A portrait of an old gentleman - Joost Cornelisz. Droochsloot (1586 - 1666)

Joost Cornelisz. Droochsloot (Utrecht, 1586 – 1666) was a Dutch painter. He painted mainly village scenes, landscapes, genre pieces, moral allegories and biblical stories. His earliest dated work is an etching from 1610, his earliest dated painting from 1615. In 1616 he joined the Utrecht Guild of Saint Luke. From 1623 he was several times dean of the guild (1623, 1641 and 1642) and held church and public offices in the city: he was regent of the St Job’s Hospital (Sint-Jobsgasthuis, 1638), deacon of the Dutch Reformed Church and, in 1665, officer of the Utrecht civic guard (schutterij). He remained active in Utrecht until his death.
Droochsloot was influenced by David Vinckboons, and his village scenes stand in the Flemish tradition of Pieter Bruegel. Religious and allegorical subjects occur mainly at the beginning of his career. Later he painted small-scale village scenes. He was a very productive painter and had a preference for a reddish-brown palette. He had six pupils, among them his son Cornelis Droochsloot and Jacob Duck.

We see an elderly bearded man, full-length, standing before a neutral brown-grey background. He wears a broad-brimmed hat that leaves his face partly in shadow, and a worn brown cloak that he holds closed with one hand. Around his neck is a white, pleated collar, and beneath the cloak a yellow shirt or doublet peeks out. His trousers and shoes are also brown and appear worn. To his right lies a dark cloth or bundle. We cannot immediately make out who the man is or what he was doing. A kind of dejection radiates from him, through his gaze into the distance and his slightly stooped posture. His worn clothing makes him look more like a poor traveller or beggar than a gentleman. Beggars and the sick often appear in Droochsloot’s village streets.

Oil on panel
Monogrammed lower left
Provenance: Collection Léon Janssen, brussels 1923.
Dimensions: 26 x 18 cm, 35 x 28 cm (framed)