Lot 196
  • 196

Egbert van Drielst

Estimate
2,000 - 3,000 GBP
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Description

  • Egbert van Drielst
  • 'Kraantje Lek', near Haarlem
  • Watercolour and gouache over black chalk, within brown ink framing lines;
    signed and dated, verso: E. van Drielst 1804 and inscribed: Kraantie Lek buijten Haarlem

Catalogue Note

'Kraantje Lek' was built as an inn in 1542 and survives to this day, as a pancake restaurant.  It is located in the village of Overveen (formerly Rockaers) at the base of the dunes, beside the old fishermen's path that led from the beach at Zandvoort to the Grote Markt in Haarlem.  According to local legend, in 1623 Frans Hals painted his famous double portrait of 'Jonker Ramp' and his lady companion (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) in this very building. 

The 'Kraantje Lek' lay within the estate at Elswout, owned from 1781 until 1805 by Jacob Boreel, who had the park transformed into an English­-style landscape garden, which soon became a source of inspiration for many landscapists, including van Drielst.  Between 1792 and 1796, the artist made a number of drawings, watercolours and paintings of various locations on the estate, four of which were engraved by Hendrik Schwegman in 1794, and also executed wall paintings in the house itself.1  In 1805, one year after van Drielst made this drawing, the estate was sold to the financier, Willem Borski.

Although van Drielst had studied in Haarlem, with Hendrik Meijer, and worked at Elswout, most of his landscape drawings depict heavily wooded locations in the province of Drenthe, in the north east of the Netherlands, to the point that he gained the soubriquet, the 'Drentse Hobbema.'  This nickname was surely a reference not only to his preferred subjects but also to his abilities, as van Drielst's landscape drawings and watercolours are some of the most accomplished and atmospheric of his time. 

1.  B. Gerlagh and E. Koolhaas-Grosveld, Egbert van Drielst 1745-1818, Zwolle 1995, pp. 67-8, 88, 92-3, 125, figs. 54, 56, 88-9, 94-97, 117; and sale, Amsterdam, Christie's, 14 May 2003, lot 205