Portrait of a Monk

In 1924 the Howard Young Gallery of New York bought this canvas in Amsterdam, and before the year was out it had reached Boston. The dealers Doll and Richards sold it that October to John Taylor Spaulding, a Boston collector better known for Japanese prints and for French painting of his own lifetime. It stayed with him until his death in 1948, and his bequest brought it to the museum in the same gift as Van Gogh's La Berceuse. Neither the sitter nor the painter is known, and there is no date. The museum catalogues the portrait as in the style of Rubens.