Anthonie Andriessen (Amsterdam 1746 – 1813 Amsterdam)

Italianate Landscape with Shepherds

Pen and brown ink, watercolour, squared in pencil, grey ink framing lines, image size 162 x 218 mm (6.4 x 8.6 inch), sheet size 176 x 232 mm (6.9 x 9.1 inch)

Provenance
Private collection, The Netherlands

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Like his better-known brother Jurriaan Andriessen (1742–1819), who was also his teacher, Anthonie specialized in painted wall decorations, which were hugely popular from the middle of the 18th century.¹ Jurriaan’s son Christiaan (1775–1846) kept a visual diary between 1805 and 1808 which has become one of the most iconic documents of its time. Both brothers were active in the Amsterdam Teekenacademie (drawing academy); their pupils included some of the best-known 19th-century Dutch artists, such as Wouter Johannes van Troostwijk, Hendrik Voogd and Jean Grandjean.

Anthonie is the author of a small group of figure studies, drawn in a strongly stylized manner, which appear to have been done quite late in his career, in the early years of the nineteenth century and are similar to the drawings of his nephew, Christiaan, although whether the young artist influenced the older uncle, or vice versa, has not yet been established. The majority of Anthonie’s drawings however are landscapes, sometimes executed in colour washes, sometimes in grey or brown ink. They are strongly reminiscent of drawings by Italianate masters of the seventeenth century, such as Nicolaes Berchem. Anthonie is known to have studied the masters of the Golden Age, and drawn copies after paintings by Jan Wijnants, Adriaen van de Velde, Dominicus van Tol and Frans Hals are known from historic sale catalogues.

Drawings by Anthonie Andriessen are preserved in the Fogg Museum, Cambridge (Massachusetts), the Groninger Museum, Groningen, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam.

Our drawing is squared for transfer, which suggests it could be a design for a larger-scale ‘behangsel’ decorative painting, which is at yet unknown. It can for instance be compared to a drawing by Andriessen formerly in the collection of I.Q. van Regteren Altena (fig.).²

1. For the artist, see the biography in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992- , vol. 3, p. 674.
2. Pencil, watercolour, black ink framing lines, 155 x 196 mm; Christie’s, Amsterdam, 10 December 2014, lot 47, repr.