Lot 353
  • 353

ABRAHAM BLOEMAERT | Moses Striking Water from the Rock

Estimate
10,000 - 15,000 GBP
bidding is closed

Description

  • Bloemaert, Abraham
  • Moses Striking Water from the Rock
  • Pen and brown ink and wash, heightened with white (partly oxidised), over black chalk, squared for transfer in black chalk, and within brown ink framing lines;bears inscription in brown ink, lower right: Bloemaert
  • 235 by 313 mm

Condition

Laid down on a backing sheet (probably 18th century), and then again onto a later mount. Lightly foxed and stained throughout, but still very legible. Sold in a modern frame.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Catalogue Note

Though the squaring would seem to indicate that this large and previously unknown compositional drawing by Bloemaert was made as the design for a painting, no corresponding work by the artist is known.  Bloemaert's most important surviving treatment of this Old Testament subject is the spectacular painting of 1596, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, but the composition of that oil, a definitive work of Bloemaert's mannerist phase, is very different from that of the present drawing.1  At least two other painted versions of the subject are believed to have existed2, but both date from early in Bloemaert's career (1591 and 1611), whereas this serenely balanced drawing must surely be a much later work, most probably from the 1640s.   Bloemaert also made at least five other drawings depicting this subject, but again none of these are very close in composition to this newly discovered work.3  The three dated by Jaap Bolten to the 1640s4 are, though, more similar in approach than the artist's more mannered, earlier treatments of the theme.  

1.  Inv. 1972.171; M.G. Roethlisberger, Abraham Bloemaert and his Sons. Paintings and Prints, 2 vols., Doornspijk 1993, vol. I, pp. 92-3, no. 46, reproduced vol. II, colour plate IV, figs. 81-85
2.  Ibid., p. 93, under no. 46
3.  J.A. Bolten, Abraham Bloemaert. The Drawings, 2 vols., vol. I, nos. 39-42, reproduced vol. II, figs. 39a, 40, 41, 41a, 42 
4.  Ibid, nos. 41, 41a, 42