Like the previous lot, this newly discovered drawing of Tonbridge, in Kent, adds significantly to our knowledge of the career of the intriguing Amsterdam artist, Abraham Rutgers, and also to our broader knowledge regarding the movement of artists between Holland and England in the later 17^th century.

Yet whereas Windsor Castle was the subject of a reasonable number of 17^th-century drawings, paintings and prints, the Kentish town of Tonbridge most certainly was not. The recently discovered portfolios of drawings by Rutgers contained no fewer than four drawings of Tonbridge, plus one of the port of Gravesend, thereby charting the travels that Rutgers must have made.

Another Dutch artist to visit England at around the same time was Willem Schellinks, whose diaries, surviving in two manuscripts in Copenhagen and Oxford, record in detail his travels through England and Scotland in 1661-63.¹ Yet although Schellinks spent a considerable part of his English stay in Kent, mainly at Bridge Place near Canterbury, the home of the Dutch merchant Sir Arnold Braems, he only records passing through Tonbridge on one occasion (14 April 1663), and no drawing of the town by Schellinks, Esselens, or any other 17^th-century artist is known.

The present drawing shows the approach to one of the gates to Tonbridge Castle. The three other drawings of Tonbridge by Rutgers include alternative views of the town’s main streets, plus a more distant vista, from an elevated viewpoint (fig. 1). Again, Rutgers eschews the most obvious views, such as that of the grand, semi-ruined gatehouse of the castle, in favour of a more immediate and personal depiction.

1. The Journal of Willem Schellinks’ Travels in England 1661-1663, transl. and ed. M. Exwood & H.L. Lehmann, London 1993