Pieter Stevens

Rugged river landscape with a ruined castle

Auction Closed

January 31, 05:59 PM GMT

Estimate

12,000 - 18,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Pieter Stevens

Mechelen (?) circa 1567 - after 1624 Prague (?)

Rugged river landscape with a ruined castle

Pen and brown ink and brown and blue wash over traces of black chalk

170 by 283 mm; 6 ¾ by 11 ⅛ in.

Heinrich Wilhelm Campe (1770-1862), Leipzig (L.1391);
Dr. Einar Perman (1893-1976), Stockholm,
by descent to the present owners

Laren, Singer Museum, Oude Tekeningen uit de Nederlanden. Verzameling Prof. E. Perman, Stockholm, 1962, cat. 106

Though this drawing must date, like lot 105, from Pieter Stevens' time working at the Prague court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II, it reflects rather more the artist's earlier experiences in Rome, and the drawings that he made there. The handling is slightly more measured than in the other sheet, and although the landscape is still extremely rugged, in the background there are numerous ruins, reminiscent of the monuments of ancient Rome. The palette too is more restrained and poetic.

Perhaps paradoxically, Stevens seems to have turned to this approach in his drawings only fairly late in his career, after around 1604, maybe as a result of Jan Brueghel the Elder's visit to Prague in that year. A very comparable drawing by Stevens is in the Fentener Van Vlissingen Collection.¹

1. Home and Abroad. Dutch and Flemish Landscape Drawings from the John and Marine van Vlissingen Art Foundation, exh. cat., Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, and Paris, Fondation Custodia, 2015-16, pp. 40-41, cat. 11