A misattributed Portrait of Prince Rupert
by Sir Peter Lely (1618–1680)
in the Hudson’s Bay Company Collection

 

 

 

 

David Franklin

 

 

 

 

1 Prince Rupert here attributed to Sir Peter Lely (1618–1680), c1660s.
Oil on canvas, 127 x 96.5 cm. Formerly the Hudson’s Bay Company Collection

 

 

A Portrait of Prince Rupert attributed to the Studio of Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641) (Pl 1) came up for sale at Heffel auction house online on 4 December 2025, together with other works from the Hudson’s Bay Company collection in Toronto, but it was withdrawn when questions of attribution were raised.^[1] The Van Dyck attribution is initially understandable because the artist produced portraits of Prince Rupert as a youth. Stylistic analysis aside, the persistent Van Dyck attribution can be simply ruled out, as the painter died in 1641 and the sitter in this portrait, born in 1619, must be considerably older than twenty-two.

Rupert was appointed the first governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1670, serving until his death 1682, and is portrayed as a military leader, three-quarter-length, in a heavy buff coat and armoured breastplate, with a baton in his right fist, his left hand on a sword, and an abbreviated scene of violent battle behind. The land skirmish depicted presumably commemorates the Prince as a commander during the First English Civil War from 1642 to 1646 and also suggests a later dating. Guessing age in images is always difficult but he appears slightly younger, certainly not older, than in the Portrait of Prince Rupert by Sir Peter Lely in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle (Pl 2), from the so-called ‘flag officer’ series of 13 canvases, and so dated to 1665–68.

 

 

2 Prince Rupert by Sir Peter Lely, c1665–8. Oil on canvas, 123 x 100.8 cm.
Royal Collection Trust

 

 

It seems plausible to propose a date around 1660 for the Hudson’s Bay Company portrait based on the likeness alone. A new attribution to Lely himself will be argued below.

The earliest documentary reference to the painting is an archival record of the Hudson’s Bay Company secretary, William Smith, writing to a Mr Winstanley of Winstanley and Sons, who valued the entire collection in 1821:

‘Since you were here yesterday, I have seen my predecessor Mr. Lean, who has kindly informed me that the portrait of Prince Rupert in the Board Room is an undoubted Sir Peter Lely and was originally in the collection of Richard Hulse Esq. at Chesterfield House, Blackheath and the Portrait in the hall of No. 3 is by Van Dyke and was presented to the Company by the Prince on its Foundation.’^[2]

‘No. 3’ refers to the address at Fenchurch Street in the City of London that was then the premises of Hudson’s Bay Company. The Prince Rupert attributed to Van Dyck is not to be confused with that other portrait in the Company collection mentioned here of Rupert wearing his Knight of the Garter robes (Pl 3), which is a later copy of the painting known from a studio work like one at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, dateable c1665.

 

 

3 Prince Rupert in Garter Robes, after a portrait by Sir Peter Lely of c1665.
Oil on canvas, 111.8 x 85.1 cm. Formerly the Hudson’s Bay Company Collection

 

 

The picture in Plate 3 was sold as lot h313 on 4 December 2025 in the same Heffel sale, and in this case the ‘School of Peter Lely’ label is generally warranted given the poor quality of the painting, even though the 1821 reference optimistically asserted its autograph status. The ‘Richard Hulse’ mentioned in William Smith’s letter was a deputy governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company – hence his donation to the company, apparently in 1794. He purchased Chesterfield House in 1783 and assembled an important collection including 177 paintings which after his death were auctioned at Christie’s London, on 21 March 1806.

