Old Master Drawings

Old Master Drawings

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 36. View of the Lower Rhine valley, looking from Kleve towards Emmerich.

Property from the Juli and Andrew Wieg Collection, Amsterdam

Adam Pijnacker

View of the Lower Rhine valley, looking from Kleve towards Emmerich

Auction Closed

January 27, 05:29 PM GMT

Estimate

15,000 - 20,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Property from the Juli and Andrew Wieg Collection, Amsterdam

Adam Pijnacker

Schiedam 1620 - 1673 Amsterdam

View of the Lower Rhine valley, looking from Kleve towards Emmerich


Pen and brown ink and grey wash over black chalk, on two joined sheets of paper;

signed and inscribed in black lead, lower left: a. Pijnacker. Cleef ziende na Embrik, and bears inscription in brown ink, verso: 50 Pijnacker

239 by 582 mm; 9 ½ by 22 ⅞ in

The Hon. John Spencer (1708-1746), Althorp (L.1532),
thence by descent in the collections of the Earls Spencer;
sale, Amsterdam, Christie's, 15 November 1993, lot 101;
with Bernard Houthakker, Amsterdam;
sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 11 November 1997, lot 85
P. Schatborn, Drawn to Warmth, 17th-century Dutch artists in Italy, exh. cat., Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 2001, pp. 183, 212, n. 21 (1997 sale reference erroneously as Christie's) 

As Peter Schatborn has described (loc. cit.), the style of this drawing is typical of the broad, rather freely executed studies that Pijnacker made directly from nature, on the basis of which he would produce, back in the studio, both his paintings and his more carefully finished drawings. This is, though, an exceptionally large example of one of the artist's plein air drawings, and is also unusual in that he has worked up some parts of the foreground in pen and ink.


All the same, the penwork and the chalk that underlies the entire composition are both handled in the nervously insistent manner that is so characteristic of Pijnacker's drawing style. The contrast between the sense of movement in the chalk and pen strokes and the calmness generated by the broad grey washes, flowing between wide areas of entirely blank paper, creates a very distinctive and satisfying sense of light and atmosphere.  


The fact that there are two drawings in this sale that can convincingly be attributed to Pijnacker (see also lot 99) might suggest otherwise, but drawings by the artist are actually very rare, all the more so a grand sheet like this, in which the precise location depicted is known. Other characteristic sketches made from nature, similar in technique but smaller and not worked up in pen, are in the Louvre and the Rijksmuseum, the latter signed in black lead in the same way as the present work.1 


1. Paris, Musée du Louvre, Inv. no. RF 34542; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-T-1964-59; reproduced Schatborn, loc. cit., figs. F and H.