Nicolaes Pietersz. Berchem

Despite the fact that it seems he never himself visited Italy, Berchem's delightful, animated paintings and drawings lie at the very heart of the Dutch tradition of Italianate landscape. He was also something of a pioneer, in making significant numbers of fully signed, finished drawings for sale, although the rapid, sketchy nature of the present drawing indicates that this was not one of them, and that it was made rather as a working study. The figure group seen here, though not identical to that in any known painting by the artist, is of a type that recurs frequently in his work.

As Annemarie Stefes has noted, Berchem was an innovative draughtsman on a technical level, using a considerable variety of media, sometimes in unusual combinations.¹ Here, he has combined normal black chalk with chalk or charcoal that has been soaked in linseed oil, thereby achieving a very original variety of touch and tone, unlike anything that is to be found in the works of other Dutch landscape artists of the time. This combination is only found in a handful of Berchem's drawings, most of which, like the Rijksmuseum's Diana and her nymphs on the shores of a lake², are fairly elaborate compositions dating from the early 1660s or later, but one other, a Hunting Scene in the British Museum, is a little earlier - dated by Stefes, like the Perman drawing, to 1657/58.³  

1.  Nicolaes Berchem. In the Light of Italy, exh. cat., Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum, Zürich, Kunsthaus, and Schwerin, Staatliches Museum, 2006-7, p. 112

2. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. RP-T-1983-500

3.  London, British Museum, inv. 1895,0915.1114