Aelbert Cuyp, 'Portrait of Cornelis van Someren', 1649

Aelbert Cuyp was one of the most famous and successful landscape painters of the seventeenth century and the National Gallery owns an important collection of his work. But he also painted a small number of portraits of which this is a rare example.

Aelbert Cuyp is famous for his landscapes but he also painted a small number of portraits, of which this is a rare example. For some time it was believed that the sitter might be Cuyp’s father, Jacob, a portraitist who taught his son to paint. However, it is now believed to depict Cornelis van Someren (1593–1649), a prominent Dordrecht doctor who was 56 years old in 1649, the age and date inscribed on the picture. This suggestion seems to be confirmed by a pendant portrait of a woman whose age is given on the picture as 49 years old, matching that of van Someren’s wife, Anna Blocken (1599–1671). It was very common for married couples to have separate portraits made which were then hung together as a pair.

In this painting, the focus is very directly on the face of the sitter. Cuyp has paid close attention to the texture and details of the skin – the pores and colour variations, the shadowy folds above and below the eyes. In the man’s pupils we can just see the reflection of the individual panes of a window. The neutral background was a very common device but the way the sunlight streams in from the left, creating such a strong and clear shadow, gives a greater sense of depth to what might have otherwise been a rather flat image. This illusion is also enhanced by the great care with which the beard has been painted. As the individual hairs catch the light from the window, it seems to project forward, as do the white tufts of the tassel beneath. The black and white clothes help frame the sitter’s face without distracting us from it. He is dressed quite simply, and, following the conventional style of the time, he wears a skull cap, giving the painting a sense of domestic informality.

At some stage after it was painted the picture seems to have been reduced from a rectangle to its current, much more unusual, octagonal shape. There are two clues which point to changes in its shape and size. At the bottom, on the right, you can see a small part of the cuff of a glove – something which typically featured in portraits of the time and is likely to have been shown more fully in the original design. Then, on the left side, the present edge of the panel cuts through the ‘A’ of Cuyp’s signature, so this must have been trimmed.