Anthonie van Borssom

Bears unidentified collector's mark, verso (G.M. in a circle, not in Lugt);

Prof. Einar Perman, Stockholm,

his sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby Mak van Waay, 9 June 1975, lot 99;

with Theo Laurentius, Voorschoten;

private collection, The Netherlands;

sale, London, Sotheby's, 4 July 2012, lot 103,

where acquired by Diane A. Nixon

A.I. Davies, The Drawings of Anthonie van Borssom, Doornspijk 2014, p. 78, cat. 77

The handling in this attractively composed drawing can be compared with a number of Borssom's signed works, such as one in the Lugt Collection, which, as Peter Schatborn has pointed out, belongs to the significant number of the artist's drawings that cannot easily be allocated to a particular period on stylistic grounds.¹ The sweeping penwork in the reeds is also similar to that in the Two Storks at a Reeded Shore, in the same collection.²  

Borssom is thought to have been a pupil of Rembrandt during the second half of the 1640s, but the majority of his works show relatively little stylistic debt to the master. Here, though, both the subject and the atmosphere certainly are very reminiscent of some of the drawings that Rembrandt made during his famous walks around the outskirts of Amsterdam during the 1640s and '50s.  Indeed, very similar rickety, gated bridges across narrow waterways can be seen in, for example, Rembrandt’s views along various roads and riverbanks to the southeast of Amsterdam, including the Sloterweg, Amstelveenseweg and Diemerdijk, and along the banks of the River Amstel – drawings now at Chatsworth and in Oxford, London, Stockholm and Hamburg.³ 

It seems highly likely that this atmospheric study of a quintessential corner of the Dutch landscape was also made in the same area.

^1.P. Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle, Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, 2 vols., Paris 2010, no. 36

^2.Ibid, no. 39

^3.O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt, rev. ed., London 1973, 6 vols., vol. 6, nos. 1218, 1226, 1242, 1243, 1285, 1289. Chatsworth, the Devonshire Collection (inv. 1020 and 1023); Oxford, Ashmolean Museum (inv. PI 187); London, British Museum (inv. 1895,0915.1283); Stockholm, Nationalmuseum (inv. 54/1919); Hamburg, Kusthalle (inv. 7644)