An Unknown Bearded Man in a Black Cap
manner of Frans Pourbus the elder (Bruges 1545 – Antwerp 1581)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1570 - 1599
Materials
Oil on panel
Measurements
460 x 360 mm
Place of origin
Flanders (Belgium from 1830)
Order this imageCollection
Petworth House and Park, West Sussex
NT 486198
Caption
It is tempting to identify this sitter as Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547), of whom there is a very similar, but slightly doubtful portrait in the Bodleian Library Sadly, on closer inspection the resemblances turns out to be fortuitous: the Bodleian portrait is earlier, by a different artist, and shows a sharper-nosed man looking to one side. The Howards were anyway not close kin, and there appears to have been no tradition in the Somerset family, unlike so many other great families, of making a gallery of historical portraits: the Van Dycks were acquired for the sake of their beauty, and not of their sitters.
Summary
Oil painting on panel, An Unknown Bearded Man in a Black Cap in the manner of Frans Pourbus the elder (Bruges 1545 – Antwerp 1581). late 16th century. A head-and-shoulders portrait of a man, turned slightly to the left, gazing at the spectator, with a dark beard and eyes, wearing a small black embroidered collarette inside a black doublet together with a black cap.
Provenance
In the collection of the 3rd Earl of Egremont (1751-1837) by 1835; thence by descent, until the death in 1952 of the 3rd Lord Leconfield, who had given Petworth to the National Trust in 1947, and whose nephew and heir, John Wyndham, 6th Lord Leconfield and 1st Lord Egremont (1920-72) arranged for the acceptance of the major portion of the collections at Petworth in lieu of death duties (the first ever such arrangement) in 1956 by H.M.Treasury.
Credit line
Petworth House, The Egremont Collection (acquired in lieu of tax by HM Treasury in 1956 and subsequently transferred to the National Trust)
Makers and roles
manner of Frans Pourbus the elder (Bruges 1545 – Antwerp 1581), artist