- Collection Jan Jansz Gildemeester (1744-1799), Amsterdam;[i]…; ?

- Collection William Morland (1739-1815), Taunton and London

- Sale, Earl of Bessborough et al. [section Morland?], London (Christie’s), 5-(7) February 1801 sqq., no. 9 (‘Polemberg. His own Portrait’; ‘Himself. A Head of Polemberg’), £ 18 18s, to ‘L[ord] Blany’

- Sale [William] ‘M’[orland et al.], London (Christie’s), 17 February 1804 sqq., no. 49 (‘Polemberg, Portrait of Himself’), £ 5 10s, to [John?] Woodburn

- His sale, London (Christie’s), 22-(23) March 1805 sqq., no. 52 (‘Polemberg, The Portrait of Polemberg – highly finished’), £ 4 6s

- Collection George Watson Taylor (1771-1841), Middlesex and Erlestoke Park, near Devizes, Wiltshire, 1806

- His sale, London (Christie’s), 13 June 1823 sqq., no. 14 (‘Poelemborg. His own Portrait, small.’), £ 27 6s, to Hume for William Beckford (1760-1844), Fonthill Abbey, Wiltshire, October 1760;[v] transferred to “Lansdown Hill”, near Bath, before May 1844

- To his daughter Susan Euphemia, Duchess of Hamilton (1786-1859)

- Her granddaughter, Lady Mary Louise (1884-1957), only child and principal heir of William Alexander Douglas-Hamilton (1845-95), 12th Duke of Hamilton, who married in 1906 James Graham (1878-1954), Marquis of Graham, who in 1925 succeeded his father as 6th Duke of Montrose, Brodick Castle, Isle of Arran; thence by descent, Brodick Castle, The National Trust for Scotland, inv. no. B/4998

- Anonymous sale [section ‘Property of a descendant of William Beckford & The Dukes of Hamilton’], London (Sotheby’s), 14 January 2021, no. 32, £ 100,800

 - N.C. Sluijter-Seijffert, Cornelis van Poelenburch (ca. 1593-1667), diss. University of Leiden 1984, p. 245, no. 191

- H.-J. Raupp, Künstlerbildnis und Künstlerdarstellung in den Niederlanden im 17. Jahrhundert, Hildesheim, Zürich and New York 1984, p. 126, note 404, p. 411 (ill.)

- J. Wood, ‘Orazio Gentileschi and some Netherlandish artists in London: the patronage of the Duke of Buckingham, Charles I and Henrietta Maria’, Simiolus XXVIII (2000-01), p. 116 (ill.)

- N. Sluijter-Seijffert, Cornelis van Poelenburch 1594/5-1667: the paintings, Amsterdam 2016, pp. 26, 155, 190 (note 65), no. 255

Cornelis van Poelenburch was one of the most influential artists in the Northern Netherlands. He was the son of Simon van Poelenburch, a Catholic canon of Utrecht Cathedral and, after his training with the leading Utrecht artist Abraham Bloemaert, he spent his early career in Italy, becoming a member in Rome of the newly founded Dutch and Flemish painters’ society Bentvueghels (Birds of a feather) and enjoying the patronage of the Grand Duke of Tuscany Cosimo II (1609-21) during his stay in Florence. His flourishing career owed Poelenburch to his specialization in minutely executed cabinet-size landscapes, often enlivened with mythological and Biblical stories or with pastoral figures, that stroke a chord with a primarily aristocratic clientele. These idyllic pictures, often based on meticulously observed drawings after life, blend the innovative landscape visions of Adam Elsheimer (1578-1610) and Paul Bril (1554-1626), creating a wholly new type of painting through which Poelenburch was to exert a considerable influence in turn, mainly in the Netherlands, with pupils and followers active well into the early eighteenth century.[1] However, Poelenburch’s acclaim was international and his pictures were avidly collected outside The Netherlands, especially in Italy and France.[2] Today, Poelenburch is recognized as one of the first Italianate painters.

