(London 1610–1646)
Portrait of a young man in a red mantle,
oil on canvas, 56 x 41 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, United Kingdom;
where bought by the present owner

We are grateful to Duncan Thompson for suggesting the attribution to William Dobson on the basis of high-resolution photographs.

The present portrait of a youth in a scarlet mantle, with its refined handling and sense of intimacy, is characteristic of the accomplished hand of William Dobson, one of the pioneering masters of 17th century English School of portraiture. The flowing locks of the sitter, and the delicate lacework of his collar indicates both the young man’s status, most likely a member of the nobility, as well as the political persuasions of his family.

In the 1630s and 40s, England was roughly divided between on one side, the Puritan constituency in parliament, which was known for its austere style, and on the other, the supporters of King Charles I, identified by the flamboyant style of his cosmopolitan court, centred around his French Queen, Henrietta Maria, and court painter, Sir Anthony van Dyck. The influence of the great Antwerp master, van Dyck, may be seen in in the present work, in the free execution of the drapery. A possible connection between the Flemish master and the present artist can be found in the probably apocryphal story recounting how William Dobson was ‘discovered’ by van Dyck when he saw one of Dobson’s paintings in a shop window.

Dobson initially trained with the Jacobean portraitist Robert Peake, before joining the studio of Francis Cleyn, a painter and tapestry designer originally from the Hanseatic port of Rostock. Following van Dyck’s death in 1641, Dobson was able to fulfill the demand for works in the late master’s style. At the outbreak of the English Civil War, Dobson followed the King from Whitehall to his court-in-exile in Oxford. The present picture has an apparent connection to the city, with an Ashmolean Museum provenance (indicated by a partially damaged label on the reverse), which may suggest some historic connection between the sitter and the Royalist court there.