Jacques de Gheyn II Antwerp 1565 - 1629 The Hague

Purchased from Aubrey Beese, Cirencester, 1954

Although it was exhibited in public in 1963, this intensely drawn, large-scale sheet of imaginative head studies is previously undocumented.  De Gheyn may well have made quite a number of similarly extensive and complex study sheets, but very few have, like this, survived intact; it seems that most were later cut up into individual studies or smaller sheets, and this is one of the most elaborate and important study sheets by the artist to have survived.

The eleven separate studies on the sheet are extremely varied in type and handling, and also fall into two distinct groups, each drawn in a slightly different ink, suggesting that De Gheyn may have made the drawing in two stages.  Seven of the studies seem to have been drawn in the first phase: the two of the boy blowing on a conch, at the top of the sheet; two more in the centre of the sheet, perhaps showing the same boy, but this time with his mouth open; and the three drawings of an old, bearded man, towards the bottom of the sheet.  Each of these three sets of drawings seems to show a single figure, seen from different angles, and in this regard, as well as in terms of the magnificently controlled, somewhat engraver-like penwork, these studies are definitive examples of Dutch mannerist drawing in the Goltzius tradition.  Also highly reminiscent of Goltzius is the motif at the top, of the boy blowing on the shell. 

The remaining four studies on the sheet, which seem in compositional terms to have been fitted in around the other seven, are drawn in a slightly blacker ink, and show figures that are much less classical in aspect.  Indeed the two in the middle are somewhat deranged-looking, and the two at the very bottom, one of which is a Medusa, are positively demonic, reflecting the interest in scenes of witchcraft and diablerie which became an increasingly important element in De Gheyn's art as his career progressed. 

Perhaps the most similar to the present drawing of de Gheyn’s previously known works is a sheet of studies in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, which was described by van Regteren Altena as "one of the greatest ‘tours de force’ achieved by the artist and one showing his extraordinary skill with the quill" (see I.Q. van Regteren Altena, Jacques de Gheyn, Three Generations, 3 vols., The Hague 1983, vol.II, cat. 493, vol.III, pl.267).  Also to some extent similar, though containing a larger number of smaller, more carefully drawn studies, is a splendid, early study sheet which first came to light two years ago (sold, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 4 November 2003, lot 27), but otherwise there are hardly any other examples of major, large-scale study sheets with which this can be compared. 

In terms of handling, if not in scale of conception, the most similar to this sheet among De Gheyn's other drawings are the series of much smaller sheets of studies of heads, which, though now dispersed, seem to originate from a single sketchbook (Van Regteren Altena, op.cit., cats. 738-48). Those drawings explore similar, rather grotesque motifs, and include certain heads that are very similar to those of the putative second group in our sheet; Van Regteren Altena dated these smaller sheets circa 1618-23, and this would also seem a reasonable dating for the second group of studies seen here.  The first seven described above do, however, seem far more closely related to De Gheyn's earlier style, when the influence of his teacher Goltzius is much more evident in his work, and it is tempting to suggest that they were drawn as much as a decade earlier. If this conclusion regarding dating is indeed correct, one might wonder if De Gheyn returned to, and elaborated his earlier sheet of studies for commercial reasons, so as to make it more complete, for sale as a finished work in its own right. 

There are few, if any, other drawings by De Gheyn in which we find these two fundamental aspects of his draughtsmanship side by side within a single sheet, and the extraordinary combination of imagination and technique seen here make this one of the most dramatic and important of all the artist's drawings. Its appearance not only adds another major example to the tiny number of study sheets of this type by the artist which have survived intact, but also adds a fascinating new insight into the creative processes of one of the most important and original Dutch draughtsmen of the beginning of the 17th century.