Master Works on Paper from Five Centuries

Master Works on Paper from Five Centuries

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 55. A castle by a bridge.

Herman Saftleven

A castle by a bridge

Auction Closed

January 26, 04:31 PM GMT

Estimate

10,000 - 15,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Herman Saftleven

Rotterdam 1609 - 1685 Utrecht

A castle by a bridge 


Black chalk and gray wash, within pen and brown ink framing lines

285 by 235 mm; 11 3/16 by 9¼ in.

Gerard Meijer (L.5805)

Although Saftleven is perhaps most immediately associated with the tightly executed, very finished drawings that make up the greatest part of his drawn oeuvre, there are also a smaller number of much more freely drawn landscapes, often, like this example, relatively large in scale. These more spontaneous drawings, which are hard to date but may perhaps originate from the earlier part of the artist’s career, include some of his most appealing and impressive drawings. A signed example, depicting the bridge in Ghent, is in Copenhagen1 and a fine woodland scene of this type is in Berlin.2


1. Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst Kobberstiksamling, inv. no. Tu-86-3; W. Schulz, Herman Saftleven 1609-1685, Berlin/New York 1982, pp. 293-4, no. 616

2. Berlin, SMPK, Kupferstichkabinett, inv. no. 5354; Schulz, op. cit., p. 360, no. 915, fig. 135