black chalk, pen and brown ink, grey wash, pen and brown ink framing lines with inscription ‘A. Van de velde in f.’ (recto)
13.5 x 18.7 cm

Provenance:
Unidentified mark (possibly L. 2898).
Private Collection, Palm Springs, CA, until 2020.
Private Collection, The Netherlands.

Adriaen van de Velde was born into one of the most successful artistic families of the 17th century in Holland, his father being Willem van de Velde the Elder (1611-1693) and his brother Willem van de Velde the Younger (1633-1707). Both Willem’s specialized in maritime painting, and became exceptionally successful with it, while Adriaen focused primarily on landscape and genre subjects as well as religious and historical scenes. Despite his early death at only 35 years old, his painted, drawn and printed œuvre is extensive and of a particular high and consistent quality. Adriaen took great care when preparing his painted compositions as is attested by the many various studies for pictures that have survived. A great example of this practice are three preparatory drawings that have survived for Vertumnus and Pomona, a picture now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. [1] While no painting related to the present drawing seems to have survived (or perhaps was never executed), it was most likely drawn in preparation for a picture too. Two small-scale paintings, executed in 1663, with similar subjects and compositions, however, have survived; one in The Cleveland Museum of Arts and the other in The Wallace Collection, London. Both show pastoral scenes with shepherds resting, while their animals are grazing and resting around them. The scenes that evoke a timeless, peaceful and ideal world very much similar to that shown in the present drawing. The compositional similarities, the closely related subjects and the strong emphasize on light and shade suggest that the drawing was executed around the same time as the paintings now in Cleveland and London. The confident and rapid execution of the drawing can be seen in many of Adriaen van de Velde’s drawings, for examples see Departure for the hunt, in Musées d’Anger’s; Cowns, goats and sheep in the Musée
du Louvre, Paris; and A herdsman and a woman with cows and sheep by a river, British Museum, London. [2]

[1] Inv. GG_6446. See B. Cornelis, ‘Reintroducing Adriaen van de Velde’ in Adriaen van de Velde. Dutch Master of Landscape, exhibition catalogue, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Dulwich, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2016-2017, fig. 39 and figs. 36-38.
[2] See B. Cornelis, op. cit., figs. 99, 104 and no. 35, ill.