Portrait of François Langlois, half-length, playing a musette

The present work replicates one of Anthony van Dyck's most memorable portraits. Depicted is the print publisher and paintings dealer François Langlois (1588-1647), also called 'Ciartres' in recognition of his hometown of Chartres. Van Dyck represented Langlois in the guise of a Savoyard, the French term used to describe itinerant musicians who captured the public imagination in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; it was a type particularly apropos for depicting Langlois, who was also a musician. Questions linger regarding the prime version of this work as two pictures by Van Dyck circulated in France at the beginning of the eighteenth century, almost certainly the paintings now in the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham (inv. no. 97.4/6567) and the National Gallery, London (inv. no. 6567). The dating of the original portrait has been debated, but it likely originated in 1637, when both Van Dyck and Langlois were in London. The present work is a contemporary version. Pierre-Jean Mariette states that Van Dyck worked especially diligently on the original and created two copies, one of which he kept in his possession (Barnes et al., op. cit. pp. 547-549).