This fascinating, double-sided sheet, with a detailed depiction of a lively market scene on the
recto and a very free landscape sketch on the
verso, is an extremely rare example of a drawing by Droochsloot, whose paintings are very familiar, but whose drawings are virtually unknown. Only one signed drawing is recorded (a much smaller sheet, dated 1630, which was with Frye & Sohn, Münster, in 1992), and otherwise we only know the rather grand depiction of
Peasants merrymaking before an inn, which was sold in Amsterdam in 2006.
1 The latter drawing is executed in the same combination of pen and brown ink and grey wash, though in that case heightened with white, and the figure types, approach to architecture and general use of the pen are extremely similar in both sheets. Here, though, we also have the freely drawn black chalk elements in the rapid landscape sketch on the
verso, which adds a significant aspect to what we know of Droochsloot's drawing style.
1. Sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 14 November 2006, lot 43