Michiel van Overbeck

Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830), London (L.2445);

Vernon Wethered (1865-1952), London,

by inheritance to the present owner

A substantial group of topographical drawings depicting English, French, Italian and Dutch views, all in the same distinctive media and many bearing identifying inscriptions of the type seen on the present work, have traditionally been linked with the name Michiel (or Michel) van Overbeek, on the basis of the initials MVO which a number of the drawings bear on the reverse.

Other highly comparable drawings of Roman views are in the collections of the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1945,1004.5); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. no. 2011.225); The Morgan Library, New York (inv. no. 2009.232); and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (RP-T-1898-A-3678).

Four superb London views, seen from St. James's and Hyde Parks, drawn by this idiosyncratic artist circa 1663, were recently presented on the London art market.¹

Michiel van Overbeek was a Dutch painter and picture dealer, the nephew of the topographical draughtsman Bonaventura van Overbeek. The older Overbeeck was born and died in Amsterdam; but it was his publication Les restes de l'ancienne Rome (1709) that won him fame during his lifetime. Dedicated to Queen Anne, the book was - according to Arnold Houbraken - published posthumously by Michiel van Overbeek. Like his uncle, Michiel seems to have travelled extensively in France and Italy and made what appears to have been a brief stay in England from about 1663 until 1666.

^1.With Lowell Libson & Jonny Yarker, London, The Spirit & Force of Art: Drawing in Britain 1600–1750, 2018, pp. 102-105, nos. 30A-D