Jacques Vaillant (Amsterdam 1643 – 1691 Berlin)

Portrait of a Boy as a Hunter, holding a Boar Spear, with his Greyhound

Oil on canvas, 157.3 x 109.3 cm (61.9 x 43 inch); contained in an ebonised frame of 17th-century model

Signed ‘J. Vaillant Fecit’ (lower left)

Presumably executed circa 1670-1672

Provenance
~ Bartholomeus Wild (c.1735–c.1810), Utrecht; his sale, 22 April 1811, lot 121, ‘JAQ. VALLANT. Een aanzienlyk Jongeling met een speer in de hand en een Windhond nevens hem, schoon en kragtig geschilderd, in allen deelen in de manier van REMBRAND, op Doek. 60 x 43 dm.’)¹
~ Samuel Rubell (1881–1949), Ridgefield, Connecticut, USA; his sale, The Samuel Rubell Mansion, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 11-14 October 1950, lot 786
~ Anonymous sale, Parke-Bernet Gelleries, New York, 13-14 June 1951, lot 301
~ Walter Chrysler Jr. (1909–1988); his sale, Sotheby Parke-Bernet Inc., New York, 6-7 March 1975, lot 194
~ Purchased at this sale by a private collector, Alexandria, Los Angeles, until 2014
~ With Laurence Steingrad Fine Arts, shown at TEFAF, Maastricht, 2015 and 2017
~ Private collection, The Netherlands

***

Jacques Vaillant was born in Amsterdam in 1643 as the son of the Hugenot linen merchant Jean Vaillant and Claire Bouchout.² He was the younger brother of the painter Wallerant Vaillant (1623–1677), who is recorded to have been his teacher by the artists’ biographer Arnold Houbraken (1660–1719) in his Groote Schouburgh of 1718-21. Jacques travelled to Italy during the mid-1660s on a Grand Tour, where he spent time in Rome and joined the Bentvueghels (‘birds of a feather’) artists’ society, who gave him the alias of ‘Leeurik’ (lark), presumably because of his singing qualities (or lack thereof).³

Upon his return from the South, Vaillant worked in Rotterdam from 1666 to 1670; he then moved to The Hague in 1670, where he lived until 1672 and joined the artists’ society Pictura. In 1672 Vaillant travelled to Berlin, where he became court painter of Prince-Elector Friedrich Wilhelm I of Brandenburg, having been invited by his envoy in The Hague. The Elector was so pleased with his work that he employed Vaillant for decades, until the end of his life, and furthermore sent the artist to Emperor Leopold I in Vienna, to paint his portrait. Interestingly, Vaillant was appointed as the teacher of the black page of the Electress, named Friedrich von Cussé, for a period of three years and an annual salary of 100 Thaler.

Vaillant is mostly known as a painter of refined and elegant courtly portraits, many of members of the Brandenburg court, with notable examples exiting in the palaces Schloss Sanssouci at Potsdam, Schloss Mosigkau, the Schlossmuseum in Schwedt an der Oder and Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin. He furthermore painted large mythological and commemorative decorative works and allegorical ceiling paintings for the Elector, including monumental works in the Stadtschloss palace in Potsdam and the Schloss Köpenick palace. Vaillant also painted the ceiling painting in the Porcellain Chamber in the Caputh Palace, commissioned by Electress Dorothea of Brandenburg around 1685 (fig.).⁴

The present portrait shows a fashionable young boy, dressed in exotic fantasy dress, based on Ottoman examples, richly adorned with pearls. Standing in an Italianate landscape, a marble sculpture behind him, he holds a hunting spear and is accompanied by a greyhound. Although his identity is lost in the mists of time, these attributes identify him as a noble, as hunting and shooting were the prerogatives of the aristocracy. It was most likely painted during Vaillant’s sojourn in The Hague from 1670 to 1672, and the subject must have been closely connected with the court of the Princes of Orange, Stadtholders of Holland.

It is highly unusual for Dutch sitters – especially of this young age – to be depicted on this scale and with this exuberance, which further suggests a connection with the Stadtholderly court. The work is the most notable example of paintings produced by Vaillant in Holland, and even in the wider context of his known oeuvre it is an absolute highlight. It must have been elegant and courtly works like these that sparked the interest of the ambassador of the Elector of Brandenburg, who tempted him to come to Berlin. Our work can for instance be compared to Vaillant’s portrait of the Elector of Brandenburg, painted c. 1685 and preserved in the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire in Geneva (fig.).⁵

RESERVED

1. ‘JAQ. VALLANT. A notable youth with a spear in his hand and a greyhound beside him, beautifully and powerfully painted, in all parts in the manner of REMBRAND, on canvas, 60 x 43 inch.’
2. For the artist, see Edwin Buijsen and Charles Dumas, Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw: het Hoogsteder lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag 1600-1700, The Hague 1998, p. 352.
3. G.J. Hoogewerff, De Ventvueghels, The Hague 1952, p. 145.
4. James Daybell and Svante Norrhem (eds.), Gender and political culture in Early Modern Europe, s.l. 2016, p. 57.
5. Oil on canvas, 136.5 x 114 cm, inv. no. 1855-0018.