While the identity of the present sitter remains unknown, his dress was historically associated with Dutch admiralty figures, like Bartholomeus van der Helst’s Egbert Meeuwsz Cortenaer (1605-65), Vice Admiral, Admiralty of the Maas, Rotterdam, shown with the prominent display of a similar baldric. Frederik Schmidt-Degener also noted its similitude to French fashions of the 1660s, such as that in Vaillant’s pastel portrait of Philippe I, Duke of Orléans (Albertina, Vienna), dated to 1660, suggesting that the sitter may have been a member of the country’s nobility. Indeed, it was at this time that Vaillant worked for the French court, when he was commissioned by Anne d’Autriche (1601-1666) in 1660 to create a series of pastels of the French royal circle, before returning to Amsterdam in 1665.

The painting entered the Gran Ducal Collection of Oldenburg in 1859, when it was acquired at auction in Leipzig from the Löhr Collection as by Diego Velázquez. The catalogue, however, already hinted at the authorship of the Flemish Vaillant. This attribution was accepted in the first inventory record of the Gran Ducal Collection in 1867 and was later reaffirmed by the leading art historians of the time: Wilhem Bode in 1888, Abraham Bredius and Frederik Schmidt-Degener in 1906, who commented on the attractive quality of the painting (op. cit.).

In the 2017 publication Die Gemäldegalerie Oldenburg: Eine europäische Altmeistersammlung (op. cit.), the present portrait was discussed as a lost work that once enriched the noble collection. Following the end of the German Empire and the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1918, the Gran Duchy of Oldenburg was dissolved. In 1919, Grand Duke Frederick Augustus II (1852-1931) went into exile in the Netherlands and took the most valuable third of the art collection with him for a planned sale in the flourishing Dutch art market. The dispersal of the collection gained international attention, with a sizeable number of artworks secured for the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam by the Rembrandt Syndicaat prior to the auctions held at Frederik Muller & Cie in Amsterdam. The present work was among the lots in the exclusive sale of the Galerie Oldenburg in June 1924, which would remain unseen until its reappearance in private hands nearly 100 years later.