Arent van Bolten

Sale, West Norwood, Rosebery's, 14 June 2011, lot 775 (as Follower of Pietro Tacca)

A highly individual, even eccentric, draughtsman and silversmith, Arent van Bolten is a fascinating figure, whose drawing style links the early Dutch Mannerism of artists such as Cornelis van Haarlem and Hendrick Goltzius with earlier Netherlandish traditions of fantasy and diablerie, going all the way back to Hieronimus Bosch. Born in the provincial centre of Zwolle, Van Bolten does not seem to have worked in any of the leading Dutch cities, but is known to have travelled to Italy; he is documented in Rome in 1596 and 1602, and probably also visited Venice and Florence.

In the realm of his decorative and sculptural designs, his work reflects the sinuous, decorative strapwork of late 16th-century Netherlandish designers, while also introducing some elements that he must have seen on his Southern travels, resulting in a very original ornamental vocabulary that played an important part in the emergence of the so-called auricular style, so popular in early 17th-century Holland, and recently celebrated in a major exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.¹

Although Van Bolten was extremely influential, and was blessed both with great gifts as a draughtsman and with a highly original and creative mind, much remains to be discovered regarding his life and work. This may partly be due to the fact that he spent most of his life in Zwolle, and is also perhaps because almost all of his known drawings have remained together in a single album of 425 studies, now in the British Museum.² Otherwise, a mere handful of drawings are known, scattered between European and American collections.³

The drawings in the London album, which are thought to have been executed between around 1595 and 1603, are immensely varied in type, ranging from highly important and original designs for metalwork and ornament through genre subjects, religious studies, and scenes of diablerie.

^1. KWAB. Ornament as Art in the Age of Rembrandt, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 2018

^2. London, British Museum, inv. SL,5217.1-424. For further information on the artist and the album, see Dawn of the Golden Age, exh. cat., Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 1993-4, pp. 301-2, 408-12

^3. For example the two studies in New York, one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 1997.376), the other at the Morgan Library and Museum (inv. 2010.148), and two in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. RP-T-1887-A-1161 and RP-T-1988-108)