. MU 11750; oil on panel, squared in oil, 26.3 x 58.5 cm.