Jan de Bisschop Amsterdam 1628 - 1671 The Hague

Estimate

6,000 - 8,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Jan de Bisschop
Campagna Landscape with a Castle and Farm Building
pen and brown ink and wash

Provenance

Probably Jacob van der Ulft, Amsterdam;
sale, London, Christie's, 26 March 1974, lot 131;
with P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., London, 1977;
Curtis O. Baer, Atlanta;
by inheritance to Mr. & Mrs. George Baer

Exhibited

Washington DC, National Gallery of Art, et al., Master Drawings from Titian to Picasso, The Curtis O. Baer Collection, 1985-7, no. 43, reproduced

Catalogue Note

Despite the large number of Roman views amongst the drawings of Jan de Bisschop, and the overwhelmingly Italianate lighting of this and many of his other works, he is not thought ever to have made the journey to Italy undertaken by so many Dutch artists of the day. Bisschop does, however, seem to have studied with Bartholomaeus Breenbergh, whose stylistic influence is readily apparent in drawings such as this. Shortly afterwards, De Bisschop enrolled as a law student in Leiden, the beginning of an illustrious legal career which was to be his primary occupation thereafter. In the early 1650s he moved to The Hague to take up a position at the Court, but still found time to produce many drawings, including Dutch and Italian landscapes, and also copies after paintings and sculptures (such as lot 73).

After De Bisschop's death, this drawing appears to have become the property of Jacob van der Ulft, who copied it, adding different staffage, in a sketchbook of 1675, now in the Lugt Collection.¹

1 Reproduced in the 1985-7 exhibition catalogue, p. 84, fig. 13.