Abraham Bloemaert

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. 10

Our understanding of Bloemaert’s work as a landscape draughtsman is underpinned by an important group of some 65 drawings in the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett, known as the ‘Berlin Album group’.¹ Almost all the sheets associated with this ‘Album’ (which may never have been a bound album, rather than simply a portfolio of similar drawings) are slightly smaller than the present drawing (circa 145 x 185 mm), but a few are similar in size. What is typical is the rather affectionate studying of very ordinary, yet very special, small details of the rural landscape, and the extensive use of delicate coloured washes, over an initial drawing in pen and ink that is itself over indications in black chalk. Also typical is the presence of a second, much slighter landscape study on the reverse of the sheet.

Given his interest in the concept of creating pattern books and drawing manuals for teaching purposes and studio use alike, it is not surprising that the individual motifs that we find in Bloemaert’s very attractive landscape studies of this type recur, both with and without variations, in other drawings and in finished paintings. The dilapidated buildings seen here are of a type that is found in quite a number of Bloemaert’s drawings. They are very similar to those in a somewhat larger drawing, dated 1650, in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg.²

¹ J. Bolten, Abraham Bloemaert, The Drawings, 2 vols., Leiden 2007, nos. 1336-1400

² Inv. 18 349; Bolten, op. cit., no. 1634