FREDERIK DE MOUCHERON | An Italianate landscape with a herd of cows breasting a rise

With Adolphe Stein, London, cat. December 1975, no. 58 (as Jan Hackaert),
where acquired by F.C. Butôt (1906-92), Sankt Gilgen, Austria,
his posthumous sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby’s, 16 November 1993, lot 102

L.J. Bol, G.S. Keyes and F.C. Butôt, Netherlandish Paintings and Drawings from the Collection of F.C. Butôt by little-known and rare masters of the seventeenth century, 1981, cat. 73

Despite it traditional attribution to Jan Hackaert this drawing can be given with some confidence to Frederik de Moucheron, not only on stylistic grounds but also because, as Keyes pointed out (op. cit.), its composition relates to that of a Moucheron painting in Copenhagen.¹ Though lit in the characteristic Dutch Italianate manner, the landscapes in many of Moucheron's drawings seem more strongly influenced by the scenery he saw during his travels in France in 1655-8; this however, is a more purely Italianate composition, which to some extent explains its previous attribution.

^1. see Copenhagen, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Catalogue of Old Foreign Paintings, 1951, no. 486