Lot 203: Plants in woodland, including (from left to right), white dead-nettle (lamium album), potentilla (potentilla reptans) and comfrey (symphitum officinale)

Attributed to Johan Verwer (Haarlem active 1647-1660) Plants in woodland, including (from left to right), white dead-nettle (lamium album), potentilla (potentilla reptans) and comfrey (symphitum officinale) with inscription 'Breugel.' pen and brown ink, brown wash, heightened with white on blue paper 11 x 15¼ in. (27.6 x 38.7 cm.)

27.6 x 38.7 cm.

Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Meesterwerken uit vier eeuwen 1400-1800, 1938, no. 240, pl. 232 (as Jan Bruegel I). Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum, Boom, bloem en plant, 1955, no. 181 (as Jan Bruegel I). 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. 36, pl. 103 (as Jan Bruegel I).

M.L. Hairs, Les peintres flamands de fleurs au XVIIe siècle, Paris and Brussels, 1955, p. 152, note 100 (it is p. 298, note 151 in the 1965 edition, and p. 429, note 270 in the 1985 edition) (as by J. Bruegel I).

Emile Calando (1840-1899) (L. 837). with Bernheim (?), Cologne; from whom purchased by I.Q. van Regteren Altena on 26 October 1929 for 75 guilders (Inventory book: '773. t. J. Brueghel planten').

Traditionally attributed to Jan Bruegel I (1568-1625) and exhibited as such in 1976-77 this drawing does not appear in Matthias Winner's publications and will not be included in the catalogue raisonné of the drawings by the artist in preparation by Louise Wood Ruby and Teréz Gerszi. The subject of plants in close focus on a blank background, the delicacy of the pen work in brown ink which details with a great naturalistic verve each leaf of every plant, the use of the wash mostly restricted to the outlines of the leaves make this drawing very close to the only two known sheets by Johan de Verwer. The only signed and dated (1669) drawing by the artist was in the van Regteren Altena collection (Christie's, London, 10 July 2014, lot 56). The other one, which carried an earlier attribution to Jan Wijnants before being recognised by An Zwollo, is at the British Museum (Master Drawings and Watercolours in the British Museum, exib. cat. 1984, no. 102). These two drawings were both executed in pen and brown ink, with grey wash, on white paper.