- 180
Thomas Wyck
Description
- Thomas Wyck
- An Italian Courtyard with a gateway and seated Figure
- Brush and gray wash over indications in black chalk;
bears various inscriptions in pen and brown ink, verso, mostly illegible, but including the word Pynacker, and inscription in red chalk: W....m
Provenance
Count Gregory Sergeyevitch Strogonoff (L.550);
bears another unidentified collector's mark (not in Lugt);
sale, Amsterdam, Christie's, 14 November 1988, lot 132 (purchased by the present owner)
Catalogue Note
Wyck's early drawings betray very clearly his apprenticeship with Adriaen van Ostade in Haarlem. Soon after this he seems, however, to have travelled to Italy, spending part or all of the time between 1644 and 1653 there, and rapidly developing a more typically "Dutch Italianate" style of drawing. The influence of Jan Asselijn becomes very apparent, although Wyck tended to apply his washes in a broader, flatter manner, and was also less theatrical in the way he chose to capture the intense Italian sunlight. He was particularly fond of enclosed compositions such as this (often including the motif of a large arch at the top), but the charming detail of the artist sketching in the shade of the loggia to the right is unusual in his work. Several similarly executed drawings are in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.1
1. See P. Schatborn, Drawn to Warmth, 17th-century Dutch artists in Italy, Amsterdam 2001, pp. 117-123