1137. PORTRAIT OF A BOY.
Jacob van Oost the Elder (Flemish: 1600-1671).
This painter was born at Bruges, and his pictures are very numerous in his native town. He painted principally religious subjects in the style of the Carracci, whose works he had studied in Italy. Of his portraits, this work—signed with his monogram,[221] and dated 1650—is the best.
A boy of eleven—so the inscription on the right-hand corner states—Mr. Pater's Sebastian van Storck, it might be.
"It was a winter scene, by Adrian van de Velde, or by Isaac van Ostade.... Sebastian van Storck, confessedly the most graceful performer in all the skating multitude moving in endless maze over the vast surface of the frozen water-meadow, liked best this season of the year for its expression of a perfect impassivity, or at least of a perfect repose. The earth was, or seemed to be, at rest, with a breathlessness of slumber which suited the young man's peculiar temper.... Yet with all his appreciation of the national winter, Sebastian was not altogether a Hollander. His mother, of Spanish descent and Catholic, had given a richness of tone and form to the healthy freshness of the Dutch physiognomy, apt to preserve its youthfulness of aspect far beyond the period of life usual with other peoples. This mixed expression charmed the eyes of Isaac van Ostade, who had painted his portrait at one of those skating parties, with his plume and squirrel's tail and fur muff, in all the modest pleasantness of boyhood" (Imaginary Portraits, p. 92).