Lot 207: Jacques des Rousseaux , Tourcoing circa 1600 - 1638 Leiden a tronie of an an old man at prayer oil on panel

signed and dated centre left: JR 1632 ( JR in ligature) oil on panel

measurements note 67 by 51 cm.; 26 3/8 by 20 in.

W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, vol. IV, Landau 1983, p. 2506, cat. no. 1676, reproduced p. 2512 (where listed as dated 1631).

PROPERTY FROM A EUROPEAN PRIVATE COLLECTION
The sitter in this painting was used as a model by Rousseaux on several other occasions, for example in his Man with a Grey Beard in the Museum Bredius, The Hague.υ1 These tronies were studies for the artist's religious works and we find the same sitter used as the model for the apostle in Rousseaux's Saint Paul, listed by W. Sumowski as location unknown.υ2 Rousseaux's tronies are strongly influenced by the early work of Jan Lievens, and can be compared to the latter's Bearded Old Man in the Herzog-Anton Ulrich Museum in Brunswick.υ3 The brushwork and use of light in the present painting is so close to the work of Lievens that it was in fact attributed to him in the past by Horst Gerson. 1. W. Sumowski, op. cit., p. 2506, cat. no. 1675, reproduced p. 2509. 2. Ibid., p. 2506, cat. no. 1678, reproduced p. 2514.
3. Ibid., p. 1801, cat. no. 1263, reproduced p. 1902.