Old Master Day Sale including Old Master Paintings, Drawings and British Works on Paper

Old Master Day Sale including Old Master Paintings, Drawings and British Works on Paper

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 239. DIRK LANGENDIJK  |  MILITARY CONVOY WITH A CARRIAGE PASSING THROUGH A GRAND GATE.

Property from the Collection formed by Albin Schram

DIRK LANGENDIJK | MILITARY CONVOY WITH A CARRIAGE PASSING THROUGH A GRAND GATE

Lot Closed

July 29, 02:20 PM GMT

Estimate

800 - 1,200 GBP

Lot Details

Description

Property from the Collection formed by Albin Schram

DIRK LANGENDIJK

Rotterdam 1748 - 1805

MILITARY CONVOY WITH A CARRIAGE PASSING THROUGH A GRAND GATE


Pen and brown and black ink and grey wash, over black chalk, within brown ink framing lines;

signed and dated in brown ink, lower left: Dirk Langendijk fecit 1788

109 by 169mm


Please note: Condition 11 of the Conditions of Business for Buyers (Online Only) is not applicable to this lot.


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Albin Schram, Lausanne,

by inheritance to the present owners

A version of this composition, with numerous minor differences in staffage and architectural details, was sold, New York, Sotheby's, 13 January 1989 (lot 59, for $2,500). That drawing was also signed and dated 1788, though in the form of a fictive carved inscription, with the date in Roman numerals, across the top of the arch.  


In the Rotterdam Historisch Museum, there is an unfinished etching of the same composition made by Langendijk's pupil J.A. Bemme. The 1989 sale catalogue records that Miss M.E. Delen suggested that the drawing was intended as a design for the title page to a series of etchings of military subjects, after compositions by Langendijk.


Over the course of his career, Langendijk made considerable numbers of highly finished drawings like this of military subjects. Some record specific historical events but many simply capture the atmosphere that surrounded the military activity that was a more or less constant feature of life in the Netherlands - particularly in the south - during this period.  


Albin Schram (1926-2005) was a voracious but discerning collector of works on paper and autograph documents. The story goes that his fascination with these records of human interactions and artistic creation was sparked when his mother presented him with a romantic letter written by Napoleon Bonaparte to his future wife Josephine de Beauharnais in an attempt to patch up an argument. The superb collection of late 19th and early 20th century works on paper from the Schram collection, including drawings by artists such as Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, August Macke, Emil Nolde and Alfred Kubin, was sold at Sotheby's last month, under the title: The Artist's Sketchbook: Where Inspiration finds Form.