Life-sized, from head to toe and beautifully dressed, the British politician and scholar Sir Norton Knatchbull (1601-1684) is captured. Van Hoogstraten was born in Dordrecht and made an international career in Vienna, Rome and London, among others.
Peter Schoon, director of the Dordrechts Museum, speaks of a ‘new icon’ for the museum, which will hang as an ‘eye-catcher’ in the Rembrandt Room. The museum collection did not yet contain a 17th-century work depicting a full-size portrait of a person standing. Such precious portraits, called ‘full-length’, are scarce in Dutch art. Rembrandt painted only three (including the famous couple Marten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit), portrait specialist Frans Hals only ventured once. The Dordrechts Museum already has eleven paintings by Van Hoogstraten in its collection and one by his father, Dirk van Hoogstraten.
The huge canvas, more than 2 meters high, was offered for sale at an auction at Sotheby’s in London in March 2021. Then the painting was bought for 212 thousand euros by an English merchant, who then offered it to the museum. The museum bought the work for 280 thousand euros, with the support of the Rembrandt Association (140 thousand euros), the Mondriaan Fund (100 thousand euros) and the Business Friends Dordrechts Museum (30 thousand euros) and with its own money (10 thousand euros). . The painting has been restored in the museum, because the varnish was strongly yellowed. Now the details and colors are more visible again.
Sir Norton Knatchbull, who posed for his portrait at the age of 65 in black with a large white collar, was Van Hoogstraten’s most important English client at the time. His attitude can be recognized as a typical British power pose from that time: hand on side and elbow forward. Van Hoogstraten had copied that from the hunting portrait that Anthony van Dyck had made Charles I of England, which is now in the collection of the Louvre.
The painting had remained in the noble family since it was produced. It was sold by Sotheby’s from the estate of Countess Patricia Mountbatten, who died in 2017. She was married to a descendant of the portrayed. One of their sons is named Norton Knatchbull, just like the man in this portrait.