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Bowdoin College BCMA Logo Museum of Art

  • strasbourg bend, fleur-de-lis above
    Type: watermark
    Location:
    Materials:
  • James Bowdoin III( Collector, Boston) - 1811.
  • Bowdoin College Museum of Art( Museum, Brunswick, Maine) 1811- . Bequest
  • Old Master Drawings at Bowdoin College
    • Bowdoin College Museum of Art. ( 5/17/1985 - 7/7/1985)
    • Clark Art Institute. ( 9/14/1985 - 10/27/1985)
    • University of Kansas. ( 1/19/1986 - 3/2/1986)
    • Art Gallery of Ontario. ( 5/17/1986 - 6/29/1986)
Type: catalogue
Author: Henry Johnson
Document Title: Catalogue of the Bowdoin College Art Collections
Publ. Place: Brunswick, Maine
Reference: no. 99
Remarks: (as Unknown)
Section Title: Pt. I, The Bowdoin Drawings
Date: 1885

Type: catalogue
Author: Bowdoin College Museum of Art
Document Title: Bowdoin Museum of Fine Arts, Walker Art Building
Edition: 4th
Publ. Place: Brunswick, Maine
Reference: no. 99
Remarks: (as Unknown)
Section Title: Descriptive Catalogue of the . . .
Date: 1930

Type: exhibition catalogue
Author: David P. Becker
Document Title: Old Master Drawings at Bowdoin College
Publ. Place: Brunswick, Maine
Location: pp. 62-63
Reference: no. 28 (illus.)
Publisher: Bowdoin College
Date: 1985

Document Title: Bowdoin Magazine
Publ. Place: Brunswick, Maine
Reference: p. 75
Publisher: Bowdoin College
Section Title: vol. 63, no. 2
Date: 1990
			
		

The former attribution to Nicolaes Berchem (see BCMA 1956.24.187) for this sheet has not been accepted, but the notation in the  BCMA files as "Style of" Berchem is closer to the truth.1 Other suggestions have been made: a member of the van der Does family, by William Robinson; or an artist in the circle of Adam Pynacker, by Egbert Haverkamp Begemann. George Abrams has suggested the Haarlem painter Vincent Laurentsz. van der Vinne (1629–1702). Several drawings which have been attributed both to him and to his son, Laurens Vincentsz. van der Vinne (1658–1729), are very much in the manner of Berchem. Laurens, in fact, studied with Berchem.

Landscapes attributed to the van der Vinnes which depict the ruins at Brederode, near Haarlem, are in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris;2 the Rijksuniversiteit, Leiden;3 and the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.4 All three are datable to 1676 and have similarities, particularly in the depiction of trees and leaves, with the Bowdoin sheet. There seems to be no consensus as to which member of the van der Vinne family may have executed these studies.5

1. Horst Gerson, for instance, in 1969, noted "later than Berchem."

2. F. Lugt, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Inventaire général des dessins des écoles du nord, vol. I, Ecole hollandaise (Paris, 1950), p. 87, no. 710, pl. 91.

3. Bernt 1957-1958, vol. 2, no. 641, repr.

4. New York 1979, cat. no. 103, repr.

5. See discussion in New York 1979, p. 129, under cat. no. 103.

Commentary credited to David P. Becker (or not otherwise captioned) appeared in his catalogue Old Master Drawings at Bowdoin College (Brunswick: Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 1985).