Clearly, the present sheet is based on the impressions De Moucheron gathered while he was travelling through Savoy and Isère in the Chartreuse mountains north of Grenoble around 1656. The present sheet is executed in a more painterly mode, entirely with the brush, and is larger than his other two views of this region in the museum, inv. nos. RP-T-1886-A-620 and RP-T-1905-85, both of which reveal passages of more visible graphite. The brush technique of the present work – lacking the artist’s characteristic thin pen lines and the energy and freshness of the two smaller landscapes – and its signature in capital letters has led some scholars to suggest a later date. However, that may not necessarily be the case, for although the pen-dominated Chartreuse views were probably made in the late 1660s, the present sheet features a Dutch watermark of the late 1650s. The differences in execution may have been prompted by the larger format, requiring a more painterly mode. The handling of the brush is indeed reminiscent of that of a drawing from 1656, the Landscape near the Grand Chartreuse in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (inv. no. 22204). It thus might have been done shortly after the artist’s return from France.
The present sheet is a good example of De Moucheron exploiting the same motifs to create different works of art. As was demonstrated by Alsteens and Buijs (2008), the right section of the sheet largely corresponds to a pen-and-ink drawing of circa 1669 in the Groninger Museum, Groningen (inv. no. 1931.0179). Stylistically, the Groningen drawing is of the same type as inv. nos. RP-T-1905-85 and RP-T-1886-A-620. As for the left section of the present composition, it coincides with a painted Mountain Landscape with Waterfall, whose present whereabouts are unknown.
Annemarie Stefes, 2019
