Lievens was a prodigious artist who successfully adapted his style to new fashions throughout his career, leaving an oeuvre characterized by great diversity of technique and subject matter. While his earlier work clearly shows the influence of Rembrandt-his friend and senior by one year-the style of this drawing is much closer to that of Anthony van Dyck. The identity of the sitter is unknown, though he is portrayed with a spontaneity and sympathy that suggests he may have been a friend of the artist. -- Exhibition Label, from "Life Lines: Portrait Drawings from Dürer to Picasso."
Signed with monogram at lower right, in black chalk, "IL". Inscribed on the verso, at lower left, in graphite, "No ["o" in superscript] 112."; below this, in the hand of Goll van Franckenstein, in brown ink, "N 4144"; and further below, in another hand (possibly that of Engelbert Michael Engelberts), in graphite, "3[?]L: HS ao-KP".
Watermark: Foolscap with five points, over "4" and three balls (similar to Heawood, nos. 1930: Amsterdam, 1646), Cap with four balls.
Goll van Franckenstein, J. (Johann), 1722-1785, former owner.
Goll van Franckenstein, Pieter Hendrik, 1787-1832, former owner.
Engelberts, Englebert Michael, 1773-1843, former owner.
Conantré, Baroness de, former owner.
Ruble, Baroness de, former owner.
Witte, Madame de, former owner.
Bryas, marquise de, former owner.
Sonnenberg, Benjamin, 1901-1978, former owner.
Ryskamp, Charles, ed. Eighteenth Report to the Fellows of the Pierpont Morgan Library, 1975-1977. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1978, p. 273.
Stampfle, Felice. Rubens and Rembrandt in Their Century : Flemish and Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century from The Pierpont Morgan Library. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1979, no. 81, repr.
Jane Shoaf Turner, with contributions by Felice Stampfle, Dutch Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library: Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, New York, 2006, cat. no. 125.