(Antwerp 1599–1641 London)
Head of a bearded man,
oil on paper laid down on canvas, 43 x 24.5 cm, unframed

Provenance:
with Benedict & Co, 1931;
Swiss private collection;
sale, Christie’s, London, 9 July 2003, lot 5;
where bought by the present owner

Literature:
N. de Poorter, H. Vey, S. Barnes, O. Millar, Van Dyck, A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, New Haven/London 2004, p. 92, under cat. no. I.98 (as a second version)

The present composition is a second version of Head of a Man Facing Right, Eyes Cast Down in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich (inv. no. 4809). The Munich picture is part of a series of five paintings (the Munich Series) said to be painted from life, mostly from the same model. Four of the five Munich studies exist in second versions, of which the present lot is one. A photograph of the present painting, with Ludwig Burchard’s attribution to van Dyck written on the back, is in the archive of the Rubenianum, Antwerp.

Leo van Puyvelde suggested the studies might be van Dyck’s very first ‘experiments’ from around 1613. They are thought to have been painted in pairs on large sheets of paper before being divided and laid down onto individual panels in the 1650s. The background and part of the costume have been amplified by another hand to make the works reassemble finished paintings.

Nora de Poorter, in her catalogue, suggests that van Puyvelde’s dating of the studies is too early. She also notes that the second versions differ in execution. A connection to Rubens´s workshop can, however, be established in that one of the head studies in the series was used for the apostle sitting to the right of Christ in Peter Paul Rubens’s Christ in the House of Simon the Pharisee (Hermitage, Saint Petersburg, inv. no. ГЭ-479) giving a terminus ante quem of circa 1618–20, around the time when Van Dyck is assumed to be the ‘best pupil’ mentioned by Rubens in a letter of 1618. The Hermitage catalogues Christ in the House of Simon the Pharisee as having been painted by both Rubens and van Dyck.

Compared to the Munich Head of a Man Facing Right, Eyes Cast Down, the present painting has the model’s head slightly raised, and while still meditative, the figure’s gaze is now directed down to the lower left of the picture, drawing in the viewer. The nose of the apostle is more pointed, and the definition and tonality of the collar is entirely different. There is a more concentrated area of white highlight in the forehead and there are new accents on the bridge and at the end of the nose. The two pictures have in common the broad, spontaneous brushwork characteristic of the hand of van Dyck. Evident is the use of a loaded brush and a palette of red, black and white and ochre, with a blue grey to enliven the hair. The paint in both has been applied thickly and rapidly, which upon the occasion of the Munich version’s exhibition in The Mystery of the Young Rembrandt (Staatliche Museen Kassel, 2001/2002, no. 69) led Bernhard Schnackenburg, in his catalogue entry, to remark that the execution ‘appears in the first instance shockingly raw, but van Dyck has carefully considered his application of the medium’.