Portrait of Gerard Edema
Attributed to Mary Beale British
Sitter Gerard Edema Dutch
Not on view
Edema was a Dutch painter who traveled to Newfoundland, New York and Surinam, then settled in Britain and became known as the "Salvator Rosa of the North." Here, he wears a short wig and plain jacket as he gazes fixedly at the viewer. The drawing is executed in ink wash, with touches of white, and includes an indistinct passage below that suggests a longer torso was once contemplated. A seventeeth-century inscription on the mount attributes the work to Mary Beale, a connection which cannot be confirmed because no other portrait drawings firmly attributed to her are known. In 1762, the image was incorporated into a triple portrait of Gerard Soest, Jan Griffier, and Edema (all born in the Netherlands), engraved as an illustration in Matthew Pilkington's "Dictionary of Painters."
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