Lot 53: Allaert van Everdingen , Alkmaar 1621 - 1675 Amsterdam norwegian landscape with a timber yard Pen and brown ink and watercolour over black chalk

Pen and brown ink and watercolour over black chalk

measurements note 124 by 329 mm

Max von Heyl zu Herrnsheim,
his sale, Stuttgart, H.M. Gutekunst, 25 May 1903, lot 135;
Wilhelm Brandes

Although Everdingen was a prolific draughtsman (in her recent book on the artist, Alice Davies lists over six hundred sheets), this landscape is exceptional as it was made by the artist during his trip to Norway and Sweden in 1644, an addition to the group of fifteen such drawings already identified. υOf these, Davies lists four executed in watercolour, one of which, at the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam, has similar proportions to the present sheet.υ1 According to the artist's earliest biographer, Arnold Houbraken, Everdingen seems to have found himself in Norway almost by surprise: ''having boarded ship for some place on the Baltic Sea he encountered a dangerous storm, that landed him willing or not on the coast of Norway''.υ2 Despite these inauspicious circumstances, the views that Everdingen captured in Scandinavia were to influence the remainder of his career. The simply constructed wooden buildings, such as those depicted in the present sheet, and dramatic landscapes with pine trees and waterfalls were used repeatedly in the artist's painted compositions. In turn, these bewitching landscapes found a resonance with other painters, from Everdingen's contemporary, Jacob van Ruisdael to the 19th century Johan Christian Dahl. We are most grateful to Alice I. Davies for her help in the cataloguing of this drawing. 1. A.I. Davies, The Drawings of Allart van Everdingen: A Complete Catalogue, Including the Studies for Reynard the Fox, Doornspijk 2007, p. 14
2. Idem, Allart van Everdingen 1621 - 1675: First Painter of Scandinavian Landscape, Doornspijk 2001, p. 26