…; anonymous sale, Utrecht (A.J. van Huffel’s Antiquariaat), 20 May 1952 sqq., no. 188, as ‘anonymous, Dutch, circa 1660, in the manner of Breenbergh’, fl. 40, to the museum (L. 2228), with the support of the F.G. Wallerfonds

Object number: RP-T-1952-137

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the F.G. Waller-Fonds

Offered as ‘anonymous, Dutch, circa 1660, in the manner of Breenbergh’ in the anonymous Utrecht sale of 1952, the drawing was attributed to Jan Baptist Weenix by Van Regteren Altena.¹¹Written annotation in the catalogue for that sale. Anke van Wagenberg-ter Hoeven, who recently published a monograph on Jan Baptist Weenix and his son, Jan Weenix (1642-1719),²²A.A. van Wagenberg-ter Hoeven, Jan Baptist Weenix and Jan Weenix: The Paintings, 2 vols., Zwolle 2018. accepted the attribution.³³Kindly communicated by email, 19 February 2017. Generally related to such drawings as inv. no. RP-T-1948-594 in the same technique, a certain stiffness in the present sheet may have resulted from the subject-matter. Yet compared with such related compositions as the View in the Colosseum in Rome in the Special Collections, Universiteit Leiden (inv. no. PK-T-AW-295), or Ruins Seen through an Archway in the Klassik Stiftung Weimar (inv. no. KK 5638,⁴⁴B. van den Boogert, Goethe & Rembrandt: Tekeningen uit Weimar uit de grafische bestanden van de Kunstsammlungen zu Weimar, aangevuld met werken uit het Goethe-Nationalmuseum, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 1999, pp. 118-19. the present sheet lacks their multi-toned hatching. Moreover, the rendering of the sunlit part of the vaulted opening is not fully convincing in terms of perspective. Such qualities could be explained by it being a weaker work of the master, but it might also point to the hand of a copyist or a follower. The watermark can be associated with works dating from the late 1640s.

Annemarie Stefes, 2018