Allart van Everdingen Landscape with Two Figures seated on a Hillside Watercolour and brown ink over traces of black chalk, brown ink framing lines Landscape with Horseman and Travellers Watercolour over black chalk, brown ink framing lines PROVENANCE Allart van Everdingen, born in Alkmaar in 1621, launched his career as a landscape and marine specialist in Haarlem in the 1640s. He moved to Amsterdam in 1652 where he was active as a painter, printmaker, draughtsman and art dealer up to his death in 1675. He was renowned in his day for the Scandinavian subjects he depicted following his trip to Norway and Sweden in 1644. The broken conifer stump and log in the foreground of the Landscape with Horseman and Travellers is one of Everdingen's favourite devices for establishing a Nordic location. For the long, low farm building and slender pole crowning the distant ridge he would have consulted a drawing from his trip, such as the ink sketch of Norwegian blockhouses at Dresden. The scenery in the Landscape with Two Figures seated on a Hillside is not Scandinavian but more likely inspired by the artist's travels to the Ardennes in 1656. The 'Arms of the Seven Provinces' watermark in this sheet dates it no earlier than 1656, the year in which the mark first appeared. The 'PC' in the paper of the second drawing is most likely from the countermark side of a Seven Provinces sheet. In fact, both landscapes belong to a lovely series of watercolours that are identical in size and executed on Seven Provinces paper, which otherwise was rarely used by the artist. Other examples that were produced at roughly the same time include both foreign and native scenes. These can be found in three different private collections, in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen and in the Collection Frits Lugt, Paris. Alice l. Davies |
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