Lambert Harmensz. Doomer

Jeronimus Tonneman (1687-1750), Amsterdam, 

his sale, Amsterdam, 21 October 1754 ff, among Kunstboek S, nos. 1-6 and 8-11;

sale, Van Kinschot Luden and other collections, Amsterdam, 31 January 1899, lot 744;

sale, Amsterdam, 11 June 1912, lot 65;

purchased at that sale by Dr. Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), The Hague (L.561),

his sale, Leipzig, C.G. Boerner, 4 November 1931, lot 78 (to Nebehay);

Dr. Einar Perman (1893-1976), Stockholm,

by descent to the present owners,

sale, New York, Sotheby's, 31 January 2024, lot 133

H.M. van den Berg, 'Willem Schellinks en Lambert Doomer in Frankrijk, Oudheidkundig Jaarboek 11, 1942, p. 30, no. 84;

W. Schulz, 'Lambert Doomer. 1624-1700. Leben und Werke', Diss., Berlin 1972, p. 293, cat. 161;

W. Schulz, Lambert Doomer. Sämtliche Zeichnungen, Berlin/New York 1974, p. 64, cat. 109;

W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, vol. 2, New York 1979, pp. 1086-7, cat. 509^x;

S. Alsteens and H. Buijs, Paysages de France, dessinés par Lambert Doomer et les artistes hollandais et flamands des XVI^e et XVII^e siècles, Paris, Fondation Custodia, 2008, pp. 145, 148, note 8

Leiden, Stedelijk Museum 'De Lakenhal', Tentoonstelling van Teekeningen van Oud-Hollandse Meesters uit de Verfzameling van Dr. C. Hofstede de Groot, 1916, part III, cat. 23;

Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, Dutch and Flemish Drawings in the Nationalmuseum and other Swedish Collections, 1953, cat. 243;

Laren, Singer Museum, Oude Tekeningen uit de Nederlanden. Verzameling Prof. E. Perman, Stockholm, 1962, cat. 35 

In 1645, Lambert Doomer set off by sea from his native Amsterdam to visit his brother, who was living and working as part of the community of Dutch artists and merchants in the western French city of Nantes. Travelling for part of the time with fellow artist Willem Schellinks, whose diaries are an important art-historical resource, Doomer sailed first to the Isle of Wight and then to La Rochelle, entering the Loire at its mouth before proceeding to Nantes. Thereafter, he continued up the length of the Loire, and visited Paris and the south of France, before returning home. 

During the course of these travels, Doomer made numerous drawings, ranging from fairly rapid and unassuming sketches to more elaborately worked up views, and in many cases he then developed large finished drawings based on his travel sketches - drawings that often exist in several versions, made both at the time and in later decades. Some eleven such finished drawings, including four French views, came into the possession of the Amsterdam merchant, Laurens van der Hem, who was both commissioning and amassing vast numbers of generally highly finished topographical drawings to interleave within his copy of Bleau's Atlas Major, creating the extraordinary ensemble of maps and drawings, the Atlas Van der Hem, now housed in the Royal Library, Vienna. 

Then, from the 1670s on, Doomer made more repetitions of his French travel sketches, many of them, including this example, on sheets of paper taken from an account book (identified by the three ruled lines across the top of the sheet). It seems likely this series of drawings revisiting the artist's earlier travel sketches was made to order for a patron, but no specific commission is recorded. 

Clearly, the remarkable cave-dwellings that are to be found in various locations along the course of the Loire were of the greatest interest to Doomer. Although no known travel sketch from the 1640s representing this exact location is known, other cave-dwellings near Saumur are recorded in two travel sketches, and a number of later, worked up drawings.¹

Despite the lack of obvious landmarks in this view, we know the location depicted from the inscription on the verso. This same handwriting is to be found on many if not all of the Doomer drawings on account book paper, and these inscriptions are widely thought to have been written, perhaps on the basis of some kind of list made by Doomer himself, by the Amsterdam collector Jeronimus Tonneman (1687-1750), the sale of whose collection included no fewer than 147 drawings by Doomer.² Ten of these are described in the sale catalogue as views 'by Samurs', but sadly no further details of the views depicted are given.  

^1.Alsteens and Buijs, op. cit., pp. 144-8

^2.Ibid., pp. 35-7