Attributed to Job Berckheyde

Joseph-Guillaume-Jean Camberlyn (1783-1861), The Hague and Brussels (L.514);

Dr. Einar Perman (1893-1976), Stockholm, by descent to the present owners

Laren, Singer Museum, Oude Tekeningen uit de Nederlanden. Verzameling Prof. E. Perman, Stockholm, 1962, cat. 5

The paintings of Amsterdam views made by Gerrit Berckheyde and his less well-known elder brother Job constitute some of the most definitive images of the 17^th-century city, then at the peak of its standing as a world centre. 

Corresponding topographical drawings by either artist are, however far rarer. The most important by Gerrit is the splendid view of the Dam Square, in the Clement C. Moore Collection, New York¹, and there are three views of the Church of St. Geroen, Cologne, one in the Amsterdam Museum and the other two in Besançon², that are generally accepted as the work of Job Berckheyde.

Comparison with the three views of Cologne suggests that the traditional attribution of the present drawing to Job Berckheyde, if hard to prove, is at least plausible, and the approach to the figures and their relationship with architecture are also similar to paintings by the artist such as his view of the interior courtyard of Amsterdam’s Old Stock Exchange.³

¹ See J. Shoaf Turner, Rembrandt's World, Dutch Drawings from the Clement C. Moore Collection, exhib. cat., New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, 2012, cat. 75

² Amsterdam Museum, inv. TA 10127; Besançon, Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie, inv. D 463, D 464

³ Two versions of the painting are in the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (inv. 1043 (OK)) and the Amsterdam Museum (inv. SA 3025)