Poelenburch has also produced several portraits, invariably on a small format.[3] As far as known, the present work is his only painted self-portrait.[4] A drawn self-portrait that has not been preserved was engraved by Coenraet Woumans (1619-61) for Joannes Meyssens’ Image de divers hommes d'esprit sublime, qui par leur art et science devraient vivre eternellement of 1649 and was then reused for Cornelis de Bie’s Het gulden cabinet vande edele vry schilder-const in 1661 (fig. 1). Both books continue the antique tradition of representing series of famous men (“uomini illustri”), but limited to artists and sculptors in their own lifetime in an obvious attempt to emancipate the visual arts, lifting artists to the elevated rank of writers, orators and philosophers. Only the most celebrated painters, printmakers and sculptors were selected for these galleries of portraits. The said portrait print shows Poelenburch at a more advanced age, with a somewhat troubled expression. Poelenburch’s likeness was in fact recorded at various moments in his life and by various colleagues. Therefore, his face is also familiar through these images. For instance, Anthony van Dyck painted an oil sketch around 1636 for his portrait project Iconographie (fig. 2).[5] Van Dyck’s original, sadly, is no longer extant.[6]

Fig. 1, Coenraet Waumans after Cornelis van Poelenburch,

Zelfportret van Cornelis van Poelenburch, engraving, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

Fig. 2, Pieter de Jode after Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of Cornelis van Poelenburch, engraving, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

Two anonymous drawings executed in Rome in the early 1620s show small portraits of the first hour members of the Bentvueghels with their names and sobriquets added and also contain Poelenburch as a much younger man with his nickname ‘Satir’ (Satyr; figs. 3-4).

Fig. 3, Anonymous, Portraits of Bentvueghels (Poelenburch’s portrait in

the upper row, second to the left), Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle

Fig. 4, Anonymous, Portraits of Bentvueghels (Poelenburch’s portrait the

second to the left), Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

Based on the sitter’s estimated age, our painting was probably painted around 1640 when the artist worked in England. Poelenburch did not represent himself as an artist, but rather as a gentleman. Leaning on the backrest of his chair, the artist strikes a confident pose, while the curtain in the background lends the small picture an air of stateliness. The loose folds of his black attire which echo those in the curtain, infuse the picture with a dynamic flavour and betray a debt to Van Dyck’s dashing portraits of the British nobility. Poelenburch will have admired many of them during his London stay in the proximity of the Stuart court.

Poelenburch was a truly cosmopolitan artist, accustomed to dealing with members of the high aristocracy. By April 1627, Poelenburch had returned home from Italy. His subsequent period in Utrecht was interrupted by a journey to France. An inscription on a drawing of the Bastille relates that he was in Paris in 1631. It was in 1637 that the English king Charles I (1600-49) asked Poelenburch to come to London. The invitation was no doubt arranged through the king’s sister Elizabeth Stuart (1596-1662) who resided in The Hague with her husband Frederick V of the Palatinate (1596-1632), commonly known as the Winter Queen and King because of their short winter term as King and Queen of Bohemia. The latter had been patrons of Poelenburch, who had portrayed their two sons. In London the artist lived at two addresses one after another with the King paying his rent and a handsome annual allowance of £ 60. On top of this, the artist received separate payments for his paintings from the monarch. Poelenburch would stay in London until 1641, having visited Utrecht meanwhile on a few occasions.

Our picture boasts an impeccable provenance. Its first recorded owner was Jan Gildemeester, who was one of the foremost collectors in the Dutch Republic during the last decades of the eighteenth century.[7] Sometime later it came into possession of the eccentric William Beckford (1760-1844), who was primarily known as the author of the gothic novel The History of the Caliph Vatlick (1780). Beckford was immensely rich and spent vast amounts of money on the construction of his magnificent residence Fonthill Abbey (Wiltshire), one of the most remarkable examples of the Gothic Revival in England. His fortune allowed Beckford to indulge in his greatest passion which was collecting.[8] Beckford turned out to be a revolutionary type of collector, unbound by conventional intellectual or aesthetic prejudices. His collection, which spanned the entire history of art from ancient to his own day, also contained Dutch and Flemish top quality paintings. 

Notes