Shown from the chest up, a light-skinned, cleanshaven man looks down and to our left in this vertical portrait painting. His shoulders angle slightly to the right, but he turns to look in the other direction with dark eyes under gathered brows. He has a prominent nose, a pointed chin, and his full lips are parted. His dark blond hair is parted down the middle and falls to both shoulders. His right arm, to our left, crosses his chest, and he holds a staff with that hand along the right side of the painting. He wears a tawny-brown coat with buttons down the front over a high white collar. The background is painted with shades of fawn and peanut brown. The artist signed and dated the painting along the center of the left edge in faint brown paint: “P. Soutman F.A. 1640.”
Read the visual description

Shown from the chest up, a light-skinned, cleanshaven man looks down and to our left in this vertical portrait painting. His shoulders angle slightly to the right, but he turns to look in the other direction with dark eyes under gathered brows. He has a prominent nose, a pointed chin, and his full lips are parted. His dark blond hair is parted down the middle and falls to both shoulders. His right arm, to our left, crosses his chest, and he holds a staff with that hand along the right side of the painting. He wears a tawny-brown coat with buttons down the front over a high white collar. The background is painted with shades of fawn and peanut brown. The artist signed and dated the painting along the center of the left edge in faint brown paint: “P. Soutman F.A. 1640.”

National Gallery of Art · Painting

A Young Man Holding a Staff

Pieter Claesz Soutman

Date
1640
Medium
oil on panel
Dimensions
overall: 60.4 x 49.2 cm (23 3/4 x 19 3/8 in.) framed: 86.68 × 74.93 × 7.3 cm (34 1/8 × 29 1/2 × 2 7/8 in.)
Classification
Painting
Accession number
2010.19.1
Credit line
Fund given in honor of Derald Ruttenberg’s Grandchildren
Time span
1601 to 1650
Department
CNE-B

Subjects and terms

  • painted surface
  • Baroque
  • Flemish
  • Portrait of a man
  • Young man
  • Acquired after publication of Flemish Paintings of the Seventeenth Century
  • half figure
  • figure
Provenance

Private collection; (sale, Sotheby's, London, 22 April 2009, no. 31); private collection; sold 21 May 2010 through (Bijl - Van Urk, B.V., Alkmaar, The Netherlands) to NGA.

Inscription

center left: P. Soutman / F.A. 1640

NGA object ID 151105. 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.