The Prince Rupert in Plate 1 was lent for an exhibition devoted to Charles II in London in 1932, where it was exhibited as no. 623.^[3] This was the first time it was exposed in public. To complicate its attributional history further, however, it was newly ascribed there to Jacob Huysmans (1633–1696) – a contemporary of Lely who is still not well studied. He was born in Antwerp and later favoured by Catholic circles in England.^[4] CH Collins Baker, among others, is thanked in the preface of the exhibition catalogue for assistance with the cataloguing, and so it appears the organizers were sufficiently confident to make new attributions on this occasion. As Collins Baker was a leading authority on this period of English painting he may well have been responsible for reattributing the ‘Van Dyck’ to Huysmans.^[5]

More confusingly, but rather extraordinarily, in a review of this exhibition by Louise Gordon-Stables, the ‘Huysmans’ Prince Rupert in the Hudson’s Bay Company collection is described as ‘finely sensitive’ and as admirably superior in quality of subtle lighting and depth of characterization to anything by Lely in the same show.^[6] The portrait was, then, definitely regarded by that reviewer as a major work.

The Hudson’s Bay Company lent a second portrait on that occasion, which retains its similarly implausible attribution to Jacob Huysmans (Pl 4) and an equally improbable identification of the sitter as James, Duke of York (James II). The Duke had been a Governor of the Company from 1683 to 1685, and this picture appeared in the 1932 exhibition as no. 609. The wrong attribution and identification of the portrait had been attached to the painting when it was purchased by the Company in 1925 at the Marquis of Ripon sale as lot 291. This canvas seems also to be very much from the Lely workshop.

 

 

4 Portrait of an unknown sitter, here attributed to the Studio of Sir Peter Lely, mid-1660s.
Oil on canvas, 127.6 x 101.3 cm. Formerly the Hudson’s Bay Company Collection

 

 

Credit goes to CR Cammell in 1937 who, in a general survey article of the portraits of Prince Rupert, discredited the ‘School of Van Dyck’ label on the Hudson’s Bay Company painting (Pl 1), instead praising it as ‘in Lely’s undoubted manner’.^[7] The new Huysmans attribution of the portrait was there ignored. Independently, in an anonymous written report in the Hudson’s Bay Company archive of 1928 the Van Dyck attribution was questioned in the terms ‘Probably School of Lely – not Dobson – Not Van Dyck’. In this same report an opinion from Colnaghi’s is recorded stating that the portrait had suffered in a restoration ‘some fifty years ago’, which is a credible comment given the current slightly worn state of preservation of the picture. Despite the firm statement in the published article of 1937, the William Dobson attribution clearly had been proposed because a 1945 inventory of the paintings then displayed at 68 Bishopsgate in the City of London references the attribution of the portrait to Van Dyck but suggested that it might instead be ‘a very fine example by William Dobson’. Of interest too, in simply stressing the perceived excellence of the Rupert portrait, Miss Pissarro, the granddaughter of Camille Pissarro, visiting the collection in 1960, also noted in a letter (in the Hudson’s Bay Company archive) that the Van Dyck attribution was unlikely, and added in her report that ‘the hands in the picture were better than any painted by Van Dyck’.

Attaching Lely’s name to the Hudson’s Bay Company portrait of Prince Rupert with baton should never have been in doubt because a documented version of the image of approximately the same dimensions exists in the Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti) in Florence (Pl 5).

 

 

5 Prince Rupert by Sir Peter Lely, 1674–77. Oil on canvas, 125 x 103 cm.
Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

 

 

This portrait was published in 1958 and is thoroughly documented from the date of its commission in 1674 to 1677 – when it was shipped and received in Florence.^[8] Oliver Millar praised its quality as fully autograph Lely but, tellingly, mentioned that the composition was a retrograde one for the painter at that date. Millar did cite the Hudson’s Bay Company version in a footnote – as a copy – and so for the first and only time linking the two works in print but, curiously again, he mentioned that the features seemed closer to the earlier portrait of Prince Rupert at Windsor Castle of approximately a decade earlier.^[9] It is not clear that Millar knew the Hudson’s Bay Company painting in person, but his suggestions that both the design and face in the Florence version seemed earlier are pertinent. Despite his dismissal, these two comments are potentially relevant for the Hudson’s Bay Company portrait, if it was painted earlier. And it is possible to defend the priority of the Company version from a reference in their archives stating that this portrait had been presented to the Company by Prince Rupert himself when it was founded in 1670, according to the document of 1821 already cited, describing the collection displayed at No. 3 Fenchurch Street in London. If the 1670 reference is accurate (and it might have been legend), the Florence painting must be either dependent directly on the Hudson’s Bay Company painting – in existence by 1670 at the latest – or another version of it.^[10]

