Jan Lievens

Lievens was one of the most accomplished Dutch landscape draughtsmen of the 17^th century. Though his early career was entwined with that of Rembrandt, the landscape drawings that he produced following his return to Amsterdam in 1644 have no obvious stylistic connection with those of his illustrious contemporary, despite the fact that the two artists were once again working side by side in the same city. 

The landscape drawings of Lievens’ maturity, made between the mid 1640s and the end of his life, are hard to date with any precision, but several relatively coherent thematic and stylistic groupings can nonetheless be associated with different periods of his career. One of these, to which the present drawing belongs, consists of rather pastoral subjects, in which rustic farm buildings nestle amongst dense trees, and occasionally isolated figures go about their daily business. See, for example, the Homestead in a Forest, which exists in at least three autograph versions, or the Wooded Landscape with Shepherds, Flocks and a Village, in the Collection Noro Foundation.¹

Relatively few of the compositions within this group of similarly serene, large drawings include rivers or fishermen, so it seems possible that this drawing is actually the same as one that appeared in the sales of three collections (those of Aegidius Laurens Tolling, Simon Fokke and H. van Maarseveen) in Amsterdam between 1768 and 1793, described as River Landscape with Net-fishermen, Houses on the Bank among Tall Trees.²

1. Jan Lievens. A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat., Washington, National Gallery of Art, et al., 2008-9, nos. 126-7
2. W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, vol.7, New York 1983, p. 3923, no. 123; unfortunately no measurements are given in these early sale catalogues