Jan Maximiliaan van Tuyll van Serooskerken (1710-1762)

Jan Maximiliaan van Tuyll van Serooskerken (1710–1762) was a Dutch nobleman from an ancient Utrecht family that had been prominent in the governance of the Dutch Republic since the seventeenth century. The 1779 portrait—painted seventeen years after the sitter's death in 1762—must therefore be either a posthumous portrait based on earlier images, a copy after an original made during the sitter's lifetime, or a work with an erroneous date. If posthumous, it joins a long tradition of commemorative portraiture that reconstructed the appearances of recently deceased individuals from existing images and descriptions. The Instituut Collectie Nederland manages artworks belonging to the Dutch state that are dispersed across various institutions, making this portrait accessible as part of the broader national heritage. The van Tuyll family maintained extensive European connections, including to Isabelle de Charrière (née van Tuyll), one of the Enlightenment's most significant female writers.

Whether posthumous or based on direct observation, Liotard's technique in 1779 remained at its characteristically high standard. Late works show a slight economy of means but no loss of precision in the elements he considered most important—face and dress surface.