- 78
Jan de Bisschop Amsterdam 1628 - 1671 The Hague
Description
- Jan de Bisschop
- riders and figures by a fallen tree in the 'haagse bos'
- signed in brown ink lower right: J: de Bischop:Fecit, and inscribed in brown ink, verso: In't Haegse bosch
- pen and brown ink and grey and brown wash, within brown ink framing lines
Provenance
Probably in the posession of the van Bleysweyck family at the beginning of the eighteenth century;
by inheritance in 1734 to Baron Hendrick van Slingelandt (1702-1759);
thence by descent to the present owners
Catalogue Note
This and the following lot, and also lots 81-82, belong to a series of extremely charming, very freely executed drawings by de Bisschop of views in and around The Hague. Particularly notable within this group are the views of the Haagse Bos, the last remaining section of the great forests that stretched in medieval times from The Hague as far as Haarlem, which were used from the thirteenth century on as a royal hunting park. By the end of the sixteenth century, the forest, by then somewhat reduced in size, had become a freely accessible area, widely used by local residents for a variety of recreational purposes. Like almost every other landscape artist who visited The Hague, de Bisschop found in the Haagse Bos the inspiration for a number of his most charming landscape drawings: some twenty such views survive, indentified, like this example, by inscriptions in the artist's hand, and one of these, at the Institut Néerlandais, Paris (collection F. Lugt, inv.I 867) is dated 1660. Others were sold, in these Rooms, 6 November 2001 (lot 84), 12 November 1996 (lot 22), 29 October 1979 (lot 242), 26 November 1984 (lot 149), 6 June 1977 (lot 157), and Amsterdam, Christie's, 9 November 1998 (lot 95), while another is in the Haagse Gemeentearchief. For further details of the drawings of the Haagse Bos by de Bisschop and other artists, see Charles Dumas, Haagse Stadsgezichten, Zwolle 1991, pp.177-87.
The same rather elaborate form of signature seen here also appeared on two other drawings by the artist sold, in these Rooms, 8 November 2000, lot 38, and 5 November 2002, lot 89.
These four drawings by de Bisschop share the same provenance as the magnificent drawing by de Gheyn (lot 27), having descended to the present owners directly from the 18th-century Barons van Slingelandt.