Herman Saftleven

William Mayor (d. 1874), London (L.2799);

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

by descent to the present owners,

sale, New York, Sotheby's, 31 January 2024, lot 123

W. Schulz, Herman Saftleven 1609-1685, Berlin/New York 1982, p. 455, cat. 1298

Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, Dutch and Flemish Drawings in the Nationalmuseum and other Swedish Collections, 1953, cat. 177;

Laren, Singer Museum, Oude Tekeningen uit de Nederlanden. Verzameling Prof. E. Perman, Stockholm, 1962, cat. 97 

Although the river is rather less in evidence here than in some of the other drawings Saftleven made in the region, this work still clearly depicts a location that the artist would have encountered during the course of his journey along the Rhine, in the early 1650s - a trip that provided him with inspiration and compositional motifs on which he was to draw for the rest of his career.  

Saftleven apparently kept his Rhine landscapes in an album, which became the subject of a song by the poet and playwright Joost van den Vondel, praising these drawings for their truth to life. His verse concludes with the lines:

Who, with these leaves, need weep or wail

for running the Rhine with ship and sail.¹

A view on the Rhine near the Drachenfels, signed and dated 1654, and very similar in scale and technique to the present drawing, is in the Rijksmuseum.² Both these drawings were formerly together in the collection of William Mayor (see Provenance). Although Saftleven inscribed the name of the spot he has depicted here on the reverse of the sheet, it has not so far been possible to connect this name ('Gob' or 'Goss') with an identifiable location. 

^1. M. Schapelhouman and P. Schatborn, Land & Water, Dutch drawings from the 17th Century, Amsterdam 1987, under cat. 75

^2.Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. RP-T-1885-A-463