Portrait of a man, bust-length, wearing a ruff

When this portrait of an unknown sitter was gifted to the Arizona State University Art Museum in 1965, it was attributed to Sir Anthony van Dyck. A photograph of the painting in the archive of Gustav Glück (1871–1952), then director of the Gemäldegalerie, Vienna, records his endorsement of this attribution and indicates that the painting was once with the London art dealer Arthur Nicholson. The painting must have been hidden away in private collections for many years, as it does not appear in any of the literature on van Dyck or his followers.

Recently, an attribution to Jacob Backer has been suggested, and endorsed by Peter van den Brink on the basis of digital images (written communication, September 2025). Backer trained initially in Amsterdam, possibly under Jacob Pynas (1581-1631), before moving to Leeuwarden in 1626-1627 to study in the workshop of the history painter Lambert Jacobsz. (c. 1592-1637). He had settled back in Amsterdam by 1633 when he won an important commission for the group portrait The Governesses of the Civic Orphanage of Amsterdam (Amsterdam, Amsterdams Historisch Museum). By the 1630s Backer had become one of the most sought after portraitists in Amsterdam. The sitter of the present portrait remains unknown, but may be considered among Backers early works, as Van den Brink dates the painting between the late 1620s and early 1630s (op. cit.).