Everhard Jabach, by Hyacinthe Rigaud

This well-documented painting bears witness to the friendship between the painter Hyacinthe Rigaud and his sitter, the famous banker and art collector Everhard Jabach. The absence of any signs of social ostentation or elaborate dress in this portrait is striking, as is the lack of any attempt to create a sense of complicity. His gaze is directed elsewhere. A damaged column to his left embodies the passage of time within the artwork, whilst a sky—which one imagines to be moonlit—appears to his right. This is a dreamy banker, powerfully inspired by non-material realms, meditating on time through his passion for art.

It was probably thanks to their shared passion for Flemish painting—and more specifically for the work of Van Dyck—that the banker and the painter first met and subsequently became friends. Jabach came from a family of merchants in Cologne, and his father, himself a collector, had founded a bank in Antwerp. In 1638, he left his hometown for Paris, where he became involved in industrial and commercial ventures that made his fortune. As director of the East India Company, he became a renowned collector and supplied numerous works of art to enrich the collections of Louis XIV.

The work was long known as the ‘portrait with grey gloves’, to distinguish it from other versions, such as the one held at the Louvre. In this version, Hyacinthe Rigaud chose to depict the banker in a half-length portrait, the collar of his white shirt casually unbuttoned, which contrasts with the black velvet coat, rendered with great nuance thanks to a broad pleat at the front—a recurring motif in Rigaud’s very earliest works.

Rigaud depicts the face of this wealthy art lover without making any concessions to the ravages of time, as is typical of portraits from the Northern School. And yet, despite the pronounced dark circles under his eyes, his sagging cheeks and his prominent goitre, the collector’s face appears at once mysterious, determined, even inspired by a project that only he understands.