Attributed to Horatius de Hooch

Charles Molinier, Toulouse (L.2917)

Laid down. Ink has eaten into paper in a few of the darkest areas. Some minor abrasions, particularly towards right and left edges. Minor losses in corners. some light staining and foxing throughout. Image none the less still very strong and powerful.
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This dashing landscape can plausibly be attributed to the rare Utrecht artist Horatius de Hooch. Relatively little is known about de Hooch's career, but he is thought to have studied in Rome with Cornelis van Poelenburch.  As Peter Schatborn has described, a group of six landscape drawings in the Landesmuseum, Mainz, form the core of his known work as a draughtsman.¹  Though slightly smaller in scale than the present sheet they are all characterised by a very similar, extremely broad use of wash (in four cases grey and in the other two brown).²  Particularly similar in technique to this is the Road through a Wood with a House in the Background, in which, as here, the artist has not made any use of an initial black chalk sketch.

^1.  P. Schatborn, Drawn to Warmth, 17th-century Dutch artists in Italy, Amsterdam 2001, pp. 140-143.

^2.  Ibid, p. 143, fig. G