CORNELIS PIETERSZ. BEGA | STUDY OF A SEATED WOMAN, SEEN FROM THE SIDE

Sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 4 November 2003, lot 75

The use of black and white chalk on blue paper, the concentration on effects of light and shade, and the contrast between carefully worked and more cursorily delineated parts of the same figure, are all characteristics of Bega's distinctive graphic style. Unlike many of his contemporaries such as Jacob Backer, Govert Flinck and Jacob van Loo, Bega was not interested in nude studies, due in part to the fact that his painted oeuvre focused predominantly on interiors, making drapery and the fall of light his main priority – something clearly reflected in his drawings.

Though it was previously noted that his drawn figure studies are very similar to those in both his etchings and paintings, it was long thought that none of Bega's known drawings were direct preliminary studies.¹ As Peter van den Brink, however, noted in his 2012 catalogue entry for the present drawing (see Exhibited), the drawn figure in fact corresponds precisely with the seated woman in a small oil by Bega of an Interior with a woman holding a wine glass (fig.1).² Baukje Coenen, writing in the 2012 Aachen/Berlin exhibition catalogue³, has described in more detail Bega's career as a draughtsman, and use of preparatory drawings for his paintings, and identified, for example, another drawing, in Antwerp, as a direct preparatory study for the seated figure in Bega's painting of 1663, The Alchemist, gifted by Ethel and Martin Wunsch to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., in 2013.⁴  

1. See P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the seventeenth century, exhib. cat., Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, and Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, 1981-82, p. 105

2. Van den Brink et al, exh. cat., op.cit., 2012, pp. 156-7, no. 31, reproduced

3.  B. Coenen, 'Experimentierfreudig und Versiert: Cornelis Bega als Zeichner und Grafiker,' in Cornelis Bega. Eleganz und raue Sitten, exh. cat., op. cit., 2012, pp. 41-59.

4. Van den Brink et al, exh. cat., op.cit., 2012, pp. 241-3, no. 69, reproduced