Lot 214: A dune landscape with gnarled trees

Claes van Beresteyn (Haarlem 1629-1684) A dune landscape with gnarled trees brush and black ink, grey wash, black framing lines 6¼ x 7 in. (15.6 x 17.6 cm.)

15.6 x 17.6 cm.

Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Paris, Fondation Custodia, and Brussels, Bibliothèque Albert 1er, Le Cabinet d'un Amateur: Dessins flamands et hollandais des XVIe et XVIIe siècles d'une collection privée d'Amsterdam, 1976-77, no. 13, pl. 52 (catalogue by J. Giltaij).

H. Gerson, Leven en werken van Claes van Beresteyn, Bijlage II der genealogie van het geslacht Van Beresteyn, The Hague, 1940, p. 149, no. B5, pl. 9, no. 1. S. Hautekeete, in Dessins du Siècle d'or hollandais: Collection Jean de Grez, exhib. cat., Brussels, Amsterdam and Aix-la-Chapelle, 2007-8, under no. 37, note 8.

Beresteyn was an amateur artist from Haarlem. In 1644 he was registered as a pupil of Salomon de Bray. A year earlier his sister Elisabeth had married Pieter Cornelisz. Verbeeck (c. 1610-1654), who may have taught Beresteyn both painting and etching. Beresteyn's only signed painting shows his brother-in-law leaning over a grey horse (Gerson, op. cit., no. A1). The subject-matter and the style of Beresteyn's etchings, however, show that he was profoundly influenced by Jacob Ruisdael (1628/9-1682). Most of Beresteyn's nine etchings are signed 'c.v. beresteyn' and two are dated 1650 (Hollstein 6 and 8). Of the 32 drawings given by Gerson to Beresteyn, 28 (including one previously in the van Regteren Altena collection, Christie's, London, 10 July 2014, lot 69) are today considered to be by Adriaen Verboom (c. 1627-1673; for a list which also includes drawings not in Gerson, see Hautekeete, op. cit., p. 122, note 9, under no. 37) and only four are still considered to be by Beresteyn (the present lot, two sheets bearing an interlaced monogram 'CVB' respectively in The Hague, E.A. van Beresteyn Collection [Gerson B21] and Weimar [Gerson 32], and one in the British Museum [Gerson B24] to which one must add another one unknown to Gerson and today in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts [inv. 1978.469]). Compared to drawings by Verboom, the ones by Beresteyn are more densely worked and have a more uniform character consisting of fine, short lines with enclosed, dense clusters of leaves around the branches. They are very close in spirit to the artist's etchings (Fig. 1) with which they also share a squared format. Fig. 1. Claes van Beresteyn, Landscape with a group of oaks and a resting peasant, etching, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum