Aernout ter Himpel (Amsterdam 1634 – 1686 Amsterdam)

Wooded Landscape with Figures

Black chalk and grey wash, black ink framing line, circular, diameter 171 mm (6.7 inch)

Signed and dated at lower centre in brown ink '1654. A. ter Himpel.'; the reverse of the drawing lifted off and mounted separately, with the collector’s marks of Böhm and Wiesböck (Lugt nos. 271, 1442 and fragmentary 272)

Provenance
~ Possibly J.D. Nijman; his sale, 19 March 1798, Album S, lot 50: ‘Een Boomryk Landschap, op de Voorgrond met twee Beeldjes en en Hond, frapant van licht; met Oost. Inkt gewassen, door A. ter Himpel’ (to Schouwman for fl. 6-10)
~ J.D. Böhm (1794-1865)
~ C. Wiesböck (1811-1874)
~ Hofrat Philipp Dräxler von Carin, sold by him in 1874 to:
~ Joseph Carl Rutter von Klinkosch (1822-1888); his sale, C.J. Wawra, Vienna, 15 April 1889, lot 458: ‘Waldlandschaft. Kreidezeichnung, mit Tusch lavirt. gr. 4. Rund. Bezeichnet: A. Ter Himpel 1654’ (to Prestel for 2 Marks)
~ With dealer F.A.C. Prestel, Frankfurt-am-Main
~ With dealer Adolphe Stein, H. Terry Engell Gallery, London, 1975
~ H.R. Bijl, The Hague; his sale, Sotheby’s, Amsterdam, 17 November 1993, lot 22, repr.
~ Glerum, The Hague, 10 November 1997, lot 899, repr., where purchased by:
~ Private collection, The Netherlands

Literature
~ A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon auf Grund archivalischer Forschungen bearbeitet, Vienna/Leipzig 1906, vol. I, p. 689
~ Dietrich Meyerhöfer, ‘Aarnout ter Himpel (um 1634 - 1686), Vorläufiges Verzeichnis seiner Zeichnungen’, Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte, vol. 32, 1993 (pp. 127-204), p. 189, no. 130 (‘Allee’)

Exhibited
Adolphe Stein, H. Terry Engell Gallery, London, 1975, no. 61, repr.

***

Arnout ter Himpel was born in Amsterdam in 1634 and married Aaltje Alberts Holl from Harderwijk in 1661. He is best known for his landscape drawings, often of circular or oval shape. It has been suggested that some of them are designs for the decoration of porcelain plates.

This beautiful atmospheric sheet is an early work by the artist, drawn when he was just twenty years old. It is exceptional both in Ter Himpel's drawn oeuvre, and in Dutch 17th-century draftsmanship as a whole, in that it is completely executed in wash, a technique mostly associated with the 18th century and often associated with Aert Schouman (1710-1792).