A landscape with a horse-drawn ferry, the city of The Hague with the Grote Kerk beyond

Details

ESAIAS VAN DE VELDE (AMSTERDAM 1587-1630 THE HAGUE)
A landscape with a horse-drawn ferry, the city of The Hague with the Grote Kerk beyond
with inscription 'E.Van de Velde / 1617' (on the old mount)
two shades of black chalk, pen and brown ink framing lines, watermark Basle crozier in a crowned shield with letters TC (?) and three balls below
9 5/8 x 16 7/8 in. (24.5 x 42.9 cm.)

Provenance

A.J. van der Poest Clement; Van Stockum, The Hague, 2 July 1963, lot 60.
Hans van Leeuwen (1911-2010), Amsterdam; Christie's, Amsterdam, 24 November 1992, lot 205, where acquired by the present owner.

Literature

G. Keyes, Esaias van de Velde 1587-1630, Doornspijk, 1984, p. 241, no. D89, plate 94.
C. Dumas, Haagse Stadsgezichten 1550/1800, Zwolle, 1991, p. 516, note 25.
P.C. Sutton, The Martin and Kathleen Feldstein Collection, privately published, 2020, pp. 126-127, no. 38, illustrated.

Exhibited

Nijmegen, Museum de Waag, Tekeningen uit de collectie Hans van Leeuwen, 12 November-13 December 1965, no. 8.
Leeuwarden, Museum Princessehof, Tentoonstelling oude tekeningen uit drie eeuwen: Collectie Hans van Leeuwen, 5 February-8 March 1966, no. 5.
Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, La Vie en Hollande au XVIIe siècle, 11 January-20 March 1967, no. 67.
Bonn, Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Niederländische Zeichnungen des 17. bis 19. Jahrhunderts aus der Sammlung Hans van Leeuwen, Utrecht, 27 September-10 November 1968, no. 139.
Rheydt, Städtisches Museum Schloss Rheydt, Niederländische Zeichnungen des 17.-19. Jahrhunderts aus der Sammlung Hans van Leeuwen, Utrecht, 2 September-17 October 1971, no. 78.
Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, De verzameling van H. van Leeuwen, 8 November 1975-1 February 1976, no. 125.
Utrecht, Centraal Museum, Nederlandse tekeningen uit drie eeuwen, 29 April-25 June 1978, no. 102.
Bremen, Bremen Kunsthalle and elsewhere, Meisterzeichnungen aus drie Jahrhunderten: Niederländische Handzeichnungen des 17. bis 19. Jahrhunderts aus der Sammlung Hans van Leeuwen, 14 October 1979-10 February 1980, no. 140.
Fribourg, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire and elsewhere, Niederländische Meisterzeichnungen des 17. bis 19. Jahrhunderts aus der Sammlung Hans van Leeuwen, 1982-1984, no. 122.

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Lot Essay

Drawn in Esaias van de Velde's characteristically refined technique, this drawing is one of the earliest and largest known sheets by the artist. Keyes dates it to circa 1618-19 on the basis of a comparison with an etching of a wooded landscape (op. cit., no. E8) and a picture from 1619 in Besançon (ibid., no. 110). In the foreground of this extensive landscape is a canal with a trekschuit (a horse-drawn boat), and in the far distance one can observe the city of The Hague, where the artist had moved in 1618, with the spire of the Grote Kerk. While ferries are frequent in the artist's paintings (see, for example, The Cattle Ferry, from 1622, now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. SK-A-1293), depictions of the, at the time, fairly novel trekschuit are rarer. The trekschuit, which was usually drawn by a horse, offered an inexpensive and reliable way of traveling between towns in Holland until it was replaced in the nineteenth century by the railroad. Another drawing by van de Velde showing a trekschuit in the distance is in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (ibid., no. D118, plate 235).

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