Attributed to Jan Baptist Weenix

Vincent van Gogh, sale, Amsterdam, 2-3 December 1913, Lot 528;
Collection Arnal(?), Toulouse, according to an old inscription, verso;
Jan Streep, New York;
Lucien Goldschmidt New York,
from whom acquired in 1983

Hinge mounted in two places along the upper edge to a modern paper backing. There is some very light foxing throughout the sheet and two small repaired tears to the lower left and right corners. The red chalk medium remains in very fine condition throughout this refined sheet, with the image strong. Sold in an antique carved and giltwood frame.
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Although it is a large, compositionally complex sheet in which we see a number of very distinctive stylistic elements, the attribution of this extremely beautiful drawing has exercised scholars for decades.  In terms of the composition of the main figure group, the mother and child with father behind, there are close parallels with the staffage in the paintings of the Italianising landscape painter, Jan Baptist Weenix, and this must surely be the correct artistic milieu in which to locate the drawing.  But there are no other known drawings by Weenix of figure groups like this with which the Haverkamp-Begemann drawing can be compared, and indeed very few securely attributable figure drawings of any type by the artist.  Peter Schatborn has kindly pointed out to us the similarities with a red chalk study of a seated man at a table, in the Albertina, Vienna, a drawing that is not signed or connected with a painting, and is held at the Albertina under the name of Gerrit Dou, but is dated 1647 in a manner that Schatborn points out is very typical of Weenix¹, but he concedes that the unquestionable similarities with the present work are none the less not enough to put the attribution beyond doubt.  That said, no other serious candidate has so far emerged as author of this outstanding drawing. It is certainly not by Adriaen van de Velde, even though such serene, strongly lit figures were central to his style, nor can one cite any really compelling comparisons amongst the drawings of Karel Dujardin, another possibility.  The more angular and sketchy background figures, which emanate echoes of a rather different world, that of the early Rembrandt and his most significant immediate predecessors such as Moeyaert, should provide significant clues, yet somehow they do not, and so the best solution would seem to be to retain Haverkamp-Begemann’s own attribution to Weenix, until such time as any firmer evidence can be found either to confirm or refute the attribution.         

^1.  Vienna, Albertina, inv. no. 9252