Portrait of a gentleman at the of 35

The painting depicts a half-length portrait of a man against a plain background. His sumptuous dark coat has decorative buttoned slits on the sleeves, revealing his undergarment with its elaborate brocade pattern. He is wearing a dark beret and has a small horizontal beard along his chin line. He has a signet ring on the index finger of his left hand. The sitter is facing to the right and the direction of his gaze is also to the right. While his voluminous coat fills the pictorial space to the edge on the right, the artist has retained the space on the left hand side. This has created a compositional imbalance, which is compounded by the fact that the sitter has been shifted to the right of the central axis.

[Daniel Görres, cda 2018]