Dirck de Vries

Paper slightly faded, and a little browned at extreme edges. Drawing seems to have been laid down at some stage, and subsequently removed from the backing: the surface of the sheet is somewhat uneven, and there are tiny traces of old backing still adhering to verso in a number of places, as well as three larger pieces of backing still stuck to sheet at top edge (left, centre and right). Light brown stains at these three places along top edge also visible on the front of the sheet, and a number of smaller, very light brown stains in various places.
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The very small group of drawings that has been convincingly attributed to Dirck de Vries centres on a single drawing of a domestic interior, formerly with C.G. Boerner in Düsseldorf,¹ which is not only inscribed with a dedicatory verse, but is also fully signed and dated: Dirck de Vrijes. Venetiae / adi 6 ottobry a^o 1590.  The extraordinary drawn portrait of de Vries by Goltzius² was also made in Venice in 1590, but little else is known about the artist's life, and no other signed drawings have survived.  It seems, though, that he may still have been in Venice in 1592, as the very precise date inscribed on a drawing of A Woman teaching a boy to read, in Oxford, incorporates the Venetian form of the word for Thursday ('1592 adi 21 magio il gioba della ottava della pentacosta a ho. 14 sonade e mezza').³ In paintings, the artist concentrated on still-lifes and domestic scenes, and the latter provided the subjects for most of his known drawings. 

Stylistically, the unique, signed drawing and the analogous sheet in Oxford are the closest to the present work of the group so far attributed to de Vries, although the drawing of A Woman Washing Dishes, formerly in the collection of Lord Methuen at Corsham Court is also in some ways comparable.⁴  Given its blue paper support, this intriguing drawing may well date from the artist's Venetian period.

1.  Weinachtsausstellung alte Handzeichnungen vor 1880, December 1967 (lagerliste 47), no. 34, pl. 17
2.  Haarlem, Teylers Museum, inv. N.73; E.K.J. Reznicek, Die Zeichnungen von Hendrick Goltzius, Utrecht 1961, no. 287, pl. 140
3.  K.T. Parker, 'Dirck de Vries,' Old Master Drawings, vol.9, no. 35, December 1934, pp. 52-3, pl. 52
4.  Sold, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 15 November 1983, lot 213.  Other drawings given to the artist are in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. 59:291); the de Boer Collection; and two others sold, Amsterdam, Sotheby Mak van Waay, 9 June 1975, lot 53 and 11 November 1997, lot 24