Lady portrait. 1668.

Oil on canvas, measures: 49 x 39.5 cm / 19.3 x 11.61 in., in a beautiful gold frame. Piece in excellent condition, with a label on the back due to its passage in the old auction house of Adolfo Bullrich. 

Magnificent Dutch Baroque oil painting, portrait of a lady who poses seated on an armchair upholstered in red velvet, the only saturated color in the painting, and which contrasts with the black dress -with white details on the neck and sleeves of the dress-, and black also the tulle that rests on his head. She shows a cameo with a profile portrait, perhaps of her husband as a sign of her mourning.

The artist displayed his baroque creative flight on the dark background. To the right of the woman a female marble sculpture on the base of which he paints the date of its completion, 1668. The scene in the background is completed by a column with a vine of roses at its foot, and an allegorical figure to the left of it (the Time?). Behind all these elements, the night landscape that is diluted.

Caspar Netscher (Heildelberg or Prague, 1635/1636 - The Hague, 1684), Baroque painter, was an outstanding portraitist, a genre in which he achieved notable success in the aristocratic circles of The Hague, even portraying William III, Prince of Orange, later King of England (oil preserved in Amsterdam, in the Rijksmuseum).

He was the son of Johannes Netscher, a sculptor, but when he was orphaned in 1642 he was adopted by Arnold Tullekens, a physician from Arnhem, where he began drawing studies in Hendrick Coster's workshop. Around 1654 he went to Deventer to pursue painting studies with Gerard ter Borch. He later worked as a copyist for art merchants in The Hague, with a stay in Bordeaux, with the desire to travel to Rome. In 1662 he settled in The Hague initially dedicating himself to genre painting. Influenced by ter Borch and the so-called "fijn schilders", the precious painters of the Leiden school, Netscher paid progressive attention to the textures of the fabrics and other elegant details with which he will also characterize the protagonists of his portraits. Around 1670 he completely abandoned genre painting to devote himself exclusively to portraits. He is the father of artists Theodorus, Constantijn and Anthonie Netscher.

S.O.H-XII