Lot 59: CORNELIS HENDRICKSZ. VROOM HAARLEM CIRCA 1591 - 1661

pen and two shades of brown ink and wash, within brown ink framing lines

199 by 310mm

H. Gerson, "Leven en werken van Claes van Beresteyn", in E.A. van Beresteyn, Geneologie van het Geslacht van Beresteyn, 1941, p. 143, no. 15, illustrated plate 9, no. 2 (as extremely close to Cornelis Vroom);
G. Keyes, Cornelis Vroom: marine and landscape artist, 2 vols., Alphen aan den Rijn 1975, vol. I, pp. 72-3, vol. II, pp. 233-4, cat. no. D 37, illustrated fig. 36 (as Cornelis Vroom)

Marquis de Chennevières & J.C. Robinson, their sale, Amsterdam, F. Muller, 20/21 November 1882, lot 7 (as Claes van Beresteyn);
With Carl Schöffer;
His sale, Amsterdam, F. Muller, 30/31 May 1893, lot 18 (as Claes van Beresteyn, sold for fl.24);
M.A.N. Godefroy & Carl Schöffer, Amsterdam, R.W.P. de Vries, 8-10 May 1900, lot 17 (as Claes van Beresteyn);
Jhr. Dr. E.A. van Beresteyn, The Hague (bears two collector's marks, verso, neither in Lugt, one circular, black, with the text FAMILIE ARCHIEF VAN BERESTEYN around a crest with a bear, the other with the same bear crest, in red);
By descent to the present owner

Characterised by their vigorous pen-work and serene, yet somehow slightly surreal, atmosphere and perspective, the landscape drawings of Cornelis Vroom are amongst the most original works of their type to have been produced in 17^th-century Holland. They are also extremely rare. In his pioneering 1975 catalogue raisonné (see Literature), Keyes assembled an oeuvre of 37 drawings, to which he added a few more sheets in a subsequent supplementary article ('Hendrick & Cornelis Vroom: Addenda,' Master Drawings, vol.XX, no.2, (Summer 1982), pp. 115-124). Since then, only one other significant drawing has come to light, the Mountain Landscape with Distant View beyond, which was with Thomas Le Claire in Hamburg in 1992 (Thomas Le Claire Kunsthandel, catalogue VIII, 1992, no. 18). In the meantime, Pieter Biesboer, Margarita Russell and others have questioned the attribution of a number of the drawings accepted by Keyes, leaving a mere 25 or so drawings that are now generally accepted as the work of Cornelis Vroom, only four of which remain in private hands.

Whether one considers it to be one of 25 surviving drawings by the artist or one of 40, the present drawing stands out as an exceptional work; Keyes (loc. cit.) described it as "one of Vroom's most beautiful and impressive drawings." Exploring a theme familiar from a number of the artist's paintings and at least one other major drawing (the Abrams Collection River Landscape, Keyes, op. cit., cat. no. D 24), the drawing shows a small boat being rowed along a glassy river, gently flowing between heavily wooded banks through a hilly landscape. The superficial calm of the scene is, however, slightly disrupted by the rather exaggerated contrast in scale between the heavy, overhanging trees to the left and the comparatively fragile boat, which gives the whole composition a very subtle tension.

Vroom's highly detailed pen technique evokes the work of other leading landscape draughtsmen of the early 17th century, such as Hendrik Goltzius, Willem Buytewech and Jan van de Velde, and there are also echoes of the very intensely worked prints of Hercules Segers. Yet there is also always a refined delicacy in his drawing style, which allows a landscape such as this to rise above the limitations of an apparently meticulous technique, to the highest level of artistic achievement. Of Vroom's other drawings, the most similar to this in overall handling and approach are probably the magnificent Path by Woods and Fields, in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and the equally splendid Amsterdam Hunters in hilly country (Keyes, op. cit., cat. nos. D 22 and D 3). Keyes dates all three of these sheets to the mid 1620s, significantly earlier than the rather larger-scale drawings in the Albertina, Vienna, and in Hamburg (Keyes, cat. nos. D 16, D 34-36), which are amongst the other high points of Vroom's oeuvre, thanks to the ambition and virtuosity of their composition and execution.

Though the descendants of Vroom's fellow Haarlem artist Claes van Beresteyn purchased this drawing in the 19th century, believing it to be the work of their famous ancestor, as early as 1941 Gerson recognised the similarities with the style of Beresteyn's even more illustrious contemporary, and in modern times the drawing has been universally acknowleded as one of the great surviving sheets by one of the rarest and most intriguingly unconventional and original landscape artists working in early 17th-century Holland.