As Lely had such a large workshop and prolific practice, it is not straightforward to argue for the autograph status of the Hudson’s Bay Company version solely on basis of style. Presumably due to overcleaning, the paint layers have become thin in places and the raw canvas visible as, for example, in the armoured breastplate. But the brisk liquidity of touch suggests the hand of the master, rather than an assistant making a copy. The roughly applied bituminous patch behind the head to define the hair and face compares to the oil sketch of King James II, in the London National Portrait Gallery, which must be one of the finest of all Lely’s efforts. A copyist would certainly not have left that in the final image. From this detail alone it is arguable that this version was the primary one from which other copies were made. Similarly, the planar treatment of the face also suggests the master working with efficiency to establish form. Most significantly, the Uffizi portrait lacks the electric flash of red on the upturned cuff on the left sleeve, one of the bolder details of paint handling. Conversely, the red sash added to the Florence canvas gives the portrait a glamour appropriate for the new ducal patron but clearly thought too ostentatious in the earlier version. Whether fully autograph or not will need to be debated, but it is now at least possible to assert the attribution of the Hudson’s Bay Company portrait of Prince Rupert to Sir Peter Lely and propose a date in the 1660s.

 

 

 

 

1. For their assistance in preparation of this note the author wishes to thank Fiona Callaghan, Kathleen Epp, David J Heffel, Catharine MacLeod, Rebecca Rykiss, Susan Sloman.The painting was sent from London to HBC Winnipeg in 1974 and then to Toronto in 1990. ↑
2. Hudson’s Bay Company archive, A.5/6 fol.165. I owe this reference and the others cited here in the archive to the kindness of Kathleen Epp in Winnipeg. ↑
3. A Loan Exhibition depicting the Reign of Charles II, catalogue of an exhibition held at 22 & 23 Grosvenor Place, London, SW1, 28 January–March 1932. ↑
4. CH Collins Baker, Lely and the Stuart Portrait Painters, London 1912, I, pp209–219, devotes a chapter to Huysmans, but does not mention this portrait. Ellis Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, Harmondsworth 1953, pp104–6, remains a useful survey of what little is known about Huysmans in England. ↑
5. According to Oliver Millar, Sir Peter Lely, 1618–80, exh cat., National Portrait Gallery, London 1978, p54. ↑
6. Louise Gordon-Stables, ‘The Charles II Exhibition’, The Burlington Magazine, LX (1932), pp151–157 (p151). ↑
7. CR Cammell, ‘Rupert, Prince Palatine: Portraits of a Royal Artist’, The Connoisseur, August 1937, pp59–64 (p63). The other Hudson’s Bay Company portrait of Prince Rupert is illustrated on p63, fig. VII, with a list of the other versions. ↑
8. Anna Maria Crinò and Oliver Millar, ‘Sir Peter Lely and the Grand Duke of Tuscany’, The Burlington Magazine, C (1958), pp124–131. ↑
9. Millar, 1958, p129, n36. A bust copy extracted from the larger portrait at Warwick Castle is also mentioned. ↑
10. A copy related to the Hudson’s Bay Company portrait, without the sash as present in the Florence version, sold at Colnaghi and Obuch in 1920 (Witt photograph). There is a copy after the Uffizi painting – presumably made c1674 before the original left England – recorded in a photograph in the National Portrait Gallery, London, as in the collection of a Mr AE Goffey Rylands, Newport, Salop (Shropshire), in 1951 (NPG photograph). Diana Dethloff, ‘The Executors’ Account Book and the Dispersal of Sir Peter Lely’s Collection’, Journal of the History of Collections, VIII (1996), pp15–51, lists four portraits of Prince Rupert without description in Lely’s estate sale, beyond half-length (two), three-quarter length and full-length. None of these paintings made high values, and so they were probably all workshop efforts. ↑