John Evelyn

This portraitback to top

On 29 June 1641 Evelyn recorded he had ‘sat to one Vanderborcht for my Picture in Oyle which I presented [to my sister Jayne], being her request upon my resolutions to absent my selfe from this ill face of things at home’; [1] in the De Vita Propria [2] he wrote further: ‘I sate to one Vanderborgh for my Picture in Oyle, at Arundel house, [3] whose servant that Excellent painter was, brought out of Germany, when that earle returned from Vienna …’. [4] In his gloved hand Evelyn holds a drawing or engraving, perhaps by Van der Borcht (and perhaps showing a St John the Baptist?). Evelyn refers to a single portrait, but Van der Borcht painted another, apparently at the same time.

Footnotesback to top

1) Diary, II, p 29.
2) Diary, I, p 21.
3) For Van der Borcht, see R. Harding, ‘John Evelyn, Hendrik van der Borcht the Younger and Wenceslaus Hollar’, Apollo, CXLIV, August 1996, pp 39-44; F. W. H. Hollstein, Dutch & Flemish Etchings Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700, III, p 98; F. C. Springell, Connoisseur and Diplomat, 1963, pp 100-04, n53.
4) Continuing: ‘with Vanderburgh he brought over Wincesalus Hollar …’ (Diary, II, p 29n1).

Referenceback to top

Piper 1963
D. Piper, Catalogue of the Seventeenth Century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery 1625-1714, 1963, p 121.

Simon & Saywell (eds.) 2004
Complete Illustrated Catalogue, NPG, ed. J. Simon & D. Saywell, 2004, p 210.

Provenanceback to top

By descent in the Evelyn family.

Exhibitionsback to top

Lent to the NPG 1976–; Sir Thomas Browne, Norwich, 1982, no.13; The Stuart Portrait, Southampton, 2001, no.8.


This extended catalogue entry is from the National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue: John Ingamells, National Portrait Gallery: Later Stuart Portraits 1685–1714, National Portrait Gallery, 2009, and is as published then. For the most up-to-date details on individual Collection works, we recommend reading the information provided in the Search the Collection results on this website in parallel with this text.

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