Orientalist Portrait of a Girl in Eastern Dress by Jan Portielje

#18377: Orientalist Portrait of a Girl in Eastern Dress by Jan Portielje
Belgian, late 19th century
Panel: Height 59cm, width 48cm, depth 0.5cm
Frame: Height 80cm, width 69cm, depth 7cm

This signed oil on panel by Jan Portielje depicts a young woman in coin jewellery and gold-embroidered dress, the metalwork picked out in raised paint.
The sitter is shown to the waist against a dark ground, turned slightly to the left and looking directly out at the viewer. Her long dark hair falls loose over her shoulders beneath a headscarf of red and gold, and a shawl striped in the same colours is draped behind her.
She wears a white blouse with full sleeves, embroidered in gold thread with flowerheads and scrolls and with bunches of purple grapes on green leaves. Over it is a teal velvet bodice with a high yellow collar, and a blue patterned sash shows at the waist.
Her jewellery comprises hoop earrings, a fringed gold choker at the throat and, below it, several strands of coins and beads, the lower rows hung with pendant coins.
The face is modelled in smooth, blended layers, with the light falling from the upper left. The gold thread, fringing and coins, by contrast, are built up in small touches of impasto, so that the metal catches the light against the flatter surfaces of velvet and linen.
The panel is signed and inscribed upper right ‘Portielje Anvers’. On the reverse, the artist’s seal is applied in red wax. The painting is presented in a carved giltwood frame with scrolling foliage and flowerheads, stylised fleurs-de-lis at the corners and a plaque engraved ‘Portielje’ on the lower rail.
Portraits of young women in Eastern, Italian and historical costume form a large part of Jan Portielje’s work and drew on the wider 19th-century taste for Orientalist subjects. Born in Amsterdam in 1829, Portielje trained at the academy there under Valentijn Bing and Jan Braet von Überfeldt, and in Antwerp under Joseph Dyckmans. After spending periods in Paris in the early 1850s, he settled in Antwerp, where he died in 1908. His paintings found a wide market in the United States through dealers such as Albert D’Huyvetter, an Antwerp native based in New York, and the Prinz Brothers of Chicago. Examples are held in the Alfred East Art Gallery, Kettering, and Bendigo Art Gallery, Australia, and his sons Gerard and Edward Portielje also became painters. The inscription ‘Anvers’, the French name for Antwerp, records where this panel was painted. With its close attention to embroidery, velvet and goldwork, the portrait reflects the appeal of such costume studies to collectors of the period, for whom the rendering of rich materials counted as much as the likeness of the sitter.
$52,500