An Arie de Vois for Washington

25/5/26 - Acquisition - Washington, The National gallery of Art - Arie de Vois painted his self-portrait several times and at different stages of his life: in 1673, when he was already in his forties, he portrayed himself without much originality as a painter, standing before his easel, in a small panel painting now in the Louvre. But he also chose more unexpected roles, appearing as a hunter in a painting executed around 1660 and now at the Mauritshuis. Although today’s viewer may not necessarily perceive the erotic connotation of the scene, it would have been apparent to seventeenth-century Dutch viewers, as the words “jagen” (to hunt) and “vogelen” (to catch birds) also referred to a man courting a woman, and more prosaically to sexuality.
Recently, the National Gallery in…