Old Master Day Sale including Old Master Paintings, Drawings and British Works on Paper
Old Master Day Sale including Old Master Paintings, Drawings and British Works on Paper
Property from a New York Private Collection
JORIS VAN DER HAAGEN | WOODLAND SCENE IN THE 'HAAGSE BOS', WITH A SEATED FIGURE
Lot Closed
July 29, 02:05 PM GMT
Estimate
4,000 - 6,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Property from a New York Private Collection
JORIS VAN DER HAAGEN
Dordrecht circa 1615 - 1669 The Hague
WOODLAND SCENE IN THE 'HAAGSE BOS', WITH A SEATED FIGURE
Point of the brush and grey wash over traces of black chalk, heightened with white, on blue paper, within brown ink framing lines;
bears old attribution and numbering in black chalk, verso: Vanderhagen 16 F 6 Sc/L-x TVo (?)
unframed: 223 by 271 mm
framed: 495 by 530 mm
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Dr. W. van Dalfsen, from whose estate sold, Amsterdam, Sotheby Mak van Waay, 18 November 1985, lot 53 (reproduced p. 74);
with Richard Day, Ltd., London
After growing up in Arnhem, Van der Haagen moved to The Hague in 1640, and lived there until his death. Although he did return regularly to the lower Rhine region, and made some of his most memorable panoramic drawings of views in that area, he also made a number of very fine and atmospheric drawings in the Haagse Bos, the last remaining section of the great forests that stretched in medieval times from The Hague as far as Haarlem, which were used from the thirteenth century on as a royal hunting park.
An act of 1576 decreed that the woods, by then rather reduced in size, could not be sold or cut down, and ever since then the Haagse Bos has been a popular and freely accessible area, widely used by local residents for a variety of recreational purposes. Van der Haagen was not the only artist of his time to find inspiration in these dense and ancient woodlands; Jan Lievens and Jan de Bisschop, to name only two, produced some of their most appealing drawings there.
Some eighteen drawings by Van der Haagen of views in the Haagse Bos are known, the great majority of them on blue paper, and all stylistic and compositional indicators point to this being another sheet from the same series. The dating of these drawings has been discussed One example, in the Frits Lugt Collection, is clearly dated in the 1640s (the last number in the date could be either a 4 or a 7), but the others are mostly thought to date from last 15 or so years of the artist's life.1
1. Paris, Fondation Custodia, Frits Lugt Collection, inv. no. 9043; see C. van Hasselt, Dessins de Paysagistes Hollandais du XVIIe Siècle, exh. cat., Brussels/Rotterdam/Paris/Berne, 1968-69, p. 74, cat. 72, reproduced vol. II, pl. 133