Museum of Art
Artist: Unknown Artist (German, -)
Medium: pen and brown ink and brown wash on paper
Dimensions: 6 1/4 in. x 6 1/4 in. (15.88 cm. x 15.88 cm.)
Credit Line: Bequest of the Honorable James Bowdoin III
Accession Number: 1811.56
- "John Smibeth"
Type: inscription
Location: center
Materials: graphite - "No. 457/illn. [monogram]"
Type: inscription and monogram
Location: verso
Materials: pen and brown ink - crowned L between two fleur-de-lis on crowned shield (similar to Briquet 8287, probably Lorraine manufacture, sixteenth century)
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)
- 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)
Type: catalogue Author: Henry Johnson Document Title: Catalogue of the Bowdoin College Art Collections Publ. Place: Brunswick, Maine Reference: no. 72 Remarks: (as Smibert) Publisher: Bowdoin College Section Title: Pt. 1, The Bowdoin Drawings Date: 1885 Type: catalogue Author: Bowdoin College Museum of Art Document Title: Bowdoin Museum of Fine Arts, Walker Art Building Publ. Place: Brunswick, Maine Reference: no. 75 Remarks: (as Smibert) Publisher: Bowdoin College Section Title: Descriptive Catalogue of the . . . Date: 1930 Author: H. W. Foote Document Title: John Smibert Painter Publ. Place: Cambridge Location: p. 232 Remarks: (as sixteenth-century) Date: 1950 Author: M. S. Sadik Document Title: Colonial and Federal Portraits at Bowdoin College Publ. Place: Brunswick, Maine Location: pp. 216-217 Remarks: (as not by Smibert) Date: 1966 Author: M. Chappell Document Title: Art Bulletin, vol. 64, no. 1 Location: pp. 137 Remarks: (as not Smibert) Section Title: A Note on John Smibert's Italian Sojourn Date: 1982 Type: exhibition catalogue Author: David P. Becker Document Title: Old Master Drawings at Bowdoin College Publ. Place: Brunswick, Maine Location: pp. 26-27 Reference: no. 10 Remarks: (as German, sixteenth century) Publisher: Bowdoin College Date: 1985 Document Title: Artists in Maine, vol. I, no. 1 Publ. Place: Portland, Maine Location: p. 35 Reference: illus. Publisher: Artists in Maine Section Title: AM Book Review Date: 1986 Author: Julia W. Vicinus Document Title: Nature Inhabited Publ. Place: Brunswick, Maine Location: p. 12 Reference: no. 3 Publisher: Bowdoin College Date: 1995
This sheet is significant for being one of three in the original Bowdoin bequest to be inscribed with the name of John Smibert (see BCMA 1811.55 and BCMA 1811.54), thus constituting the primary concrete evidence for the Smibert provenance for the collection (see 1985 Introduction). None of the three drawings has anything to do with Smibert's own art, and this particular design was quickly established by several scholars as dating from the sixteenth century.1 Though Frits Lugt thought it was of Flemish origin, more recently most authorities have placed it in Germany, probably in the area of Nuremberg.2
The design has been thought to be a model for a silver dish. It could also conceivably have been a model for a ceramic piece, a box lid, or even an engraving in a model book. The scene is of a caravan of animals and armed soldiers traversing countryside which includes a camp among hills, towns, and a river with a pontoon bridge across it. The sketchiness and small size of the figures hamper an accurate attribution, but parallels with the draughtsmanship of Nuremberg artists of the time can be found. A larger sheet attributed to Erhard Schön (ca. 1491-1542) in the Germanischen Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, depicting a similar subject, has similarities in figure type and landscape style.3 The cruder pen work in the Bowdoin drawing could be attributable to its being a contemporary copy of another, more sophisticated study. Designs for works of art in other media were often copied and circulated within (and outside of) workshops.
1. Comments in BCMA files: Sir Robert Witt "German, ca. 1550"; Hans Tietze "at least 200 years earlier than Smibert"; Frits Lugt "Flemish 16th cen. style of Hans Bol."
2. Ingrid Weber and Konrad Oberhuber independently suggested such an origin.
3. Inv. no. Hz 194, repr. in F. Zink, Die Handzeichnungen bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts, vol. I. Die deutschen Handzeichnungen (Nuremberg, 1968), p. 139, cat. no. 109.
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).