In his late works, Frederik de Moucheron often followed the then current fashion of depicting cultivated park landscapes with monuments. The present sheet’s emphasis on oversized decorative objects is shared with one such painting by him formerly on the art market, Hunting Company at the Foot of a Staircase, dated 1667. Similar sculptural pedestals are found in a painting from a year later in a private collection, and in another work in a private collection only attributed to the artist. The drawing may be considered to be a late work as well. Despite the lack of a signature, there is no reason to doubt its traditional attribution to Frederik, since it seems to mark a development of such drawings as inv. no. RP-T-00-200. It foreshadows compositions of a couple of decades later, for instance by Johannes Glauber (1646-1726), such as his Arcadian Landscape of circa 1687 (inv. no. SK-A-4216). Similar park landscapes with fancy architectural elements were drawn by Frederik’s son Isaac de Moucheron (1667-1744), though usually in a far more accurate manner, as in inv. no. RP-T-1879-A-53.
Annemarie Stefes, 2019
