(1593–1678)
Three portrait studies of a man in a fool’s cap, making faces, red and black chalk, on laid paper, 21,5 x 16 cm, laid down to old support, browned, somewhat stained, mounted, framed, (Sch)

Provenance:
Private collection, Austria.

Joerdans seems to have drawn the present sheet from the life model; the drawing may date from the 1640s. The figure reappears in several paintings by Jordaens in this time, especially in the various depictions of the Bean King, versions of which are preserved in the Musée Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels (Inv. 3545), in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (Inv. 1406) and in the paintings gallery in Kassel (Inv. GK 108). Variants of the figure can be found in paintings such as „Susanna and the Elders” in the Statens Museum vor Kunst, Copenhagen (Inv. KMSSp. 235), and in the „Banquet of Cleopatra” in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg (Inv. 8536). They served Jordaens as prototypes to which he went back from time to time. The head in the lower right corner of the present sheet is comparable with a modello in the Koninklijk Museum, Antwerp (Inv. 843), which may have also been used in preparation for a further mirror-inverted version of the „Bean King” around 1640. Rogier D’Hulst mentions another drawing of a comparable figure in the Mount Holyoke College, Massachussetts (R. d’Hulst, Jordaens Drawings, Brussels 1974, Cat. A164). This drawing is considered to show a self portrait of the artist. In 1990 Rogier d‘Hulst added one more drawing to the supplement volume of his catalogue raisonné of Jordaens drawings („Jordaens Drawings. Supplement II“, in: Master Drawings 28, 1990, pp. 153-154, Fig. 17). Thus, the present drawing can be linked with numerous compositions by Jordaens from the 1640s; the sheet may have served as a prototype, which the artist altered in accordance to the function of the respective figure in the painting.

The attribution to Jacob Jordaens was suggested by Prof. Hans Vlieghe, Brecht Vanoppen and Jeremy Wood independently on the basis of a high resolution digital photograph. With a written statement by Jeremy Wood (March 4, 2020).

© Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister