Description:

1645
pencil, pen and ink
136 x 220 mm

Provenance:

Carel Emil Duits (born 1882), London, Lugt 533a
by descent

Note:

This recently discovered drawing is described by Dr. Bernhard Schackenburg as ‘a highly important masterpiece’. Although it relates to a painting of 1645, now in the National Gallery of Art Washington, it is one of Ostade’s few full compositional drawings made as an independent work of art. Two similar crowded village scenes are in the Teyler Museum, Haarlem.

Purchased by the National Gallery of Art, Washington