AERT SCHOUMAN | WATERFOWL IN A RIVER LANDSCAPE

The most familiar watercolors of animals and birds by Schouman show one or two specimens, often exotic rather than native, on a relatively large scale, with little or no landscape background. This animated watercolor is, however, a particularly fine example of another type of composition that the artist occasionally made, in which the landscape is accorded as much attention as the birds or animals that populate it, and there is consequently a much greater sense of atmosphere.¹

1. For a comparable watercolor see sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, "The Unicorno Collection: Fifty-five Years of Collecting Drawings", 19 May 2004, lot 204; see also C. Dumas et al, Een Koninklijk Paradijs, Aert Schouman en de verbeelding van de natuur, Dordrecht 2017, p. 243, nos. 384-85, reproduced