- 155
Jacob Cats
Estimate
4,000 - 6,000 USD
Log in to view results
bidding is closed
Description
- Jacob Cats
- Winter scene with a swineherd on a village street
- Brush and gray and brown wash over black chalk, within brown ink framing lines;
numbered by the artist and signed and dated in brown ink, verso: N 612 / J: Cats fec 1792
Catalogue Note
The numbering on the reverse of this drawing, which is in Cats' own hand, is of particular interest. As has been described in two fascinating articles, the first by Jane Shoaf Turner1 and the second by Leslie A Schwarz,2 somewhere between a quarter and a third of Cats' known drawings bear such numbers, and these are predominantly small-scale studies or relatively free monochrome sketches, rather than the artist's most elaborate and highly-finished works. Turner suggests that the numbered drawings may have formed part of some kind of pattern-book, from which clients would select compositions and motifs to be worked up into finished drawings and watercolors.
A fully colored version of this drawing, also dated 1792 and with only minor compositional differences, was sold at Sotheby's in London on 14 December 1992 (lot 25).
1. J.S. Turner, 'Jacob Cats and the Identification of a "Pseudo-Goll van Franckenstein" Numbering System', in Master Drawings, XXVIII, no. 3 (Autumn 1990), pp. 323-331.
2. Leslie A. Schwarz, 'The 'Thoughts' ('Gedagten') of Jacob Cats (1741-1799). Inscriptions on the numbered drawings of a prolific eighteenth-century draughtsman. An addition to the list of Jane Shoaf Turner (1990),' in Delineavit et Sculpsit, 31 (December 2007), pp. 57-77
A fully colored version of this drawing, also dated 1792 and with only minor compositional differences, was sold at Sotheby's in London on 14 December 1992 (lot 25).
1. J.S. Turner, 'Jacob Cats and the Identification of a "Pseudo-Goll van Franckenstein" Numbering System', in Master Drawings, XXVIII, no. 3 (Autumn 1990), pp. 323-331.
2. Leslie A. Schwarz, 'The 'Thoughts' ('Gedagten') of Jacob Cats (1741-1799). Inscriptions on the numbered drawings of a prolific eighteenth-century draughtsman. An addition to the list of Jane Shoaf Turner (1990),' in Delineavit et Sculpsit, 31 (December 2007), pp. 57-77