Lot 373: Hendrik Danckerts (The Hague 1625-1680 Amsterdam)

Hendrik Danckerts (The Hague 1625-1680 Amsterdam)
Caerphilly Castle, South Wales (recto); and A study of part of the Castle from the north-east (verso)
numbered 'N1' (upper left) and inscribed 'Castle Caerfilly [sic]' (upper centre)
pen and grey ink, grey wash (recto), pen and brown and grey ink, grey wash (verso) on paper, unframed
11¼ x 16¾ in. (28.5 x 42.5 cm.)

Iolo Williams.
L.G. Duke (L. 146).
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 9 April 1991, lot 22a, where purchased by the present owner.

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium, which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.
Please note Payments and Collections will be unavailable on Monday 12th July 2010 due to a major update to the Client Accounting IT system. For further details please call +44 (0) 20 7839 9060 or e-mail info@christies.com
Danckerts appears to have been born in The Hague and like his brother Johannes. He was initially trained as an engraver, but took up landscape painting. He probably first visited England with his brother in 1658/9 and his first marriage is recorded here in 1664. He remained in England until 1679 when the threat to Catholics of the Popish Plot forced him to return to the Netherlands, where he married again in August 1680, and died there shortly afterwards.

He received many commissions from the gentry and nobility for paintings to decorate their country houses often on a large scale, but his most important patron was King Charles II, who commissioned among other works a sliding panel to cover a naked portrait of Nell Gwyn.

His drawings are rare. Six works, views of London and of Badminton House, are in the British Museum, and there is a similar view of Caerphilly Castle from the south-east, also formerly in the collection of Iolo Williams and now in the Yale Center for British Art. Both this and the present drawing are numbered suggesting that they may be part of a series of works (L. Stainton and C. White, From Hilliard to Hogarth, London, 1987, p. 161, no. 123).