Dirck Helmbreeker

Clifford Duits

Window mounted on an old mount (probably 18th century). Some very light staining, foxing and surface dirt. One or two small, darker stains towards bottom left. Chalk generally in very good, fresh condition.
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The very rare red chalk figure studies of Dirck Helmbreeker, to which this newly identified sheet is an important addition, are among the most accomplished and exciting of all 17^th-century Dutch figure drawings.  Ever since the end of the 16th century, Haarlem had been a centre with a distinguished tradition of figure drawing.  The leading masters of the early moment, circa 1600, were Hendrick Goltzius and Cornelis van Haarlem, but in the middle of the century too several Haarlem artists made outstanding figure drawings, notably Cornelis Bega, the amateur Leendert van der Cooghen, and the rather enigmatic Dirck Helmbreeker.  Of these the most idiosyncratic, and in many ways most talented and interesting, draughtsman was Helmbreeker, whose red chalk drawing technique is a fascinating combination of great refinement and considerable boldness. 

The refinement of Helmbreeker’s technique is surely largely due to the sizeable proportion of his life that he spent in Italy. Having studied in Haarlem with Pieter de Grebber, Helmbreeker set off in 1653, together with fellow artists Cornelis Bega, Vincent Laurensz. van der Vinne and Guillam Dubois, travelling through Germany and Switzerland to Italy.  By 1659 he had settled in Rome.  Around 1675 he went back to Holland, then to Paris, but from 1681 until his death he was again in Italy, working in Turin, Florence and Rome.   

Although quite a number of paintings by Helmbreeker are known, extremely few drawings by his hand have so far been identified. Within this very small corpus, one of the most comparable drawings to this newly identified head study is the Study of the Head of a Girl in a Headscarf, in Munich,¹ which is proudly signed ‘T. Helmbreecker oland’, the T signifying ‘Teodoro’, the Italian form of ‘Dirck’, and ‘oland’ being short for Olandese (‘Dutch’, in Italian).  Further emphasising the Italian connection, the present drawing was even attributed to Guido Reni by an 18^th or early 19^th-century collector – a confusion that would be far less likely in the case of a drawing by one of Helmbreeker’s Haarlem contemporaries. 

Yet alongside this great Italianate refinement in modelling and handling, Helmbreeker’s drawing style is also characterised by a robust, almost eccentric firmness, and this, together with his tendency to show his subjects in unusual, striking poses, gives his very rare red chalk drawings a unique and distinctive force. Good illustrations of these qualities are the famous self-portrait in Washington,² and the early, double-sided study sheet in the Getty Museum.³  More specifically, the unusual pose and viewpoint seen in the present drawing are also to be found in a full-length study of boy seated at a table, formerly in the collection of Hans van Leeuwen.⁴  Perhaps closest of all, though, in the way it combines all of these features and qualities, is the portrait study of a boy in a soft cap, perhaps a self-portrait, seen almost in profile, in the British Museum.⁵

Helmbreeker was an accomplished and fascinating draughtsman whose works are extremely rare, and the attribution to him of this fine study, which has been endorsed by all the leading specialists in the field, is therefore of considerable significance.

^1.  Munich, Staatlichen Graphischen Sammlung, inv. 1965; see W. Wegner, Kataloge der Staatlichen Graphischen Sammlung München, Die Niederlänischen Handzeichnungen des 15.-18. Jahrhunderts, 2 vols., Berlin 1973, vol. I, p. 89, no. 619, reproduced vol. II, pl. 262

^2.  Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, inv. 1982.38.1; see The Glory of the Golden Age exh. cat., Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 2000, no. 86, pp. 112-114, 148

^3.  Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, inv. 91.GB.67; see N. Turner, L. Hendrix, C. Plazzotta, European Drawings. 3. Catalogue of the Collections, Los Angeles, 1997, pp. 210-11, no. 85

^4.  Sold, Amsterdam, Christie’s, 24 November 1992, lot 100

^5.  London, British Museum, inv. 1895,0915.1177