Tobias Verhaecht

Charles Paul Jean-Baptiste de Bourgevin Vialart, Comte de Saint-Morys (1743-1795), Paris and London (L.474);

Prince Wladimir Argoutinsky-Dolgoroukoff (1874-1941), St. Petersburg and Paris (L.2602d);

Prof. Dr. Einar Perman, Stockholm;

With Gebr. Douwes Fine Art, Amsterdam, after 1958

W. Bernt, Die Niederländischen Zeichner des 17. Jahrhunderts, Munich 1958, vol. II, no. 622, reproduced

Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, Dutch and Flemish Drawings in the Nationalmuseum and other Swedish Collections, 1953, no. 63, pl. 14;

Laren, Singer Museum, Oude Tekeningen uit de Nederlanden, Verzameling Prof. E. Perman, Stockholm, 1962, no. 123, pl. 9;

Brussels, Société Générale de Banque, Dessins du XV^e au XVIII^e siècle dans les collections privées de Belgique, 1983, no. 23

This grand composition was clearly one of which Verhaecht was rightly proud; it is known not only from the present drawing, one of Verhaecht's most impressive, and another, weaker version, without staffage, in the Museum Plantin Moretus, Antwerp¹, but also in several paintings, of which the most accomplished appears to be the signed and dated canvas of 1609, in the Herzog-Anton-Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig (fig. 1). In each of these versions, the artist has inserted different biblical subjects; in the Braunschweig canvas, for example, the subject is The Parting of Abraham and Lot. 

Tobias Verhaecht is one of the most distinctive of all the Flemish landscape draughtsmen of the late 16th and early 17th century. His compositions in some ways reflect the influence of contemporaries such as Joos de Momper, but Verhaecht's characteristic, rhythmic and angular penwork is all his own.

¹ Inv. PK.OT.00100 (as a copy)