View of an Encampment of the Army of Willem III near Leuven

watermark: arms of Amsterdam (fragment)

Red stain and hole centre left; brown stain centre right; small holes scattered throughout the sheet

…; from the dealer F. Muller, Amsterdam, to the museum (L. 2228), 1881

ObjectNumber: RP-T-00-132

The Rijksmuseum's collection includes twenty-four drawings that depict the encampments of the Dutch army during their 1675 campaign to Walloon Brabant and Hainaut (a province of Wallonia and Belgium). Most of these drawings are quite formulaic; the encampments – which include groups of tents, figures, tilt cars and horses – are drawn in the center of the composition and placed in a generic-looking landscape. Only a few of the drawings are signed and/or include inscriptions. Some represent views of villages near the encampments.

Carolyn Mensing

This sheet might be drawn by a follower of Josua de Grave. Perhaps the initial sketch and thin brown pen lines were done by him, but they do seem rather different from his more defined pen and brown ink lines in other sheets in the Rijksmuseum’s collection; see, for example, a sheet depicting the city of Aelzen, made in the same year (inv. no. RP-T-1905-68). Moreover, the grey wash is more thoroughly and smoothly applied throughout the sheet. According to Charles Dumas, some areas of grey wash, in particular in the foreground and the trees in the background, were quite possibly applied by eighteenth-century artist Aert Schouman (1710-1792), who is documented as having ‘improved’ works by earlier artists; the washes applied to the tents, tilt carts, figure and horse, by contrast, are probably original.¹¹Charles Dumas in an email conversation with the author, 22 August 2019. It is possible that Schouman got hold of an unfinished drawing by De Grave and finished it himself, a practice for which he is known.²²C. Dumas, ‘Improving Old Master Drawings by Aert Schouman’, in A. Boschloo (ed.), Aemulatio: Imitation, Emulation and Invention in Netherlandish Art from 1500 to 1800: Essays in Honor of Eric Jan Sluijter, Zwolle 2011, pp. 463-64.

As can be read on the verso, the drawing belonged to the dealer Frederik Muller (1817-1881), who included the drawing as by Josua de Grave, together with seven other sheets depicting encampments in Leuven, under no. 2576 of his De Nederlandsche geschiedenis in platen. Beredeneerde beschrijving van Nederlandsche historieplaten, zinneprenten en historische kaarten. The drawing was sold, together with fifty other sheets from his collection, to the Rijksmuseum in 1881.

Carolyn Mensing, 2019

F. Muller, De Nederlandsche geschiedenis in platen. Beredeneerde beschrijving van Nederlandsche historieplaten, zinneprenten en historische kaarten, 4 vols., Amsterdam 1863-82, I (1863), p. 391, under no. 2576 (as Josua de Grave); R.J.G.M. van Hasselt, ‘Drie tekenaars van topografische prenten in Brabant en elders. Valentijn Klotz, Josua de Grave en Constantijn Huygens Jr.’, Jaarboek Oudheidkundige Kring ‘De Ghulden Roos’ 25 (1965), pp. 145-92, no. 478 (as Josua de Grave)

C. Mensing, 2019, 'circle of Josua de Grave, View of an Encampment of the Army of Willem III near Leuven, 1674', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.51837