
Read the visual description
Shown from the shoulders up, a bearded man with wrinkles lining his pale-skinned face looks up and to our left, toward a bright light source, in this vertical portrait painting. His shoulders are angled to our left, and he tips his head slightly back so his face turns toward us. He looks up from the corners of his gray eyes under bushy brows. A soft gray cap, pushed back high over the crown of his head, frames his face over a few tuffs of charcoal-gray hair on his high forehead. His brows are furrowed and his hollow cheeks ruddy. He has a silvery gray mustache, and his long, full beard falls to his chest. Lines have been incised in the gray and white paint of his beard to reveal an underlayer of rust orange. His slate-gray tunic is streaked with fawn brown to create highlights. The background is painted with blended strokes of leather brown and touches of golden orange, and it lightens around the man’s head.
National Gallery of Art · Painting
Bearded Man with a Beret
Jan Lievens
- Date
- c. 1630
- Medium
- oil on panel
- Dimensions
- overall: 53.5 x 46.3 cm (21 1/16 x 18 1/4 in.)
- Classification
- Painting
- Accession number
- 2006.172.1
- Credit line
- Gift of George M. and Linda H. Kaufman
- Time span
- 1601 to 1650
- Department
- CNE-B
Subjects and terms
- painted surface
- Baroque
- portrait
- Dutch
- Acquired after launch of Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century (NGA Online Editions)
- head and shoulders
- figure
Provenance
Estate of Marion Louise Nichols, Cambridge, Massachusetts;[1] private collection, Boston, from 1975; consigned by (Michael Filades, Boston) to (Hoogsteder-Naumann, Ltd., New York);[2] sold 6 June 1986 to George M. [1932-2001] and Linda H. Kaufman, Norfolk; transferred 31 August 2005 to the Kaufman Americana Foundation; gift (partial and promised) 2006 to NGA; gift completed 2010. [1] According to information provided by Otto Naumann to the Kaufmans (copy in NGA curatorial files), Marion Louise Nichols inherited the painting from her father, who presumably brought it to the United States in the early twentieth century. [2] Otto Nauman, e-mail to Jennifer Henel, 30 August 2011, in NGA curatorial files.
NGA object ID 131993. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.