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  • HR
    Type: watermark
    Location:
    Materials:
  • figures [101?]
    Type: inscription
    Location: upper right
    Materials: graphite
  • 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)
  • Nature Inhabited
    • Bowdoin College Museum of Art. ( 4/20/1995 - 6/4/1995)
  • Drawings from Maine Collections
    • Colby College Museum of Art. ( 5/14/1978 - 7/16/1978)
  • Baroque Drawings
    • Bowdoin College Museum of Art. ( 2/3/1981 - 3/5/1981)
  • Masterpieces from the Bowdoin College Museum of Art
    • The Currier Gallery of Art. ( 9/5/1986 - 10/19/1986)
  • Drawing on Basics
    • Bowdoin College Museum of Art. ( 10/14/1993 - 12/19/1993)
  • Old Master Drawings from the Bowdoin College Museum of Art
    • Timken Museum of Art. ( 5/13/2005 - 8/14/2005)
  • Why Draw? 500 Years of Drawings and Watercolors at Bowdoin College
    • Bowdoin College Museum of Art. ( 5/3/2017 - 9/3/2017)

Type: catalogue
Author: Henry Johnson
Document Title: Catalogue of the Bowdoin College Art Collections
Publ. Place: Brunswick, Maine
Reference: no. 102
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. 102
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. 60-61
Reference: 27 (illus.)
Publisher: Bowdoin College
Date: 1985
			
		

Weenix studied with Jan Micker, Claes Moeyaert and Abraham Bloemaert (BCMA 1811.81) in Amsterdam. Going to Rome about 1643, he joined the group of Dutch artists known as the Bentveughels, which at that time included Jan Asselijn, Karel Dujardin, and Nicolaes Berchem. Weenix received several painting commissions; among them was at least one from Cardinal Pamphili, later Pope Innocent X. He specialized in classicizing landscapes, at times in collaboration with other painters such as Asselijn and Berchem. He retumed to Holland about 1647 and eventually settled in Utrecht.

Frits Lugt ascribed this large sheet to Moeyaert; Judson and van Regteren Altena were the first to attribute it to Weenix. His early landscape style does show affinities with that of the Pre-Rembrandt school typified by his teacher, Moeyaert. However, the Bowdoin sheet is much closer to Weenix's mature landscape drawings, many of which are executed in red chalk. Van Regteren Altena pointed out similarities to sheets in the Kestner-Museum, Hanover,1 and William Robinson has drawn attention to a drawing in the Van Leeuwen Collection, Utrecht.2 These drawings show particular parallels in technique with Bowdoin's sheet in architectural elements, foliage, and the broad treatment of the distant landscape. The Bowdoin drawing is one of the largest known by Weenix. Other comparable red chalk drawings are in Munich3 and Hamburg.4

Upon removing the sheet from its old mount in 1978, Judy Walsh observed that the verso had been rubbed, undoubtedly in the process of transferring a counterproof of the design onto another sheet (BCMA 1811.52). The location of that work, if extant, is not known. The scene depicted could be an actual site in the Roman Campagna but more likely is a later composition done after the artist's return to Holland.

1. Letter to BCMA, 20 December 1960; the Hanover sheets are published in Kestner-Museum, Handzeichnung I (Die Niederländer des 16. bis 18. Jahrhunderts) (cat. by C. von Heusinger) (Hanover, 1960), nos. 132-34, repr. pl. 42.

2. Repr. in Centraal Museum, Nederlandse Tekeningen uit drie Eeuwen (exh. cat.) (Utrecht, 1978), cat. no. 114.

3. Wegner 1973, nos. 1062, 1064-65, repr. pl. 233.

4. Inv. no. 22711, Gernsheim 17780.

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).