Jan Gossaert (Jean Gossart), 'An Elderly Couple'

Jan Gossaert (Jean Gossart)
NG1689
An Elderly Couple
Oil on parchment, laid down on canvas, 48.1 x 69.2 cm, parchment 47.1 x 67.8 cm, painted surface approximately 46.0 x 66.9 cm

Provenance

NG1689 was possibly the ‘Two Portraits in one Picture' – ‘very animated and elaborately finished’ which, attributed to Quinten Massys, was sold at Christie’s on 21 May 1808 (120) by ‘Burrell’: Sir Charles Merrik Burrell (1774–1862), MP.¹ It was bought, for the very high price of £215 5s., by Hill – the dealer Philip Hill (c.1766–1836) of Greek Street, Soho. It reappeared as no. 17, ‘Massys, The Portrait of Foger (and his Wife,) …’, in Hill’s exhibition of ‘capital Pictures for Sale by Private Contract’ which began on 16 April 1810 at the Old Academy Room, 118 Pall Mall. It was once again sold at a very high price, 300 guineas.² NG1689 was certainly by 1824 in the collection of Landseer’s friend and patron William Wells (1760–1847) of Redleaf in Kent where it was attributed to Massys. It was sold with the rest of Wells’s pictures at Christie’s on 13 May 1847 (76) and was bought by Seguier for Mrs Whyte. She was Maria Louisa Simpson (1773–1855), widow of the lawyer Mark Anthony Whyte (died 1838), and lived at Barrow Hill near Rocester in Staffordshire. By her will of 12 January 1855 she bequeathed Barrow Hill and the pictures there to her niece, Louisa Jane Finch Simpson, widow of Henry Dawson (died 1849).³ Mrs Dawson died in 1865; her son, Captain Arthur Finch Dawson (1836–1928), inherited the house and the pictures. NG1689 was purchased in 1900 through the restorer and dealer Ayerst Hooker Buttery (1868–1929), London.

Further Sections

• Introduction
• Provenance
• Exhibitions and version
• Technical notes
• Description
• The identities of the sitters
• Attribution and date