*This painting is sold but the artist is regularly available in our inventory		Jacob van Loo* Slyus 1614 -1670 Paris Portrait of a Gentleman Oil on canvas 37 1/4 x 30 1/4 inches (94.5 x 76.8 cm) Signed and dated: J V Loo fecit AN: 1656 Provenance: Private collection, England When Jacob van Loo left Amsterdam in 1660 and went to France, he and his children of many generations established the renowned Van Loo dynasty of painters.  Van Loo was active in Amsterdam from about 1630 until 1660 and had been influenced by Thomas de Keyser and later more by Bartholomeus van der Helst and Jacob Backer.  He specialized in genre subjects, portraits and mythological and allegorical pieces, often executing gallant pictures of large figures, evidencing his talent as a master of a spirited composition.  By the 1650s Van Loo ranked with Rembrandt, Bol and Van der Helst as one of the most important portrait artists in Amsterdam.  Houbraken, the Dutch biographer of the period, wrote that Eglon van der Neer was his pupil. The handsome sitter of our portrait has yet to be precisely identified, however his physique bears strong affinities to that of Jean-Baptiste Colbert who was a minister to Louis XIV and whose portrait was painted by Philippe de Champagne one year earlier than the present example.  Although our painting was executed while Van Loo was still living in Holland, it is conceivable that Colbert had already become his client, thus supporting the premise that since he had already cultivated a patronage in France, that is one the reasons why Van Loo chose to settle there.  The sitter is regally poised, very elegantly dressed in clothes, which dramatize a beautiful lace and exquisite detail.  The sitter's confident gaze assures the viewer that he was a man of prosperity and authority.