Provenance
…; collection Jan Jansz Gildemeester (1744-1799), Amsterdam;1…; ? 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’;
2 sale
[William] ‘M’[orland et al.], London (Christie’s), 17 February 1804 sqq., no. 49
(‘Polemberg, Portrait of Himself’), £ 5 10s, to [John?] Woodburn;
3 his sale, London
(Christie’s), 22-(23) March 1805 sqq., no. 52 (‘Polemberg, The Portrait of Polemberg –
highly finished’), £ 4 6s;
4…; 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;
5 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, £ 100,8006
Literature
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.7 However, Poelenburch’s acclaim was
international and his pictures were avidly collected outside The Netherlands, especially
in Italy and France.
8 Today, Poelenburch is recognized as one of the first Italianate
painters.
Poelenburch has also produced several portraits, invariably on a small format.9 As far as
known, the present work is his only painted self-portrait.
10 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).11 Van Dyck’s original, sadly, is no
longer extant.12

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