Aert Schouman

Sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby Mak van Waay, 18 May 1981, lot 221,

where purchased by A.M. ('Ton') van den Broek (1932-1995), Haarlem (bears his mark, verso, not in Lugt)

In his 1991 monograph on the artist, Laurens Bol made the startling observation that although watercolors of birds and animals by Schouman survive in considerable numbers, hardly thirty botanical watercolors are known today.¹ This disparity seemed particularly surprising given that the 1792 sale of the artist's studio estate had contained no fewer than 268 such works.² As Paul Knolle and Ruud Vlek pointed out, however, in the catalogue of the recent, encyclopaedic exhibition of Schouman’s work, held in Dordrecht in 2017, Bol was unaware of an album of 62 botanical watercolors by the artist, formerly in the Fairhaven Collection and now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.³

Schouman seems to have started to make these botanical watercolors around 1740, and initially represented his subjects not within a landscape setting, but drawn on a blank background, following the earlier, more scientific tradition of artists such as Maria Sibylla Merian or Herman Saftleven.  In its extraordinarily fresh condition and rich colorism, this is a definitive example of Schouman's mastery of the watercolor medium. 

The only other major botanical watercolor by Schouman to come on the market in recent times is the superb Bergamot Plant, formerly in the collection of Saam and Lily Nijstad, and acquired at their sale in 2004 by the Rijksmuseum.⁴  

1. L.J. Bol, Aart Schouman; Ingenious Painter and Draughtsman, Doornspijk 1991, p.77

2. Sale, 's-Gravenhage, Scheurleer, 10-11 December 1792, lots 477-488

3. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, inv. PD.127-1973; Een koninklijk paradijs. Aert Schouman en de verbeelding van de natuur, exh. cat., Dordrechts Museum, 2017, p.254

4. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. RP-T-2004-104; sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, The Unicorno Collection, 19 May 2004, lot 209