Philips Wouwerman

Hendrik van Eyl Sluyter (1739-1814), Amsterdam, his sale, Amsterdam, 26 November 1814;
"Muller" collection, sale 1828;
Jacob de Vos Jbsz., his sale, Amsterdam, F. Muller, 22-24 May 1883 (all three of these references from the former owner's private collection catalogue, from which the entry is pasted to the back of the frame); 
Eugène Schneider (1805-1875), Paris,
his sale, Paris, Pillet & Escribe, 3 - 4 April 1876, lot 97, 600 francs, to Charles-Théodore Sauvageot (1826-1883);
from whom acquired by an ancestor of the present owner

Although many paintings by Wouwerman are known, his drawings are very rare; the most significant examples of his works to be found in public collections are the small but fine groups in the Teyler Museum, Haarlem, the British Museum, and the Fodor Collection at the Amsterdams Historisch Museum.  

This previously unrecorded and exceptionally well preserved sheet is therefore an important addition to the artist's drawn oeuvre.   It is a lively depiction of a subject familiar from many of Wouwerman's paintings, but is not directly connected with any surviving painted work, and given that it is so prominently signed, it may well have been made as a finished work, for sale, rather than as a study for a painting.

As Frits Duparc pointed out in his recent essay on Wouwerman's drawings¹ (the only publication to date on this subject), the form of monogram seen here indicates that the drawing is not an early work, and probably dates from after 1646.

1.  F. Duparc and Q. Buvelot, Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668), exhib. cat., Kassel, Gemäldegalerie Alter Meister, and The Hague, Mauritshuis, 2009-10, pp. 38-41