Lot 32: Jan de Bray (Haarlem c. 1672-1697)

Portrait of Gudula de Kies van Wissen, n‚e van der Wielen (1650-1680), aged 21, half-length, in a black dress with a lace collar and white sleeves with black ribbons inscribed and dated 'AN. 1671. AEt.21.' (AE linked, on the reverse) oil on panel 28 1/8 x 24 1/8 in. (71.5 x 61.5 cm.) PROVENANCE (Probably) J. Simon, Berlin. Anon. Sale, Christie's, Amsterdam, 6 May 1993, lot 123 (48,300 florins to the present owners). LITERATURE (Probably) J.W. von Moltke, 'Jan de Bray', Marburger Jahrbuch fr Kunstwissenschaft, XI/XII, pp. 38-9 and 489, no. FR 24. EXHIBITION (Probably) Berlin, K”nigliche Akademie, Ausstellung von Werken der Niederl„ndischen Kunst des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts, 1 April-15 May 1890, no. 16. NOTES The present portrait was identified, in a letter of 21 August 1992 from the Stichting Iconografisch Bureau, The Hague, as the pendant to de Bray's Portrait of Jonkheer Jan Adriaen de Kies van Wissen, aged 29 in the Mus‚es Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels (inv. no. 2939; see illustration), which is signed and dated 1671 and bears a comparable inscription in white on the reverse. Moltke probably never saw this painting in the original; he included it ( loc. cit.) as a doubtful attribution following Moes and Bode (annotations which also recorded Hofstede de Groot's acceptance of De Bray's authorship). That the present lot is indeed autograph is, however, established by comparison with the Portrait of a Lady, signed and dated 1674, recorded in the collection of Lord Burnham ( ibid, no. 156, fig. 15). The present picture and its pendant must have been separated before 1858 when the male portrait was sold at the M.C. van Hall sale in Amsterdam, 27 April 1858, lot 131, as 'J. van Sprong' (wrongly catalogued as on canvas). The sitter was the daughter of Franciscus van der Wielen and Cornelia Bisschop and was born in Haarlem on 12 June 1650. She married Jonkheer Jan Adriaen de Kies van Wissen on 5 February 1668 in Haarlem. Copyright Mus‚es Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels.