Valentijn Klotz

Soldiers crossing a weir by a watermill, near Mons

Lot Closed

January 25, 09:00 PM GMT

Estimate

3,000 - 5,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Valentijn Klotz

Maastricht circa 1650 - circa 1716

Soldiers crossing a weir by a watermill, near Mons

Inscribed upper center (largely erased), and verso: Le pont d'yon proche de monts / le 8/16 1674, and bears Jacob Helmolt numbering in brown ink, verso: N^o- 726;

pen and brown ink and grey wash, within pen and brown ink framing lines

153 by 202 mm; 6 by 8 in.

Jacob Helmolt (1747-1808), Haarlem (L.2986b);
sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 18 November 1985, lot 87,
where purchased by A.M. ('Ton') van den Broek (1932-1995), Haarlem (bears his collector's mark, verso, not in Lugt)

Another view by Klotz bearing the same date and showing more of the mill to the left was with Henk Stokking, Amsterdam, in 1981-2. A different view, inscribed bij Mons of Bergen in Henegouw, and also bearing the same date as the present sheet, is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, as Attributed to Josua de Grave.¹

Together with De Grave, Klotz saw military service in the army of the Stadtholder-King William III of Orange, accompanying him on his campaigns against the French in the Southern Netherlands in 1672-76. Both artists made numerous drawings of the towns, landscapes and military events that they witnessed during these years, and their works are sometimes hard to separate, as both inscribed and dated their drawings in exactly the same way. There is, however, a certain freedom of line, seen here, that seems more characteristic of Klotz's style.