Frans Kops Jr. (XX) - portret

Characterful half-length male portrait of F. Kops Jr., executed in oil on canvas and signed and dated in the upper left ‘F. Kops Jr. 1942’. The canvas measures approximately 60 × 45 cm and is mounted in a richly ornamented gold-coloured frame; the total dimensions amount to about 74 × 59 × 7 cm.

The depicted subject is shown half-length and almost frontally, dressed in a deep blue work jacket with metal closures on the shoulder and a pipe in the mouth. Against the sober gray-beige background all attention concentrates on the face. Kops models the bald skull, strong eyebrows, cheekbones and the folds around the eyes and mouth with careful transitions from pink, reddish-brown and muted flesh tones. The cool blue eyes form a sharp accent within the warm face. The broad, dark area of the work clothing gives the portrait a monumental understructure, while the restrained background reinforces the plastic rendering of the head and the torso without arms.

Biography of the artist
Frans Kops Jr. was a Dutch painter from ’s-Hertogenbosch and the son of the Bossche painter Johannes Franciscus (Frans) Kops (1873–1951). He thus grew up within an artistic milieu; his father was trained at the Royal School in ’s-Hertogenbosch and worked as a painter of portraits, still lifes and monumental decorations. It is documented that Frans Kops Jr. worked as a painter and in 1933 received a Royal subsidy, a support granted to artists for further artistic development. In the City Archive of ’s-Hertogenbosch, separate archival records concerning his artistry are kept within the family archive Kops. His oeuvre is today less extensively documented than that of his father. This portrait from 1942 shows a meticulous, realistic portrait concept with particular attention to facial modeling and individual character traits.