JAN DASVELDT (Amsterdam 1770 – 1855 Amsterdam)
Jan Dasveldt (Amsterdam 1770 – 1855 Amsterdam)
A Horse in a Landscape
Black chalk, pen and brown ink, grey and brown wash, traces of squaring in chalk, grey ink framing lines, 90 x 101 mm (3.5 x 4 inch)
Signed with monogram ‘ID.’ (lower left)
Provenance
Private collection, The Netherlands
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Jan Dasveldt was born in Amsterdam in 1770 and received his artistic training by Hendrik Stokvisch (1768–1820).1 In 1840 he became a member of the Koninklijke Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. Dasveldt was active as a painter, draughtsman and etcher, specialising in landscapes and in representations of animals, particularly cows, horses and dogs – because of this speciality, he was known as ‘kleine Potter’, ‘little Potter’, referring to the Golden Age painter Paulus Potter (1625–1654).
Dasveldt’s masterpiece is his lifesize painting of a Siberian greyhound of circa 1825, which was part of the collection of the Amsterdam banker Adriaan van der Hoop (1778–1854), and now in the collection of the Rjiksmuseum in Amsterdam (fig.).2
The drawn oeuvre of Dasveldt consists mostly of animal studies in black chalk – the present sheet, with the combination of black chalk, grey wash and powerful applications of pen and brown ink, is exceptional in its mixture of media, as it is in the painterly effects of the work, which is in fact executed on a small scale. The presence of Dasveldt’s iconic monogram ID suggests that this sheet was considered as a finished work of art by the artist, intended for collectors of ‘papierconst’, paper art. In terms of scale and subject matter, our drawing can for instance be compared by Dasveldt’s study of a grazing mare in the Teylers Museum in Haarlem (fig.).3
1. For the artist, see the biography in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992- , vol. 24 (2000), p. 341.
2. Oil on canvas, 142.5 x 177 cm, inv. no. SK-C-125; P.J.J. van Thiel, All the paintings in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1976, p. 187, repr.
3. Black chalk on blue paper, 90 x 97 mm, inv. no. Y 048a.
