Pieter Stevens

Heinrich Wilhelm Campe (1770-1862), Leipzig (L.1391);

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

by descent to the present owners,

sale, New York, Sotheby's, 31 January 2024, lot 106

Laren, Singer Museum, Oude Tekeningen uit de Nederlanden. Verzameling Prof. E. Perman, Stockholm, 1962, cat. 106

Though this drawing must date from Pieter Stevens' time working at the Prague court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II, it reflects rather more the artist's earlier experiences in Rome, and the drawings that he made there. The handling is slightly more measured than in some of the artist’s other drawings, and although the landscape is still extremely rugged, in the background there are numerous ruins, reminiscent of the monuments of ancient Rome. The palette too is more restrained and poetic. 

Perhaps paradoxically, Stevens seems to have turned to this approach in his drawings only fairly late in his career, after around 1604, maybe as a result of Jan Brueghel the Elder's visit to Prague in that year. A very comparable drawing by Stevens is in the Fentener Van Vlissingen Collection.¹

^1.Home and Abroad. Dutch and Flemish Landscape Drawings from the John and Marine van Vlissingen Art Foundation, exh. cat., Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, and Paris, Fondation Custodia, 2015-16, pp. 40-41, cat. 11