ABRAHAM BLOEMAERT | Study of a female figure, three-quarter length

Acquis à Bordeaux, commerce d'art, janvier 1972

Rennes, 2012, n°28 (notice par Jaap Bolten)

J. Bolten, 'The Drawings of Abraham Bloemaert, a Supplement,' Master Drawings, vol.55, n°1, 2017, pp.68-9, n°A24*, fig.204

When Jaap Bolten published his immense, two-volume 2007 catalogue of the drawings of Bloemaert, this visually delightful and highly characteristic figure study by Bloemaert was only known through another version of the central part of the image, which passed through the New York art market in 2003.^1.  As Bolten rightly points out, however, in the recently published supplement to his catalogue (see Literature), the Adrien collection drawing is not only more extensive in composition, but also rather subtler and more refined in execution, suggesting that it is surely the primary version.   

Throughout the course of his long and productive career, Bloemaert made studies like this, depicting motifs such as heads, hands and feet as well as more complete figures like this one, drawings which he amassed in albums in his studio, to serve as a repertory of figures, poses and details for use in his paintings and those of his students.  Bloemaert's drawings of this type are generally executed in red, or occasionally black, chalk, heightened with white.

Around 1650, Bloemaert’s son Frederik embarked on a large series of engravings based on these drawings by his father, which were published, under the title Konstryk Tekenboek ('Artful Drawing Book’), for wider use by artists as a model-book and learning tool.  The Bloemaert Tekenboek was perhaps the most influential of all the various drawing-books and artists’ manuals published in 17^th and 18^th-century Holland.² 

Rather than copying his father's drawings directly when making his prints, Federick Bloemaert seems generally to have selected individual motifs from various sheets to appear alone or in different combinations in the prints.  The figure seen here does not appear in identical form in any of the Tekenboek prints, nor, for that matter, in any known painting by Bloemaert, but she is a type that is extremely familiar from his works in all media, and indeed the actual model who here poses so pensively for Bloemaert’s skilful study, also appears in several other drawings by the artist.³ 

^1.  J. Bolten, Abraham Bloemaert c.1565-1651, The Drawings, Leiden 2007, vol. I, p. 493, no. A1, reproduced vol. II, p.496; sold, new York, Sotheby’s, 21 January 2003, lot 148

^2.  J. Bolten, Method and Practice, Dutch and Flemish Drawing Books 1600-1750, Landau, Pfalz, 1985

^3.  Bolten, op. cit., 2007, nos. 834, 838, 1235