Jean-Baptiste Greuze
Portrait of Florentius Josephus van Ertborn (1784-1840)
Portrait of Florentius Josephus van Ertbor, the great art patron from Antwerp, is a paining by Jean-Baptiste Greuze. It was sold through Nicholas Hall to a private collection.
Signature
Signed, center right: ‘J. B. Greuze’; inscribed, verso: ‘F. J. van ertborn ætate XXI/ Greuze pinxit anno MDCCCIV’
Provenance
Commissioned from the artist by Florentius Josephus van Ertborn (1784–1840), 1804
Comte Charles de Bergeyck, Antwerp, by 1908
Christie’s, London, Old Master Pictures, 10 July 1998, lot 39
with Hall & Knight, New York, 1999; sold to
Private Collection, 1999–2011
Sotheby’s, New York, Important Old Master Paintings & Sculpture, 27 January 2011, lot 135
Exhibitions
Jean Martin, Catalogue raisonné de l’ouevre peint et desinné de Jean-Baptiste Greuze, suivi de la liste des gravures exécutées d’après ses ouvrages, Paris, 1908, p. 69, no. 1114.
Arthur J.H. Cornette, Een Antwerpsch maeceen, Ridder Florent van Ertborn, 1784–1840, Antwerp, 1938, p. 23 (as untraced).
C.D. Dickerson, in Richard R. Brettell and C.D. Dickerson, eds., From the Private Collections of Texas: European Art, Ancient to Modern, Fort Worth, 2009, exh. cat., pp. 228–30, reproduced no. 46.
Essay
Set against an austere grey background, Jean-Baptiste Greuze depicts the young Florentius Josephus van Ertborn, future politician and great patron of the arts. Ertborn is prhaps best known for his prolific collection of late-medieval art, which he donated to the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (KMSKA). To this day, Ertborn’s collection serves as the core of KMSKA’s Old Masters collection, evidence to Ertborn’s profound connoisseurship and remarkable taste.
In this exquisite portrait, Greuze depicts the statesman early in life, before he gained renown for his political career and collecting prowess. Ertborn is shown here in the flush of youth, barely out of adolescence. He gazes directly at the viewer with a casually inquisitive look, his hair elegantly disheveled, wearing an open-collared white silk shirt and black silk jacket and cape, recalling the portraits of his seventeenth-century countryman Van Dyck. Ertborn was only 21 when he commissioned Greuze, aged 79, to execute his portrait. With this difference in age and stages of life, Ertborn the ambitious young ingenue and Greuze the well-established artist at the end of an illustrious career, one can almost sense the tension on the canvas between lifetimes. Even early on in life, Ertborn was attuned to artistic craftsmanship, and it is notable that Greuze made a lasting impression on Ertborn, as Ertborn would go on to write a short pamphlet on the artist, writing on his techniques and the making of this portrait.
Florentius Josephus van Ertborn would go on to live a distinguished and accomplished life, serving as mayor of Antwerp from 1817 to 1828, Chamberlain to King William I of Netherlands, and then Governor of the province of Utrecht, a position he held until 1830. During his lifetime, he was known for initiating the reconstruction of the Antwerp cathedral tower, improving the city’s finances, and refounding the Antwerp Academy.
Ertborn’s legacy today is founded in his illustrious collection, which consisted of over 106 works of art. Ertborn was fascinated by the period of Flemish Primitivism during a time when his compatriots were focused on works by Rubens and artists of the Baroque period. Ertborn’s collection, featuring pieces created in the 15th-16th centuries, would grow to include masterpieces by artists such as Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling, Jean Fouquet, Simone Martini, and Antonello da Messina. Masterworks from the collection such as Simone Martini’s Orsini Polyptych, Jan van Eyck’s Madonna at the Fountain, and Jean Fouquet’s Madonna and Child surrounded by Seraphim and Cherubim (fig. 1) remain cornerstones of the KMSKA collection to this day.
A now-lost copy of this portrait by Greuze was previously in the collection of Count Jean de Marnix de Ste Aldegonde, Kasteel Eyzer, Overrijsche.