GERMAN SCHOOL, late 17th - early 18th Century

Portrait of a Gardener

Oil on an octagonal oak panel
34 ½ x 31 inches (94.5 x 79.5 cm)

Provenance:   

(Probably) Staudt Collection, Staudterhof, Hellenthal, Germany, by the 18th century[i]; and by descent to:

Guillermo Staudt and Martha Facio de Stoudt, Estancia La Benquerencia, San Miguel del Monte, Argentina (the house was famous for its meticulously preserved landscape and gardens).

This engaging painting represents a rare subject in the history of European art: a portrait of a gardener. Freed from the limitations that governed aristocratic and society portraits, the artist was able to depict his subject with great inventiveness, resulting in the disarming and sympathetic portrait presented here. Our painting stands out for the lightheartedness of the treatment of the subject, a man emphatically shown smiling—a rarity in portraits until the modern era. The sitter peers out of the painting, directly engaging the viewer while gesturing with one hand and resting the other on the stone parapet. He wears workman’s garments and a straw hat, traditional attire for outdoor laborers from the medieval through the early modern period. The sprig of flowers tied to his hat with a blue bow attests to his profession as a gardener.

 Painted around 1700 by an as yet unidentified artist, our painting is among the earliest known paintings of this singular category of portraiture. Gardeners served a distinct and important role in a society that witnessed the rise of the landscape garden and prized it in both private and public locales. In addition to planning garden designs, a gardener’s work included the planting and maintenance of flowerbeds, greenhouses, orangeries, and kitchen gardens. Larger estates might have a chief gardener that headed a team of assistants. While our painting recalls in its typology genre imagery, portraits of domestic staff were often intended to be hung in the main communal space below stairs in a servant’s hall and were a reward for loyalty and skill. They were further intended to set an example for the household to emulate. Whatever the original genesis of our painting, the sitter’s unmistakable personality and even eccentricity suggests that a specific individual is being commemorated, someone beloved by the commissioner of this work.

[i] For more information on the Staudt family and their residence, the Staudterhof, see: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staudterhof.