Jeanne Rongier

Beauties (Pair)

Oil on panel Panel size: 18 x 15 inches Framed size: 22 x 19 inches Signed lower right

Oil on panel Panel size: 7.25 x 5.5 inches Framed size: 12.5 x 11 inches Signed top left

Oil on panel Panel size: 8 x 6.5 inches Framed size: 12.5 x 10.75 inches Signed top right

Oil on panel Panel size: 10 x 8 inches each Framed size: 13 x 10.5 inches each A signed lower left B signed lower right

Oil on panel Panel size: 19.25 x 12.5 inches Framed size: 31.25 x 25.5 inches Signed lower left

Oil on panel Panel size: 9.5 x 12.5 inches Framed size: 14.75 x 17.75 inches Signed and dated 1870 lower right

Provenance: with Leo Blumenreich and Julius Böhler, Munich, 1924 Dr. Frederic Goldstein Oppenheimer (1881-1963), San Antonio, Texas; by whom given to: Abraham M. Adler, New York, un...

Provenance: Bradley Collection. Private Collection, Upperville, Virginia. Literature: Katlijne van der Stighelen and Hans Vlieghe, Rubens: Portraits of Unidentified and Newly Identified Sitters painted in Antwerp, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, vol. 19, pt. 3, London and Turnhout, 2021, under cat. no. 189, p. 161, and fig. 75. This painting had previously been considered to be by an anonymous Tuscan painter of the sixteenth century in the orbit of Agnolo Bronzino. While the painting does in fact demonstrate a striking formal and compositional similarity to Bronzino’s portraits—compare the nearly identical pose of Bronzino’s Portrait of a Young Man in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Fig. 1)—its style is completely foreign to Italian works of the period. That it is painted on an oak panel is further indication of its non-Italian origin. This portrait can in fact be confidently attributed to the Antwerp artist Huybrecht Beuckelaer. Huybrecht, the brother of Joachim Beuckelaer, has only recently been identified as the author of a distinct body of work formerly grouped under the name of the “Monogrammist HB.” In recent studies by Kreidl, Wolters, and Bruyn his remarkable career has been delineated: from its beginnings with Joachim in the workshop of Pieter Aertsen; to his evident travels to Italy where, it has been suggested, he came into contact with Bronzino’s paintings; to his return to Antwerp, where he seems to have assisted Anthonis Mor in painting costume in portraits; to his independent work in Antwerp (where he entered the Guild of Saint Luke in 1579); and, later to his career in England where, known as “Master Hubberd,” he was patronized by the Earl of Leicester. Our painting was recently published by Dr. Katlijne van der Stighelen and Dr. Hans Vlieghe in a volume of the Corpus Rubenianum, in which they write that the painting “has a very Italian air about it and fits convincingly within [Beuckelaer’s] oeuvre.” Stighelen and Vlieghe compare the painting with Peter Paul Ruben’s early Portrait of a Man, Possibly an Architect or Geographer in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in which the sitter holds a compass and wears a similarly styled doublet (Fig. 2). Huybrecht both outlived and travelled further afield than his brother Joachim, who made his career primarily in Antwerp. Whereas Joachim was the main artistic inheritor of their uncle and teacher, Pieter Aertson, working in similar style and format as a specialist in large-scale genre and still-life paintings, Huybrecht clearly specialized as a painter of portraits and was greatly influenced by the foreign artists and works he encountered on his travels. His peripatetic life and his distinctly individual hand undoubtedly contributed to the fact his career and artistic output have only recently been rediscovered and reconstructed. His periods abroad seem to have overlapped with the mature phase of his brother Joachim’s career, who enrolled in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke much earlier than his brother, establishing himself as an independent painter in 1560. Joachim’s activity was confined to the following decade and half, and his latest work dates from the last year of his life, 1574. Our portrait was likely produced in the late 1560s, a dating supported by the dendrochronological investigation performed by Dr. Peter Klein, which established that it is painted on an oak panel with an earliest felling date of 1558 and with a fabrication date of ca. 1566. This painting presents a portrait of an artist, almost certainly Huybrecht’s self-portrait. The young sitter is confidently posed in a striking patterned white doublet with a wide collar and an abundance of buttons. He stands with his right arm akimbo, his exaggerated hands both a trademark of Huybrecht and his brother Joachim’s art, as well as a possible reference to the “hand of the artist.” The figure peers out of the painting, interacting intimately and directly with the viewer, as we witness him posed in an interior, the tools and results of his craft visible nearby. He holds a square or ruler in his left hand, while a drawing compass...

The panel has been attributed both to Joan de Joanes and his son Vicente Macip Comes (Valencia, ca. 1555 – 1623). Provenance: Private Collection, England, by 1886 (according to stencils on the reverse) Private Collection, New Jersey, until 2010 The Veil of Veronica, often called the Sudarium, is one of the most important and well-known relics of Christ. According to legend, Veronica offered Christ her veil as he carried the cross to his crucifixion. He wiped his face with the veil, which left the cloth miraculously imprinted with his image. Depictions of Christ’s face on a veil, or simply images that focused in on Christ’s face, were treasured objects of religious devotion. The popularity of this format also inspired similar images of the face of the Virgin. The iconographic type of the present painting is known as the Veronica of the Virgin, which was especially favored in late medieval and early Renaissance Spain. Distinct from the images of the suffering Christ, the Veronica of the Virgin is based on the legend that Saint Luke painted a portrait of Mary from life. Although scholars have sometimes mistaken them for portraits of Queen Isabella I of Castile (known as Isabel la Católica) or as a depiction of Saint Maria Toribia (known as María de la Cabeza, or, Mary of the Head), paintings like this one were clearly intended as images of the Virgin in the style of Saint Luke’s lost portrait. The Veronica of the Virgin was especially popular in Valencia, and depictions of this subject produced there all stem back to one visual prototype: a Byzantine image in the city’s cathedral (Fig. 1). This early treatment of the Veronica was given to the cathedral in 1437 by Martin the Humane, King of Aragon and Valencia, who promoted religious veneration of the Veronica of the Virgin as part of the celebration of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. This devotion spread throughout Martin’s kingdom and particularly took hold in Valencia, where the Byzantine image resided. The image, which is displayed in a gold reliquary...

Artist: Edmond Pierre Jean Castan Title: Lost in the Woods Medium: Oil on Panel Year of Work: 1875 Signed: Lower Left Dimensions: Framed 18.5" x 16.5" x 3.25" Unframed 6.25" x 4.25" Edmond Castan (1817-1892) was a French artist born in Toulouse in Haute-Garrone who specialized in capturing simple moments of daily life, interior scenes of peasants and children playing games. A pupil of neoclassical painter Francois Gerard...

Artist: Charles Xavier Harris Title: Speak Medium: Oil on Wood Panel Nationality: American (1856 - 1936) Year: 1885 Dimension: 20.5 x 16.25 Fra...

Painting oil on panel measuring 40 x 30 cm without frame and 48 x 38 with frame representing a great bishop of the Venetian school from the first half of the 18th century. Very curi...