This painting was purchased by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1925 with an attribution to Jacob Huysmans. The three-quarter length portrait was thought then to represent James II, Duke of York, who had been a Governor of the Company from 1683-85, which accounts for their purchase. It was lent to an exhibition devoted to Charles II in London in 1932, as number 609, with that same attribution and identification.[1] It seems otherwise to be undiscussed in the literature, which helps account for the mysteries surrounding it.

Jacob Huysmans (born 1633?-1696) is a still not thoroughly studied contemporary of Peter Lely, born in Antwerp and later favored by Catholic circles in England.[2] The great authority on this period, C.H. Collins Baker, who was a curator at the National Gallery and Surveyor of the King’s Pictures, was responsible for these novel attributions to Huysmans of paintings seemingly related instead to Sir Peter Lely’s rival workshop.[3] His suggestions now seem questionable. From the few secure paintings from his English period Huysman’s style, compared to Lely’s, is smoother and more polished, always distinctly exaggerated compared to this example. In fact, in a letter surviving in the Hudson’s Bay Company archive, Sir Roy Strong wrote, in 1965, to the archivist that this portrait is “definitely by Lely”. Indeed, the arrangement of the sitter and style places the canvas firmly in Lely’s studio, where Huysmans is not known to have practiced. For its naturalism and tactility, the face appears to be by a different artist than the master, compared to the elegant, effete hands, perfectly typical of Lely’s style. Who that collaborator of Lely was in this instance is difficult to identify.

The portrait does not closely resemble surviving portraits of the Duke of York, so the sitter must be considered unidentified. The clothing with the buff coat, red sash and golden brocaded sleeve slashed to reveal the white billowing sleeves appears in precisely the same form in several other contemporary British portraits. Including also a breastplate and sword, the costume may designate a military rank but precisely what remains to be explored. Whether it was sometimes a ceremonial title or the sitter served in battle equally remains unclear. But a portrait closely related in style, pose and costume, also wrongly attributed to Huysmans but likely also Lely studio, surviving at the Royal Museum, Greenwich, represents Sir John Chichley, who was a celebrated naval officer under James II, knighted in 1665.

Despite newly raised questions around attribution, identification of the sitter and the meaning of the costume, the Hudson’s Bay Company portrait is nonetheless an outstanding example of official seventeenth-century English portraiture.

We thank David Franklin, art historian, curator and expert in Renaissance and Baroque art, for his extensive research on this work and for contributing the above essay.

1. A loan exhibition depicting the reign of Charles II: 22 & 23 Grosvenor Place, London, SW1, 28th January – March 1932, no. 609.

2. C. H. Collins Baker, Lely and the Stuart Portrait Painters, London, 1912, I, pp. 209-219, devotes a chapter to Huysmans, but does not mention this portrait. Ellis Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, Harmondsworth, 1953, pp. 104-6, remains a useful survey of the little known about Huysmans in England in general.

3. According to John Hayes, Lely, exhibition catalogue, National Portrait Gallery, London, 1978, p. 54.

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