Lot 60: * JOHAN THOPAS ? ASSENDELFT CIRCA 1630 - CIRCA 1700

PORTRAIT OF A SEATED OLD LADY HOLDING A BOOK OF SHEET MUSIC, WITH A VIEW OF THE DAMRAK, AMSTERDAM, BEHIND

9 7/16 by 7 1/2 in.; 240 by 191 mm.

Gouache on japan paper

Amsterdam, Bernard Houthakker, Dessins exposés chez Bernard Houthakker, 1962, catalogue number 33 (as Thomas de Keyser)

Wilfred Thesiger;
With Bernard Houthakker, Amsterdam

Little is known about the life of Johan Thopas. He is believed to have been a native of Assendelft, but in 1688 he joined the painters' guild in Haarlem. With the exception, however, of one oil painting, all his known works are drawings, almost all extremely fine, meticulously drawn portraits, made as finished works of art in their own right. Dated examples exist from between 1646 and 1676, but his surviving oeuvre remains very small and outstanding examples of his work such this hardly ever come on the market. Amongst his finest works are the five highly finished portraits of members of the Tulp family, in the Six Collection, Amsterdam, which are, like the present drawing, fully colored (see S.A.C. Dudok van Heel et al., Nicolaes Tulp, Amsterdam 1998, pp. 64-5). Also notable is the charming Portrait of a Boy as a Hunter, in the Abrams Collection (see William W. Robinson, Brueghel to Rembrandt, Dutch and Flemish Drawings from the Maida and George Abrams Collection, exhibition catalogue, London, British Museum; Paris, Institut Néerlandais; Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Museum, 2002-3, cat.no. 95). The majority of the artist's known drawings are, however, executed like the Abrams drawing in his most characteristic technique of graphite and/or pen and black ink on vellum, and fully colored portraits such as this are extremely rare.

Another distinctive feature of Thopas' portrait drawings is the very obvious way in which he includes attributes or backgrounds alluding to the sitters' occupation or status. For example, the double portrait of the Zaandam shipbuilder Cornelis Cornelisz. Nooman and his wife (sold, Amsterdam, Mak van Waay, 29 March 1966, lot 282) shows the couple in front of a detailed depiction of their shipyard. Here, the lady is shown holding a volume of sheet music, possibly a psalter or hymnbook, with a precise depiction of several shops and houses, believed to be on Amsterdam's Damrak, behind; it is not, however, presently known what was the significance of this backround to the sitter.

The attribution to Thopas has been confirmed by Rudi Ekkart, who is preparing a catalogue of drawings by the artist.