Allaert van EVERDINGEN

(Alkmaar 1621 - Amsterdam 1675)

A Wooded Landscape, with Traveller on a Path at the Right and a Church and City in the Distance

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Brush and black ink and grey wash, on grey-blue paper, faded to brown, with framing lines in brown ink.
Signed with initials AVE at the lower right.
inscribed Allert van Everdingen / Landschaft in pencil and Everdingen on the verso.
96 x 217 mm. (3 3/4 x 8 3/8 in.)
The present sheet belongs with a group of autonomous landscape drawings in grey ink and wash by Everdingen, of which Alice Davies lists ninety-six examples in her catalogue raisonné of the artist’s drawings.



The first recorded owner of this drawing was the 19th century Nuremberg art dealer Johann Andreas Boerner (1785-1862), who inscribed the verso of the sheet with the date 1841, which is presumably when he acquired the drawing. The drawing later belonged successively to the noted German collectors F. Heimsoth (died 1879 or earlier) in Bonn, Dr. August Sträter (1810-1897) in Aachen and Rudolf Philip Goldschmidt (c.1840-1914) in Berlin and Frankfurt, before coming into the possession of the collection of the Czech lawyer and collector Dr. Arthur Feldmann (1877-1941). Feldmann began collecting drawings around 1922, and by 1939 owned about eight hundred sheets, mainly Central European drawings of the late 16th and 17th centuries. The collection was confiscated by the Gestapo in March 1939, and only a portion of the drawings have come to light since the Second World War. 135 drawings from the collection were acquired by the museum in Brno in 1942, and were eventually restituted to the Feldmann heirs in 2003. Five of these drawings were purchased in 2004 by the Czech government for the Moravian Gallery in Brno, and several others were dispersed at auction. In the past few years, thirty drawings from the Feldmann collection have been presented to the Albertina in Vienna by his grandson.







Allaert van Everdingen was a pupil of Roelandt Savery in Utrecht and Pieter Molijn in Haarlem, where he entered the guild as an independent master in 1645. Very little is known of his life, apart from a trip to Norway and Sweden around 1643-1644 that was to be of considerable influence on his work. His itinerary on this trip, which can be vaguely reconstructed from inscriptions on the handful of actual topographical drawings that survive, seems to have taken him along the south coast of Norway, near the ports of Risör and Langeshund, and in the area of Gothenburg and the Bothusland province of western Sweden. Although it has occasionally been suggested that Everdingen made a second trip to Scandinavia in around 1660, there is in fact no evidence for this. Nevertheless, the artist continued to be inspired by the rugged, mountainous Nordic scenery long after his return to Haarlem. He produced a large number of landscape drawings of such scenes from memory, replete with pine forests, rustic wooden huts and waterfalls; these were to be a particular influence on the work of his younger contemporary, Jacob van Ruisdael. From 1652 Everdingen lived in Amsterdam, where he also worked as an art dealer.



Although his oil paintings are relatively rare, Everdingen was a prolific draughtsman. Some six hundred landscape drawings by the artist survive, including many of Scandinavian subjects. Many of Everdingen’s landscape drawings - for the most part executed in pen and brown wash and usually signed with the artist’s monogram - were in all likelihood intended for sale as works of art in their own right. Everdingen also produced a large number of landscape etchings, many of which were also inspired by his travels in Norway and Sweden. Only one extant drawing by Everdingen is dated, however, and a precise chronology of his draughtsmanship is difficult to establish. Significant groups of drawings by the artist are today in the collections of the British Museum, the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, the Albertina in Vienna, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, the Teyler Museum in Haarlem, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, and elsewhere.

Provenance

Johann Andreas Boerner, Nuremberg (Lugt 269), by 1841, with his signature and inscription 'J. A. Boerner / 1841 / DVO.dua' on the verso His posthumous sale, Leipzig, 22 January 1863 onwards, lot 1154 Prof. Dr. F. Heimsöth, Bonn His posthumous sale, Frankfurt, F. A. C. Prestel, 5 May 1879, lot 56 (bt. Sträter) August Sträter, Aachen (Lugt 787), his collector’s mark on the verso His posthumous sale, Stuttgart, H. G. Gutekunst, 10-14 May 1898, lot 1116 Rudolf Philip Goldschmidt, Berlin (Lugt 2926), his collector’s mark on the verso His posthumous sale, Frankfurt, F. A. C. Prestel, 4-5 October 1917, lot 196 Dr. Arthur Feldmann, Brno Looted by the Gestapo in 1939, during the Nazi occupation of Moravia Accessioned by the National Gallery, Prague (Inv. DK 4588), with their stamp NGGS / PRAHA (not in Lugt) on the verso Restituted to the heirs of Arthur Feldmann in 2013.

Literature

Anna Rollová, Nizozemské kresby, 16. a 17. století (Dutch Drawings, 16th and 17th Centuries), exhibition catalogue, Prague, 1993-1994, p.35, no.33, illustrated p.55; Alice Davies, The Drawings of Allart van Everdingen: A Complete Catalogue, Doornspijk, 2007, no.185.



Exhibition

Prague, National Gallery, Dutch Drawings, 16th and 17th Centuries, 1993-1994, p.35, no.33.



Allaert van EVERDINGEN

A Wooded Landscape, with Traveller on a Path at the Right and a Church and City in the Distance