Lot 568: WILLEM DE HEER

WILLEM DE HEER AMSTERDAM CIRCA 1637 - 1681 PORTRAIT OF A SEATED OLD MAN, HOLDING A CARNATION Pen and brown ink over traces of black chalk, within brown ink framing lines, on vellum; signed, lower left: G. de Heer. , inscribed with the sitter's age and dated, upper left: OUT LVIII / 1658. and inscribed in scroll: Dus is de Schets van mijn daar't voorbeelt van een bloem is. / De schets is als ik schijn het welk de Heerzijn roem is. / Mijn leevens bloem gaat af. Mijn roem en hoop is stof / dat GOD verplanten moght voor eeuwighin zijn hof. 235 by 181 mm; 9 1/4 by 7 1/8 in

The works of Willem, or Guillaume, de Heer and those of his father and master Gerrit are notoriously difficult to separate. Willem is thought to have signed some of his drawings W. de Heer and others G. de Heer, the same signature that his father used, and the stylistic differences between their works are extremely subtle. However, although no portrait drawings by Willem have previously been recorded, the present example is dated 1658, six years after Gerrit's death.

For a full discussion of the attribution of drawings by the two de Heers, see Franklin W. Robinson, Dutch Drawings from the Abrams Collection, exhib. cat., Hanover, New Hampshire, Dartmouth College, et al., 1969, under no. 23.