Joost Cornelisz. Droochsloot

Anonymous sale, New York, Christie's, 18 January 1984, lot 154.

 

 

The actual painting is slightly softer and less red in tone than the catalogue illustration suggests. The canvas is relined (glue). The paint surface seems to be in very good condition, with all of the details nicely preserved. No major damages are apparent. The canvas has a slightly dirty varnish layer and a fine craquelure pattern. Inspection under ultra violet light reveals tiny scattered retouchings throughout, e.g. in the sky, in the figures and in some of the houses. Offered in a decorative plaster gilt wood frame, in good condition, small repaired damages. (ML/SB)
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Jan Campo Weyerman, a 18th-Century Dutch biographer of artists' lives, wrote the following about Droochsloot : 'He painted peasant carnivals whose villages one knows by their churches and towers, with rows of houses on both sides, with market stalls for sweets, with beggars and other carnival guests. As his name suggests, one called him Droog sloot (literary; dry creek), and he painted dry images, which all seem to be of the same kind.'¹ Slightly harsh in his conclusion, we now know that Droochsloot actually painted a variety of subjects, even self portraits (see lot 69 of this sale).

A beautiful example of the typical choice of composition which Joost Cornelisz. Droochsloot used for his broad, almost panoramic, street scenes, is shown with a Flemish narrative through the figures. The oeuvre of Droochsloot is unthinkable without thinking of Flemish art. One might almost think he enjoyed his artistic training in Antwerp. It is for this Flemish influence that Droochsloot stood apart from his contempories in 17th-Century Utrecht.

1. See J.C. Weyerman, De Levens-Beschryvingen der Nederlandsche Konst-Schilders en Konst-Schilderessen, vol. 3, The Hague 1729, p. 133.