Lot 56: * DAVID BAILLY LEIDEN 1584 - 1657

dated: Ao 1623

PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN

5 3/16 by 4 7/16 in.; 132 by 125 mm.

pen and brown ink

PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR, NEW YORK

The brief mention of David Bailly in Jan Jansz. Orlers' Beschrijvinge der Stad Leyden (1643) states that "in addition to his artistic work in painting, in the year 1623 he began to portray a few persons on a small scale, using the pen and thereafter a fine brush, very curious and meticulously done." Orlers continues that Bailly's portrait drawings were admired by Jacques de Gheyn II, whose own drawings were clearly a major source of inspiration for Bailly. Some 35 portrait drawings of this type are currently known, all dating from the 1620s and '30s; for a good example (the 1621 portrait of the artist Jan Pynas) and further information on the artist, see William W. Robinson, Seventeenth-Century Dutch Drawings, a Selection from the Maida and George Abrams Collection, exhibition catalogue, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, et al., 1991-2, cat.no. 16.