Jacques de Gheyn II Antwerp 1565-1629 The Hague

This extremely refined landscape drawing by de Gheyn is previously unrecorded, perhaps as a result of the erroneous Carracci attribution on the mount.

Jacques de Gheyn is surely best known as a figure draughtsman and print designer, and the author of the famous series of preparatory drawings for the military manual, De Wapenhandelinghe, but his relatively small number of landscape drawings also constitute a significant aspect of his work, to which this newly discovered drawing is a very important addition.

The striking, disappearing perspective seen here is a compositional device originating with Breughel, and also explored by Hans Bol, as van Regeteren Altena noted in his discussion of the only other drawing by de Gheyn that employs this device as prominently as here, the 1598 Canal with Sailing Boats. (see I.Q. van Regteren Altena, Jacques de Gheyn, Three Generations, 3 vols., The Hague 1983, vol.II, cat. 941, vol.III, pl.62). The very similar form of the boat in the right foreground of the Van Regteren Altena drawing is also worth noting in relation to the present sheet.

The rather unusual form of the bridge, with its two small but very high side arches, is also significant. This is a feature which also occurs in a de Gheyn drawing of 1602 in Berlin (van Regteren Altena, cat. 942), and may derive from similar bridges in drawings by Flemish artists such as Joos de Momper, whose works de Gheyn would surely have encountered during his youth in Antwerp. The overall, often somewhat minute rendering of detail is similar both to this Berlin landscape and also to the drawing, dated 1600, of Figures by a watch-fire in a mountainous landscape (van Regteren Altena cat. 960), so a similar date would seem appropriate for the present drawing.
See also lot 27.