Possible Van Dyck Charcoal & Chalk Portrait, ca. 1630
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GUEST:
Oh, it's a van Dyck. And in the 1800s, it hung in a museum in Germany. In the early 1900s, it was transferred to my grandmother. So it's been in the family for 125 years, somewhere around there.
APPRAISER:
Give or take. Yeah.
GUEST:
And it's on four parchment panels.
APPRAISER:
Mm-hmm. You told me your family name was Habisch?
GUEST:
Habisch, yes.
APPRAISER:
Habisch was the German collector.
GUEST:
That was the family name of my grandmother.
APPRAISER:
So, what we have is a purported drawing by Sir Anthony van Dyck...
GUEST:
Correct.
APPRAISER:
...who was one of the more noted artists of the 17th century. He was a prodigy in the Netherlands in, at, at 18 years old. By the 1630s, he was called to work for the king in England. He sort of had reached the peak, uh, in terms of, uh, artistry and portraiture at the time.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
This is a charcoal drawing and it appears to be an ecclesiastical portrait, to me. It is on four sheets.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
You can see the dividing lines here.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
Uh, they are joined, and it is glued down to another sheet of paper.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
Now, van Dyck was very famous in his day. And one of the odd things to me is the idea of him joining four sheets of paper and drawing on it. That strikes me as a red flag.
GUEST:
Right, mm-hmm, I understand.
APPRAISER:
That, that, that an artist of his stature would do that.
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
The drawing itself has passages that are very strong and also ones that seem very thick...
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
...and undetermined. And there's not the, the usual bravura that you get with a van Dyck sketch.
GUEST:
Hm.
APPRAISER:
The positive side is that your family, the Habisch family...
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
...were noted collectors. Right. And had built a collection in Kassel, Germany...
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
...during the late 1800s that was widely exhibited. And in 1899, over a thousand of the works in the collection were sold at auction...
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
...by the estate in Stuttgart. This obviously was not. It continued down to you in the family.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm, right.
APPRAISER:
It strikes me as odd that these works would have been shown and this potentially published and on museum checklists.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
And later scholars in the 20th century putting together the catalogues of van Dyck's works...
GUEST:
Hm.
APPRAISER:
...would not have known about it. But then again, perhaps this was just a sketch that was missed...
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
...and stayed in the family. Now, the big question is... (both laugh) ...if it's correct...
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
...what is it worth, if we can determine it is by Anthony van Dyck?
GUEST:
Right. Right.
APPRAISER:
If we have something that is a contemporaneous imitator of van Dyck's, you're looking at a very strong portrait this size, from the 17th century. We can determine perhaps who the sitter is down the line.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
Maybe even the artist. That would be in the $5,000 to $10,000, perhaps even up to $15,000,
GUEST:
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
...price range at auction. Now if, doing more work on this...
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
...and having it established with authorship to van Dyck...
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
...this would be a drawing worth about $100,000 to $150,000 at auction.
GUEST:
Wow, mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
So it, it certainly warrants further work.
GUEST:
It's something regardless, yeah.
APPRAISER:
It has promises, to me...
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
...based so much on the family history, and the fact that other van Dyck drawings and paintings from this collector are in museum collections...
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
...and have been accepted as works by van Dyck. But it just needs... More research. More scholarship, more research.
GUEST:
Yeah. Thank you very much, yeah.
APPRAISER:
Thank you for bringing it in.
GUEST:
Yeah, I enjoyed it.
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