Anthonie Waterloo Lille 1609 - 1690 Utrecht

This is one of the most lyrical and atmospheric of the small group of landscape drawings in which Waterloo employed an astonishingly individual technique, combining chalk, watercolour, bodycolour and in some cases also charcoal soaked in linseed oil, to create an extremely original effect.  No records survive to suggest that the artist served a traditional apprenticeship, suggesting that he might have been self-taught;  if true, this may partly explain his unusual, highly personal technique.  Amongst the best of Waterloo's other known drawings of this type are the two sheets formerly in the collection of the British Rail Pension Fund (both sold New York, Sotheby's, one 23 January 2001, lot 148, the other 8 January 1991, lot 121), the Landscape with a Bridge, in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (inv. nr. P.D. 893-1963), and another exhibited at Colnaghi in 1960.   

No clear picture has yet emerged of Waterloo's stylistic development, so it is not known where these fascinating coloured drawings should be placed chronologically within the artist's career.  One of the ex-British Rail drawings, the Winter Landscape sold in 1991, was, however, drawn, like the present sheet, on the back of a sheet of domestic accounts, and the date of 1629 inscribed on that account sheet suggests these might perhaps be relatively early works.