Lot 240: View of an Italian town

Attributed to Paulus van Hillegaert I (Amsterdam 1596-1640) View of an Italian town pen and brown ink and watercolour 8 x 10¾ in. (20 x 27 cm.)

20 x 27 cm.

Amsterdam, Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap, Hoe Hollandse teekenaars Rome zagen 1500-1840, 1940 (no catalogue published). 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. 94, pl. 22, as Willem van Nieulandt II (catalogue by J. Giltaij). Amsterdam, Amsterdam Museum, In de ban van Italië: Tekeningen uit een Amsterdamse verzameling, 1995, no. 10, as attributed to Paulus van Hillegaert I (catalogue by I. Oud, M. Jonker and M. Schapelhouman).

K. Andrews, Catalogue of Netherlandish drawings in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1985, I, pp. 37-38, under no. RSA 493 (as part of a series attributed to Paulus van Hillegaert). H. Bevers, in Niederländische Zeichnungen und Druckgraphik: Der Sammlung Christoph Müller im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett, exhib. cat., Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, 2008, under no. 75.

Diderick Smith (early 18th Century); Posthumus, de Leth and de Winter, Amsterdam, 13 July 1761, lot 340. Johan van der Marck Aegidiusz. (1707-1772); Hendrik de Winter and Jan Yver, Amsterdam, 29 November 1773, lot 157 ('Nieuwlant. 157. Een gestoffeered Landschap met Gebouwen: met de Pen en Sapjes, h. 7½ b. 10 duim') or 158 ('Nieuwlant. 158. Een wederga, als vooren getekend'). M. Bier, in 1880 (according to an inscription by Pitcairn Knowles on the mount). William Pitcairn Knowles (1820-1894) (L. 2643); Muller, Amsterdam, 25-26 June 1895, part of lot 465 ('Guilliam van Nieuwlandt. Vue en Italie. Le Colisée à Rome. Signé: G. V. NIEVWLANT et daté: 1620. - Deux dessins. Aquarelle et plume'). Anton Wilhelmus Mensing (1866-1936); Muller, Amsterdam, 27-29 April 1937, lot 489 ('Guillaume van Nieulandt. Environs de Rome. Aquarelle. Haut. 20, larg. 27 cent. Collection W.P. Knowles'; 65 guilders to Colnaghi).

This is one of a group of drawings which have been recently attributed to Paulus van Hillegaert, on the basis of an old inscription which appears on the verso of one of the sheets from the group, in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin; Bock-Rosenberg, 1930, p. 152). Other drawings from the group are in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh (Andrews, op. cit.), the Kunstmuseum, Bern (inv. A 3096), the de Grez collection in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, inv. 1584) and the Fodor Collection in Amsterdam (Tekeningen van Noord: en Zuidnederlands Kunstenaars, exhib. cat., Amsterdam Museum, 1979, no. 93, as anonymous). Further drawings from that group are listed in Christie's, Amsterdam, 14 November 1994, lot 118.