Gerrit Battem

Possibly Louis Fabritius Dubourg (1693 - 1775), Amsterdam,
his posthumous sale, Amsterdam, R. Steenberger, Ph. van der Schley, J. de Bosch, C. Ploos van Amstel, H. de Winter and J. Yver, 15 January 1776, kunstboek G, nr. 82;
Van den Brande collection, Middelburg;
by descent to E.C. Baron van Pallandt, his sale, Amsterdam, Mak van Waay, 26 September 1972, lot 274

Window mounted. One or two very small stains and losses, but overall condition extremely good and fresh.
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Battem is best known for his highly original and decorative landscape gouaches, which survive in considerable numbers, but he also made a few monochrome gouaches heightened with white, representing religious subjects, which, like many of the artist's landscapes, have few direct stylistic parallels in the work of other 17th-century Dutch artists.  Including the present example, 14 such works are currently known, of which all but two depict subjects from the New Testament.  Three others, showing The Crucifixion, The Adoration of the Shepherds, and Christ and the Woman of Samaria, were until 1972 together with the present drawing in the famous Van Pallandt collection¹, where they had presumably been since the 18th century, but despite this shared provenance it does not seem that they can have been part of a series, as their subjects and formats are too diverse.   The Van Pallandt collection contained a remarkable group of magnificently preserved Dutch drawings, mostly from the second half of the 17th and the 18th centuries.²

Though Battem's technique in these religious gouaches was very unusual, his compositions draw heavily on prints by other artists, in particular various Rembrandt etchings of the mid-1650s. It therefore seems reasonable to date these works to the second half of the 1650s, when Battem seems to have been living in Amsterdam.  A secondary influence on Battem's religious compositions of this type was that of Adam Elsheimer (again probably through the medium of prints by Hendrik Goudt after Elsheimer's paintings), although Elsheimer's impact on Battem's style is perhaps most readily apparent in some of the latter's landscapes.³

1.  Sale, Amsterdam, Mak van Waay, 26 September 1972, lots 273, 275, 276.  The Adoration of the Shepherds subsequently in the Unicorno Collection, sold, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 19 May 2004, lot 111. 
2.  For information on the Van Pallandt provenance, see Robert-Jan te Rijdt in Kleur en Raffiniement, Tekeningen uit de Unicorno Collectie, exh. cat., Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis, and Dordrechts Museum, 1994-5, under no. 38
3. See K. Andrews, "Ein Rotterdamer Maler und Radierer geringer Ordnung", in: Essays in Northern European Art Presented to Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann on his Sixtieth Birthday (ed. A.-M. Logan), Doornspijk 1983, pp. 25-27