Caspar Netscher

This attractive, accurately and confidently executed portrait is a characteristic work of the Heidelberg-born painter and draughtsman, Caspar Netscher, who was apprenticed to Gerard ter Borch. Netscher, a respected portraitist and genre painter, began working in The Hague in 1652. In all probability the young woman portrayed here is the famous Jane Lane, later Lady Fisher, who played a heroic part in King Charles II’s escape to France after his defeat in the Battle of Worcester in September 1651. An authentic portrait dated 1652 by the master JH (possibly Jerome Hesketh) in the collection of Moseley Old Hall in Staffordshire (National Trust Collection) bears an unmistakable resemblance to the elegant, fashionably coiffured woman in the present sheet who conceals the royal crown under a veil – an allusion to the monarch’s escape. The same iconography is evident in an anonymous portrait of around 1660 in the National Portrait Gallery in London (NPG 1798).

Jane Lane boldly accompanied King Charles II on his hazardous six-week flight from Cromwell’s parliamentary troops, during which Charles was disguised as the companion of his supposed wife, the pair of them riding a horse together – an event that was reflected in English art at the time (for example in the National Portrait Gallery in London, NPG 5251). In December 1651 Jane arrived in Paris, where she remained loyal to the English court in exile there. After subsequently returning to England during the Restoration, Jane Lane married Sir Clement Fisher, 2nd Baronet of Packington Hall in Warwickshire on 8 December 1663.

The free and fluid brushwork that is a hallmark of Netscher’s art gives the portrait a pronounced spontaneity and immediacy, thus conveying the impression that the artist has sketched the young woman straight from life. With a contemporary inscription ‘mestres ... Lane’ in pen and brown ink on the verso. From the collection of Jean-François Gigoux (Lugt 1164).

9.500 €