Old Master & British Works on Paper

Old Master & British Works on Paper

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 131. Recto and verso: The Church and beach at Scheveningen.

Jan Josefsz. van Goyen

Recto and verso: The Church and beach at Scheveningen

Lot Closed

July 8, 12:45 PM GMT

Estimate

10,000 - 15,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

Jan Josefsz. van Goyen

Leiden 1596 - 1656 The Hague

Recto and verso: The Church and beach at Scheveningen


Black chalk (recto and verso), within black chalk framing lines;

bears inscription in grey ink, lower left: J van Goyen, and numbering and initials in dark brown ink, versoNo 412 / EM

97 by 149 mm

Bears unidentified collector's numbering and initials, verso (L.881a);
sale, London, Christies, 28 June 1960, lot 74 (part of a lot of 4 to Seiferheld, for 82 gns);
with Seiferheld Gallery, New York, 1961;
Private collection, New York;
with Crispian Riley Smith Fine Arts, Ltd., Norfolk, where purchased by the present owner in 2015
H.-U. Beck, Jan van Goyen (1596-1656): ein Oeuvreverzeichnis, Vol. I, Katalog der Handzeichnungen, Amsterdam 1972, p. 56, under no. 158; p. 219, no. 677 (recto reproduced)
This lively double-sided sheet, surely from a sketchbook, must have been drawn from life on the beach at Scheveningen, a important seaside location near The Hague, which provided Van Goyen and many other Dutch artists of his time with subjects for their compositions.  As Dr. Beck noted, the recto of this drawing served as the basis for the left hand side of a larger and more finished drawing, now in the Louvre, of the type that Van Goyen generally made in the studio.1  The Paris drawing is signed and dated 1646, suggesting that the present sheet should be dated shortly before that, around 1645. 

No Dutch draughtsman ever captured the atmosphere of the vibrant coastal life of Holland with the same atmospheric and engaging simplicity that Van Goyen achieved in drawings such as this.

1.  Beck, op. cit., no. 158; reproduced Ibid., vol. III, Supplement, Doornspijk 1987, p. 51