Circle of Quentin Massys
(Flemish, 1466 – 1530)

Portrait of a Man

Oil on panel
11 x 9 inches (27.9 x 22.9 cm)

Provenance:   

with Leo Blumenreich and Julius Böhler, Munich, 1924 

Dr. Frederic Goldstein Oppenheimer, San Antonio, Texas; by whom given to:

Abraham M. Adler, New York, until 1985; thence by descent to the present owners

While old inscriptions on the verso of this panel propose its author to be Hans Holbein and the sitter Sir John More—a lawyer, judge, and the father of Sir Thomas More—this fine portrait has long been recognized to be by a Flemish hand.[i] Max Friedländer gave the painting to Bernard van Orley (1487/1491 – 1541) in 1924, but did not include it in the volume dedicated to the artist in his Early Netherlandish Paintings.[ii] The painting differs considerably from our modern understanding of Bernard van Orley and his limited oeuvre, which includes only one signed and dated portrait.

Our portrait is by an unknown hand working around the year 1520. It records a vogue in portrait style and in fashion that was current in that period in Flanders. The dress, particularly the hat and the fur coat, most closely resembles those found in the portraits of the period by Quinten Metsys (his name variously spelled Quinten and Metsys). His portrait in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (Fig. 1) provides an interesting comparison with the present work, highlighting similarities in the costume, hat, and pose, but also the differences in style and composition.

This work was formerly in the collection of Dr. Frederic Goldstein Oppenheimer (1881–1963), whose collection of predominantly Flemish Renaissance paintings is now at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas.

[i] Ink inscriptions on the verso of the panel read “Holbein pinx.” and “Johan Morus / Holbein.” Sir John More appeared in Holbein’s lost Portrait of Sir Thomas More and his family, as well as in Holbein’s preliminary study for it in the Royal Collection.

[ii] His attribution is recorded on the verso of a photograph in the Max Friedländer Archive of the RKD, The Hague. At the time, in 1924, the painting was in the hands of the Munich dealers Leo Blumenreich and Julius Böhler. See: Max J. Friedländer, Jan Gossart and Bernart van Orley, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. 8, New York and Washington, 1972.