JACQUES DES ROUSSEAUX

Tourcoing c.1600 -  Leiden 1638

An Apostle, probably St. Peter

Oil on panel
60.8 by 45.3 cm.

PROVENANCE:

Collection O'Meara;
Anonymous sale, Brussels, Gallery Renaissance, 16 December 1941, lot 126, offered with a certificate of Dr. C. Hofstede de Groot;
Collection Warnants, Belgium (both the above as P. de Grebber);
Private collection, Antwerp;
Sale: Sotheby’s Amsterdam, November 13, 2007, Lot 21 (as Jan Lievens);
Private collection

LITERATURE:

H. Gerson, 'Rembrandt en de schilderkunst in Haarlem', in Miscellanea I.Q. van Regteren Altena, Amsterdam 1969, p. 139;
W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt Schüler, vol. III, Landau/Pfalz 1983 and after, p. 1798, no. 1246, reproduced p. 1885 (as Jan Lievens);

B. Schnackenburg, “Jan Lievens und Pieter de Grebber", Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch, vol. 68, 2007, pp. 187-188 (as Jan Lievens)

A native of Tourcoing, in southern Flanders, Jacques des Rousseaux was one of the few of Rembrandt's circle who had actually been to Italy, for in 1627 he ‘résidait au Bourg de Tourcoing, venu naguerre du pays d'Italie où il a demeuré quelques années'. Neither Bredius nor Sumowski (1) were able to find details of his journey south, nor have any works surfaced that would have been painted there. This picture is however close to that experience, because of its echoing of the head and shoulders subjects that he could have seen there, like Caravaggio’s Bacchus and the Boy Bitten by a Lizard that were such popular images of the 'retratto' - not so much a portrait as an image taken from life. In Holland these had quite a following, and developed in the genre of what was called a 'tronie', a head and shoulders study in which the model plays a role or expresses a particular emotion. This owes a lot to the ressemblance parlante that Simon Vouet had introduced in Rome, which in turn was a result of the direct observation of expression and suspended motion, like Bernini's statues that showed the model's buttons half undone, the mouth about to utter or sing. A considerable demand for these paintings developed, both among collectors and for the artists themselves,

for they also served as a storehouse of facial types and expressions for figures in history paintings. Des Rousseaux must have been in Italy at the same time as Van Dyck, who arrived in Rome in 1622, and his awareness of his bravura would have been an important element for Jan Lievens, who would seek the Flemish painter's work out even before he actually met him in The Hague in 1632 and travelled with him to London.

There were a number of works of this kind painted by Lievens and the young Rembrandt around 1630, and since Des Rousseaux was quite a lot older than both of these for he was probably born before 1600, (while Rembrandt was born in 1606, Lievens a year later) so the example must have been significant. By contrast, the influence was obviously reciprocal, because Jacques des Rousseaux obviously identified with Rembrandt's style, and painted a number of pictures that were confused with his work, including pictures thought to be of him, his father, and Rembrandt's mother. Rousseaux's family, who made fabric ’bourattiers’ had moved to Leiden from southern Flanders that had come under Spanish rule, along with a large number of French artists drawn there because of the religious freedom that existed in Holland, and there was a lively community there including many foreigners. There has been some difficulty in tracing his career in Holland, partly because of the many forms used for his name (and this may be at the root of why his Italian stay is undocumented in the Stati d'Anime of Roman churches). Many of them travelled freely, and indeed Jacques's son married Herman van Swanevelt's (from Woerden not far from Leiden) daughter, in Rome, and also worked in Paris (where Swanevelt returned about 1640).

The same model appears in a head and shoulders Study of a Man, signed and dated 1630 that was in a sale at Sotheby's, London, in 1992 (Lot 111, 12th May), which also has the Caravaggesque background wall with a shaft of shadow.

(1) A. Bredius, 'Le Peintre Jacques des Rousseaux' Gazette des Beaux-Arts, CXIV, 1922, p. 1-12;  W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler IV, 1983, p. 2501.

JACQUES DE ROUSSEAUX

Portrait of a man

Signed & dated 1630

Sotheby’s 12 May 1992, lot 111