Wallace Collection Online

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Ferdinand Bol (1616 - 1680) The Toper Netherlands: Date: c. 1650–1

Object Type: Painting

Medium: Oil on canvas

Image size: 89.2 x 82.3 cm
Object size: 117 x 111 x 10 cm

Inv: P74

Location: East Galleries I

Ferdinand Bol joined Rembrandt’s workshop in Amsterdam in 1637, and probably remained there until he set up as an independent painter around 1642. The Toper (a drinker or drunkard) is shown in the costume of an early sixteenth-century knight wearing a gold medallion of Saint George. In the nineteenth century the picture was thought to be by another follower of Rembrandt, Jan Victors, and to depict the imprisoned Arnold, Duke of Guelders (1423–1473). The intensity of the facial characterisation has led some to speculate that the picture is a self-portrait, although the picture does not resemble Bol’s known Self-Portrait (1653; private collection). The Toper is in fact a typical character-piece, or tronie, in the Rembrandt manner and may be compared with other half-length figures leaning from windows by Rembrandt and Bol. Bol used this type of pose for an elaborate series between 1644 and 1653, and the present picture is generally thought to date from this period, c. 1650–1.

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