Attribué à Johannes Cornelis MERTENS (1742-18... Lot n° 28

Portrait of a man in a green frock coat in a bull's eye Canvas (Ancient Restorations) 75 x 62 cm Provenance : Sale Mrs X., Reims, Me Dapsens, 21 April 1996; Acquired at this sale by the present owner. The composition, the position and the look of the model, the treatment of the hat and the frock coat encourage us to bring our painting closer to the portrait of the flower painter Gabriel van Royen, drawn in 1800 by Johannes Cornelis Mertens and kept at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Active in Amsterdam and Utrecht, Mertens is a portrait painter, pastelist and miniaturist. He was admitted to the Guild of Saint Luke in Amsterdam in 1775. Today we only know of him through drawings. Our painting is a discovery, an example of what his painted work could be.