Description:

inscribed, lower left (recto): Both; inscribed on backing sheet: Roghman
black chalk with grey and brown wash
206 x 172 mm

Provenance:

Hendrikus Egbertus Ten Cate (1868–1955), Almelo [L.533b]
150 Meisterzeichnungen des 16. Bis 19. Jahrhunderts, C.G. Boerner, Düsseldorf, 1–15 December 1964, no. 93 (as Herman Saftleven)
Christie’s, New York: 25 January 2005, lot 192 (as Emanuel Murant)
Private collection, Rye, New York

Literature

Peter Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle. Drawings from the Frits Lugt Collection, 2 vols., Bussum and Paris, 2010, pp. 360–361, under no. 154, fig. 77, ill.

Note:

This water-side landscape, with houses, vegetation, and a bridge, is one of two versions of a drawing which have been attributed to Roelant Roghman by Peter Schatborn. The second version, in the Frits Lugt collection at the Fondation Custodia in Paris, is different in several respects, including the larger scale of the drawing, the level of the water and the figures with which the scene is populated. Schatborn suggests that both drawings were done in situ and tentatively dates them to after Roghman’s celebrated castle series of c. 1646–7, and before his journey to the south in 1654–7. In stylistic terms, the present drawing may be compared with early sheets by the artist at the Museum Boijmans in Rotterdam and in the Lugt collection.

The Lugt collection also contains an 18th-century variation of the drawing which is attributed to François Boucher. The Boucher drawing was executed more precisely than either of the two earlier examples, and the artist introduced new details that were only indicated in the other drawings. A weak tributary stream, for example, seen to the right of the wooden platform in the Roghman drawings, is transformed into a more powerful flow in the Boucher sheet, while a secondary stream, seen on the other side of the tree at centre left, is also introduced. The shape of the roof is reworked in the Boucher drawing, and the thin wooden bridge is replaced with a more solid stone arched bridge. The new stone bridge obscures the wooden house further downstream, transforming the Dutch view into something more French.

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