Anthonie van Borssum

Jhr. Johann Goll van Franckenstein (1722-1785), Amsterdam (with his variant numbering, without the letter N; L.2987)   

Oscar Huldschinsky (1846-1931), Berlin,

his estate sale, Berlin, Paul Graupe, 3 November 1931, lot 18;

Dr. Einar Perman (1893-1976), Stockholm,

by descent to the present owners

W. Schulz, Lambert Doomer, Sämtliche Zeichnungen, Berlin 1974, p. 86, under cat. 198;

W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, vol. 2, New York 1979, pp. 648-9, no. 302

Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, Dutch and Flemish Drawings in the Nationalmuseum and other Swedish Collections, 1953, cat. 259;

Laren, Singer Museum, Oude Tekeningen uit de Nederlanden. Verzameling Prof. E. Perman, Stockholm, 1962, cat. 16

Although Rembrandt was interested, at least early in his career, in the coloristic aspects of combinations of red and black chalk and grey wash, he seems never to have used watercolor in any of his drawings. The medium was, though, adopted by at least two of his most able followers, Philips Koninck and Anthonie van Borssom, and although neither artist made large numbers of watercolors, their colored drawings of this type include some of their most accomplished and poetic landscapes. As we see in the present work – one of the very finest of Van Borssom’s watercolors – these drawings sometimes achieve a splendid combination of the sense of limitless space and ever-present weather typical of so many of Rembrandt’s landscapes, and the more pictorial completeness of a ‘finished’ watercolor.  

In the case of Van Borssom, most of his large-scale watercolors, including this one, seem to depict locations in the Lower Rhine valley, near the German border – a region much favoured by Dutch landscape artists for its gently sweeping vistas towards picturesque distant towns and villages. Wolfgang Schulz suggested that this drawing shows a location in the vicinity of Elten (see Literature), and the church seen in the centre does indeed look very much like that of the village of Niederelten. Borssom also made a panoramic painted view in the same area, which is now in Düsseldorf.¹ 

The few other known watercolors by Borssom that are comparable in spirit to the Perman drawing are almost all in museum collections: these include the Panoramic View from the Tafelberg near Rhenen, with an Elegant Party, in the Metropolitan Museum², and the Rijksmuseum’s Windmill by Water.³ The only drawing by the artist of similar quality to appear on the market in recent decades was the very sparsely drawn, Rembrandtesque View of a broad river with boats, animals grazing on the land, sold in 2000 and now in the Peck Collection⁴, but no watercolor of comparable standing has been offered for sale in a generation.    

1. Düsseldorf, Kunstsammlungen, inv. 121

2. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 2005.418.5

3. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. RP-T-1884-A-286

4. Sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 26 January 2000, lot 30; Chapel Hill, NC, The Ackland Art Museum, inv. 2017.1.10..