Portrait of a Boy

Additional texteDescription: Black and red chalk, 292 x 197 mm. Ruled framing lines in brown ink. Lower left corner cut off. No watermark. Mark of the Royal Collection (Lugt 1638). This drawing was most likely acquired by Tessin in Paris, but it is only clearly mentioned in the 1790 catalogue. There, it is inserted between two chalk drawings by Hendrick Goltzius, his self-portrait and a portrait of a woman. In Tessin’s earlier catalogue, the self-portrait is next to the entry for a portrait of a boy attributed to Visscher: “Autre plus grande d’un jeune garcon au craion rouge et noire, par le meme (Vischer)”. This is probably our drawing. In the 1790 catalogue, Visscher follows immediately after Goltzius, and the fact that the drawings were kept side by side, and were similar in size and technique, led the compiler to change the attribution. He also added to the list of Goltzius drawings two that had previously been attributed to Bloemaert. The realism of Goltzius’s portraits makes the decision understandable, but it is still clear that this drawing is later. The present attribution to De Bray was suggested by S. Gudlaugson. Both De Bray and Cornelis Visscher belong to the same generation of Haarlem artists, and their portrait drawings have much in common. This drawing was given to De Bray in 1953, and so far the attribution has been accepted. [Magnusson, Dutch Drawings no. 107]