Lot 120: GERRIT BATTEM (CIRCA 1636-1684) LANDSCAPE WITH PEASANTS ON A ROAD, OTHERS WITH THEIR SHEEP AND GOATS CROSSING A BRIDGE.

Signed in brown ink lower right: Battem. Gouache over pen and brown ink and traces of black chalk. 267 by 400 mm. Gerrit Battem's extremely decorative landscape gouaches are amongst the most original Dutch landscape drawings of the second half of the seventeenth century. In his approach to composition, Battem looked to the works of a variety of earlier Dutch masters, ranging from Hendrik Avercamp through Jan Both to his own uncle by marriage, Philips Koninck, but he adapted these prototypes to suit his chosen medium of gouache. The resultant drawings combine the energy and freshness of the best of seventeenth century Dutch landscape drawing with a decorative elegance generally found only in the more formulaic landscapes of eighteenth century artists such as Pieter Barbiers or Hendrik Meyer. Amongst Battem's most attractive works are his rare Italianate landscapes, works in which he clearly looked to artists such as Both and Frederik de Moucheron for his compositional inspiration.