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Village View with Watermills on a Pond

Village View with Watermills on a Pond

Copy after: Hans Bol (in 1579)

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Specifications

Title Village View with Watermills on a Pond
Material and technique Pen and brown ink, framing lines with the pen in gray ink
Object type
Drawing > Two-dimensional object > Art object
Location This object is in storage
Dimensions Height 176 mm
Width 245 mm
Artists Copy after: Hans Bol
Artist: Anoniem
Accession number N 98 (PK)
Credits Loan Stichting Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (former Koenigs collection), 1940
Department Drawings & Prints
Acquisition date 1940
Creation date in 1579
Signature ‘HB.1.5.7.9.’ monogrammed and dated (recto, top centre, in pen and brown ink, possibly not autograph)
Watermark none (vV, 7P)
Condition good; judging from the incomplete ‘signature’ at the top edge and the cadre overlapping the drawing, the sheet was cropped on all sides. The old mount, probably carrying Koenigs collector's mark (L.1023a), has been removed.
Inscriptions ‘Hans Bol 1579’ (verso, bottom centre, in pencil)
Collector Collector / Franz Koenigs
Mark none (F.W. Koenigs, L.1023a mussing)
Provenance sale (Prince von Solms-Braunfels et al.), Amsterdam (De Vries), 24-25 January 1922, no. 56; Veuve Galippe, her sale, Amsterdam (De Vries), 27-29 March 1923, no. 70; Franz W. Koenigs (1881-1941), Haarlem, 1927; on loan to the museum, 1935-1940; purchased with the Koenigs collection by D.G. van Beuningen (1871-1955), Rotterdam and presented to the Stichting Museum Boymans, 1940; on loan to the museum since 1940
Exhibitions Rotterdam 2004b; Paris/Rotterdam 2014, no. 30 (Bol)
Internal exhibitions Het jaar rond met Bol (2004)
External exhibitions Bosch to Bloemaert. Early Netherlandish Drawings from the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (2014)
Research Show research Netherlandish Drawings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
Literature Franz 1965, pp. 35-36, 60, no. 43, pl. 44; Faber 1997 (Delineavit et Sculpsit 17), pp. 9, 12 (contemporary copy, confirmed by Stefaan Hautekeete, Brussels, 31 March 2014)
Material
Object
Geographical origin Northern Netherlands > The Netherlands > Western Europe > Europe
Geographical origin Southern Netherlands > The Netherlands > Western Europe > Europe
Place of manufacture Antwerp > Belgium > Western Europe > Europe

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Entry catalogue Netherlandish Drawings of the 15th and 16th Centuries.

Author: Albert J. Elen

A small village is seen from a hill top, with a distant view toward a town on the horizon. A path leads to the edge of the hill, where two travellers arrive, seen on the back, their right arms raised as if in greeting or gaining balance. They start descending towards a small bridge at lower right which leads to a gate. A high slope with a tree on top serves as a side wing in the left foreground; another, behind the village on the right, creates distance in the centre plan where houses are standing on the far side of a pond fed by a stream coming from the right.

As Franz (1965) already observed, this part of the composition was copied from Albrecht Dürer’s well-known coloured drawing The Willow Mill (1496-1498), now in Paris (ill. 1).1 Dürer’s landscape, however, is flat and shows a stream diagonally from left to right, no pond, the view dominated by two monumental tall willow trees on the right. In neither drawing a mill can be distinguished, but Dürer’s drawing, annotated ‘weidenmull’ in his own hand, is a topographic view of two watermills on the river Pegnitz, which flows through his native Nuremberg. The fragile wooden bridge in Dürer’s drawing, essential to cross the river, was also copied by Bol. The artist succeeded in making an attractive drawing by creating wings to close the composition, taking an elevated position and adding a distant view. It would be interesting to know where Bol saw the watercolour by Dürer, which must at that time have been in a private collection in Malines or Antwerp. Franz (1965) surmises that Bol had a drawn copy after Dürer’s drawing at his disposal.

A characteristic feature in Bol’s landscape drawings is the representation of the sky with parallel hatchings, the clouds sketched in outlines and shaded in similar hatchings. As in some other drawings, a low sun, either rising or setting, is indicated by a bow of rays. Generally, a solitary tree dominates the foreground in the centre or on the side, serving as a repoussoir to create depth and sometimes as a backdrop for a biblical scene. The rendering of the foliage by tiny loops (‘lusjes’) and shading with short parallel hatchings is another of Bol’s hall marks.

The partly cut-off monogram and date 1579 at the top edge, which differ from Bol’s known handwriting, are considered to be false by Franz (1965), who dates the drawing earlier, probably 1567.2 However, the inscribed date may very well be correct, possibly repeating an original inscribed date (and signature) which was removed when the sheet was cropped up at an early stage. Moreover, Bol used this drawing only three years later when he made a coloured version on parchment (laid down on panel), dated 1582, now at Harvard.3 In this somewhat smaller gouache Bol made some adjustments, replacing the two travellers with a group of four figures conversing, adding two seated travellers with a dog, more figures in the left background and two fishermen in a boat on the pond.

Footnotes

1 Bibliothèque Nationale de France, inv. no. no. B 13-1 bis; W.L. Strauss, The Complete Drawings of Albrecht Dürer, New York 1974, vol. 1, pp. 406-407, ill..; P. Strieder, Albrecht Dürer, Königstein im Taunus 2012, p. 51, col.ill. 52.

2 The presumed false signature was probably the reason to put a question mark to Bol’s name on the old inventory card.

3 Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, inv. no. 2002.257, companion to a similar gouache, inv. no. 2002.258; http://www.harvardartmuseums.org/art/197059; measuring 136 x 186 mm.

Show research Netherlandish Drawings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
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Hans Bol

Mechelen 1534 - Amsterdam 1593

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