- 129
Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne
Description
- Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne
- A quack dentist removing a tooth from a seated woman
- Black chalk, pen and brown ink and grey wash, within brown ink framing lines, indented for transfer;
signed with initials: ...V
Provenance
sale, Amsterdam, Christie's, 13 November 1995, lot 154;
sale, New York, Christie's, 24 January 2004, lot 123 (purchased by the present owner)
Catalogue Note
In reverse, by an anonymous engraver, as an illustration to Jacob Cats, Ouderdom, Buyten-leven en Hofgedachten, op Sorgh-vliet, Invallende Gedachten, Amsterdam 1656, p. 86.1 (An impression of the print is sold with the drawing)
The moralising poetry of Jacob Cats provided Adriaen van de Venne with an immensely rich vein of source material for his illustrations. Though one expressed it in words and the other in images, both men possessed a rare combination of wit, humour and insight into the human condition, and the collaboration between the two resulted in the publication of a series of the most delightful, imaginative and often just plain funny, illustrated books of the period. Other drawings by the artist, preparatory studies for illustrations to the same publication, are in the Prentenkabinet of the Rijksuniversiteit, Leiden, and at the Teylers Museum, Haarlem.2
1. F.W.H. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts c.1450-1700, vol. XXXV, Roosendaal 1990, p. 126, no. 381
2. The studies for Hollstein, op. cit., nos. 353-4, 359, 366, 372, 379, 382 and 389