Adam de Colone & Adam de Colonia

January 31 2012

Image of Adam de Colone & Adam de Colonia

Picture: Scottish National Portrait Gallery

The noted Dutch art historian Rudi Ekkart has published an invaluable article in the latest Burlington Magazine on the artist Adam de Colone, the leading portrait painter in Scotland in the 1620s. He was previously thought to have been the son of James I's court artist Adrian Vanson. But Ekkart can now prove that Adam de Colone was not Vanson's son, but his brother-in-law (the younger brother of Vanson's wife, Susanna de Colonia), and that he is the same artist as Adam de Colonia, who was practicing in Rotterdam in the 1630s. Ekkart then goes onto make some plausible attributions to possible Dutch works by Adam de Colonia, whose distinctive style of drawing faces can be seen in the above portrait of James Erskine, 6th Earl of Buchan [Scottish National Portrait Gallery].

I don't want to steal too much of Ekkart's research from the Burlington, which can be subscribed to here. It's well worth getting a copy of the article, which is a fine example of good old-fashioned 'who painted what when' art history, of a type rarely seen these days. 

Update - oops, turns out this doesn't work at all. Read about Duncan Thomson's latest research here

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