Nicolaes Pietersz. Berchem Haarlem 1620 - 1683 Amsterdam

The son and pupil of the Haarlem still-life painter Pieter Claesz., Berchem rapidly turned his attention to landscape painting, a genre in which he was immensely successful.  Although there is no documentary evidence that he ever went to Italy, for much of his career his style was defined by its Italianate subject-matter and lighting, an idiom in which he became an absolute master.  Berchem’s drawings comprise studies in red chalk, black chalk and pen and wash, representing various types of composition to varying degrees of finish.  Rough, sketchy chalk drawings such as this are generally dated to after 1670 (see Peter Schatborn, Drawn to Warmth, 17^th-century Dutch artists in Italy, exhibition catalogue, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 2001, p. 193).