The Tamesis
In a new catalog raisonné, scholar Christof Metzger argues painter’s father (1497) is a painting in the collection of the National Gallery, London, and is actually an authentic work by Albrecht Dürer.
painter’s fatherA gift to King Charles I of England in 1636, it has long been thought to be a copy of the lost original made decades after Dürer’s death in 1528. but in new publications Albrecht Dürer: Complete PaintingsAccording to Metzger (a Dürer expert and curator of German art at the Albertina Museum in Vienna), the face is “so well preserved that the painting’s former outstanding qualities are still perceptible”. he told The Art Newspaper The London work is distinguished from at least seven earlier known copies of Dürer’s portrait of his father by its “experienced brushwork and superb glazing technique.”
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Curators at the National Gallery have long held a different view. In a 2010 catalog entry, Marjorie E. Wieseman, then the museum’s curator of Dutch paintings, wrote that the painting’s “quality and technique are inconsistent with Dürer’s original work” and “lacks Dürer’s complex and highly realistic approach to formal modeling.”
Susan Foister, the museum’s longtime curator of German paintings, made the same point in the gallery’s 2024 catalog of the German collection, saying the painting had cracks not found in Dürer’s other works and that the subject’s hair “lacks Dürer’s usual fluidity and refinement.”
Due to space constraints and its status as a copy, the painting is not currently on display at the National Gallery. However, The Art Newspaper Reports say the museum may soon put it back on display. However, there is still no indication that the National Gallery plans to revise its stance on the attribution of the works. Currently, the museum’s website still lists it as “possibly a late sixteenth-century copy of Dürer’s lost original.”
