Herman Saftleven

Rhine landscape with figures and boats

Auction Closed

January 31, 05:59 PM GMT

Estimate

10,000 - 15,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Herman Saftleven

Rotterdam 1609 - 1685 Utrecht

Rhine landscape with figures and boats

Black chalk and watercolor, within pen and brown ink, and gold framing lines

181 by 291 mm; 7 ⅛ by 11 ½ in.

Bears unidentified collector's mark, verso (L.1481b);
Dr. E. Czeczowiczka, Vienna,
sale, ('Einer Wiener Sammlung') Berlin, C.G. Boerner, 12 May 1930, lot 133 (to Colnaghi);
Dr. Einar Perman (1893-1976), Stockholm,
by descent to the present owners

W. Schulz, Herman Saftleven 1609-1685, Berlin/New York 1982, p. 456, cat. 1299

Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, Dutch and Flemish Drawings in the Nationalmuseum and other Swedish Collections, 1953, cat. 175;
Laren, Singer Museum, Oude Tekeningen uit de Nederlanden. Verzameling Prof. E. Perman, Stockholm, 1962, cat. 98

As is also the case for Anthonie van Borssom (see lot 126), some of Herman Saftleven's most attractive and appealing landscapes are his relatively highly finished drawings, incorporating delicately applied watercolor, like this sheet and the following lot. It seems to have been in the early 1650s that Saftleven made the journey along the Rhine that was to provide him with inspiration and compositional motifs on which he was to draw for the rest of his career.

Saftleven apparently kept his Rhine landscapes in an album, which became the subject of a song by the poet and playwright Joost van den Vondel, praising these drawings for their truth to life. His verse concludes with the lines:

Who, with these leaves, need weep or wail

for running the Rhine with ship and sail.¹

1. M. Schapelhouman and P. Schatborn, Land & Water, Dutch drawings from the 17th Century, Amsterdam 1987, under cat. 75