Lot 122: Willem Pietersz. Buytewech (1591-1624)

Study for a frontispiece: A cook and a fisherman flanking trophies of poultry and vegetables signed, inscribed and dated 'Willem buiteweij fecit (?) et inventor Anno 1621' and numbered 'i' pencil, pen and brown ink, gray wash, pen and brown ink framing lines, watermark coat-of-arms flanked by lions (?) 4 7/8 x 71/2 in. (124 x 191 mm.) NOTES This is the frontispiece to a series of at least twelve drawings depicting markets in Dutch towns. The following two lots are respectively numbers ten and twelve in the series. The date on the present drawing places the series in Buytewech's late period, while he was living in Rotterdam. Another drawing from the same group, depicting a timber market, is in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (C. van Hasselt et al., Willem Buytewech, exhib. cat., Rotterdam, Boymans-van Beuningen Museum and Paris, Institut N‚erlandais, 1974-5, no. 43, pl. 56). That drawing is in the same technique and handling as the present one and although trimmed at the sides (it measures 111 x 181 mm.), it was probably originally of the same size as these three sheets. Buytewech's thin pen and brown ink framing lines have been replaced on the Amsterdam sheet with thicker lines. The general composition of the Timber market is the same as that of the two following lots. The figures are all arranged in a frieze in the foreground and are standing before Dutch townscapes. The Amsterdam drawing is particularly close to the following lot, with a central figure facing the spectator and a sharply fore-shortened horse on the right. These drawings are close in handling to a series of sheets for prints of figures in their daily occupations (C. van Hasselt, op. cit., nos. 72-87). They can be dated to the years 1620-2 according to the costumes. A further drawing of Summer in Berlin, and the lost drawing of Fire both datable to 1621-2, are also very close in handling to the present ones (C. van Hasselt, op. cit., nos. 23 and 179, pls. 118 and 128). We are grateful to Professor Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann for confirming the attribution of these three unpublished drawings.