Master Works on Paper from Five Centuries

Albert Flamen

A view of Paris, looking towards Montmartre

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July 6, 10:38 AM GMT

Estimation

5,000 - 7,000 GBP

Description du lot

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Description

Albert Flamen

Bruges circa 1620 - after 1693 Paris

A view of Paris, looking towards Montmartre

Pen and brown ink and brown and grey wash;

inscribed in brown ink, lower centre: Veue de ...... le faulx bourg St. Martin, .... les ... faulx bourg / St. Denis, ... St. Martin, vers Montmartre.

bears old attribution in brown ink, lower right: Le clerc fecit.

100 by 207 mm

Marquis Charles-Philippe de Chennevières (1820-1899), Paris (L.2072),
his sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 4-7 April 1900, lot 288 (with another; as Sébastien Leclerc);
sale, London, Sotheby's, 8 July 1998, lot 62 (as Sébastien Leclerc);
with Thomas Le Claire, Hamburg

L.-A. Prat, with L. Lhinares, La collection Chennevières, Quatre siècles de dessins français, Paris 2007, pp. 412, 707, no. 742, reproduced (as Sébastien Leclerc, location unknown)

Musée d'Alençon, Dessins de la Collection du M. Chennevières-Pointel, 1857, no.91

Though a native of Bruges, Flamen was in Paris by 1636, and remained in or near the French capital for the rest of his life. He was mainly active as a draughtsman of animals, fish and landscapes, many of which were engraved by Jacques van Merle. Although many of Flamen's landscape drawings are more painstakingly executed and finished, a sketchbook now in Berlin¹ contains 86 pages of rapid landscape sketches that are similar in their spontaneity to this very appealing, early view of the famous 'artists' quarter' of Paris. The way in which the artist has here combined fine pen lines with broad grey washes can also be compared with signed drawings by Flamen, such as Ducks Surprised by a Dog, or View of a town on a river, both on the art market some years ago.²

1. Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, inv.nr. KdZ 79 C 1

2. Respectively, sale, Amsterdam, Christie's, 13 November 1995, lot 78, and sale New York, Sotheby's, 23 January 2001, lot 133