Caspar Netscher, Dutch 1639-1684- Portrait of a lady, half-length, wearing a brown and white dress with blue cloak, standing in an interior, with an evening landscape beyond; oil on canvas, 32.7 x 26.1 cm. Provenance: With The Brod Gallery, London, November 1967.; Anon. sale, Sotheby's, London, 22 May 1996, lot 74.; The estate of the late designer Anthony Powell. Note: Netscher was one of the most high-profile artists of his period, working alongside painters including Gerard ter Borch (1617-1681) and Frans van Mieris (1635-1681), with whom his work displays many affinities. As such, Netscher’s portraits, a genre for which he was particularly celebrated, were highly sought after, depicting wealthy and influential figures in great splendour. In the present work, Netscher exhibits the painterly skill which sets him apart from many of his contemporaries. The portrait’s intimacy, in its small-scale and closely cropped composition, is combined with a highly polished finish, presumably drawn from Netscher’s interest in the work of the ‘Leiden fijnschilders’. The sitter is rendered with an almost porcelain-like perfection in the materials of her dress, gleaming pearls, and skin tones, yet the artist also retains an interest in the texture of the paint surface. This combination of the precise and the painterly results in an overall highly lively work. In both the sitter’s sumptuous and flowing garments, and the backdrop of a suitably imposing classical column, Netscher exhibits stylistic similarities with the portraits of Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), thereby placing him at the forefront of key artistic developments taking place throughout Europe. For a similar work by Netscher, of comparable dimensions, see Anon. sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 22 May 2019, lot 89. Please refer to department for condition report