Lot Essay
The subject is taken from Genesis 18, 1-33. As described in the Bible, Abraham feeds the angels, of which one is God Himself, under the oaks of Mamre. The aged woman at the door of the house is probably Sarah with God informing her that she will bear a son. The central episode is Abraham pleading that Sodom and Gomorrah should not be destroyed if ten righteous citizens are found.
Bol has based the canal of the present sheet on a silverpoint drawing inscribed 'delfs ghouw' in the British Museum (fig. 1, Hind, V, no. 5, p. 95). Although the medium is unusual, the view of the British Museum drawing may well have been drawn directly from nature and Bol has adapted it in the present drawing by breaking the monotony of the left-hand bank with a canal meeting the main one, adding a house and an avenue of trees. He also made the town beyond much grander than the rather modest village of Delfsghouw, a small village outside Delft, adding an imposing cathedral to the right. Campbell Dodgson was the first to attribute the British Museum sheet, previously believed to be by Dürer, to Bol (C. Dodgson, Eine Zeichnung Hans Bol, Mitteilungen aus den Sächsischen Kunstsammlungen, 1912, III, pp. 39-41), pointing out that it had served as a model for the landscape in a bodycolor drawing, signed and dated 1586, in Dresden, A. Walther et al., Gemäldegalerie Dresden, Alte Meister, Katalog der ausgestellten Werke, Dresden/Leipzig, 1992, no. 826, illustrated. Hind also records a pen and ink drawing of this view that belonged in 1928 to Mr. Malcolm Laing.
The Dresden drawing is similar in composition to that of the present study, although the scene of Abraham and the Angels with Sarah is on the left rather than on the right. The city in the background of the Dresden drawing differs from that in the present drawing, and has been identified as a view of Delft, A. van Suchtelen, Hans Bol, Een van de eerste schilders van het Hollandse Stadsgezicht, Antiek, tijdschrift voor kunst en kunstnijverheid, 1993, 28, no. 5. In this article van Suchtelen underlines Bol's importance as one of the first artists to paint cityscapes, a genre that was to remain central to Dutch art throughout the 17th and 18th Century. Bol's views were not always topographically accurate, conflating real and imagined elements such as in the painting dated 1589 in Berlin, H. Bock et al., Gemäldegalerie Berlin, Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, Berlin, 1986, no. M 508, fig. 284. Similar views, such as those sold at Christie's, Amsterdam, 14 November 1994, lot 4, illustrated, show Bol's characteristic small scale and miniaturist technique allied with his preference for vellum laid down on panel, which reflects the artist's Flemish training which would have still been rooted in the tradition of illuminated manuscripts. Bol fled from the war in the south in 1584 and living in various northern towns until he settled in Amsterdam where he worked until his death in 1593. Bol's travels are reflected in his paintings and drawings of various cities as he adapted to the local markets, for example the gouache of Antwerp dated to the year before he moved to the north formerly with Bob Habolt, Paris, or the views of Delft of 1586 and Amsterdam of 1589 in private collections, van Suchtelen, op. cit., figs. 3, 2 and 7 respectively.
Other examples of Bol basing bodycolor drawings - presumably intended as independent works - on earlier drawings, include the Hermitage bodycolor of Winter which incorporates a view of Brussels taken from a sheet in the Rijksprentenkabinett, Amsterdam (K.G. Boon, Netherlandish Drawings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, The Hague, 1978, I, no. 82, II, illustrated) and a gouache, also of a winter scene, in the Residenz, Munich, which is inspired by a drawing in an American public collection, W.W. Robinson, The Age of Breughel, exhib. cat., Washington, National Gallery of Art and New York, The Pierpont Morgan Museum, 1986-7, no. 15, illustrated (the Munich drawing as fig. 2 on p. 74)
Bol has based the canal of the present sheet on a silverpoint drawing inscribed 'delfs ghouw' in the British Museum (fig. 1, Hind, V, no. 5, p. 95). Although the medium is unusual, the view of the British Museum drawing may well have been drawn directly from nature and Bol has adapted it in the present drawing by breaking the monotony of the left-hand bank with a canal meeting the main one, adding a house and an avenue of trees. He also made the town beyond much grander than the rather modest village of Delfsghouw, a small village outside Delft, adding an imposing cathedral to the right. Campbell Dodgson was the first to attribute the British Museum sheet, previously believed to be by Dürer, to Bol (C. Dodgson, Eine Zeichnung Hans Bol, Mitteilungen aus den Sächsischen Kunstsammlungen, 1912, III, pp. 39-41), pointing out that it had served as a model for the landscape in a bodycolor drawing, signed and dated 1586, in Dresden, A. Walther et al., Gemäldegalerie Dresden, Alte Meister, Katalog der ausgestellten Werke, Dresden/Leipzig, 1992, no. 826, illustrated. Hind also records a pen and ink drawing of this view that belonged in 1928 to Mr. Malcolm Laing.
The Dresden drawing is similar in composition to that of the present study, although the scene of Abraham and the Angels with Sarah is on the left rather than on the right. The city in the background of the Dresden drawing differs from that in the present drawing, and has been identified as a view of Delft, A. van Suchtelen, Hans Bol, Een van de eerste schilders van het Hollandse Stadsgezicht, Antiek, tijdschrift voor kunst en kunstnijverheid, 1993, 28, no. 5. In this article van Suchtelen underlines Bol's importance as one of the first artists to paint cityscapes, a genre that was to remain central to Dutch art throughout the 17th and 18th Century. Bol's views were not always topographically accurate, conflating real and imagined elements such as in the painting dated 1589 in Berlin, H. Bock et al., Gemäldegalerie Berlin, Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, Berlin, 1986, no. M 508, fig. 284. Similar views, such as those sold at Christie's, Amsterdam, 14 November 1994, lot 4, illustrated, show Bol's characteristic small scale and miniaturist technique allied with his preference for vellum laid down on panel, which reflects the artist's Flemish training which would have still been rooted in the tradition of illuminated manuscripts. Bol fled from the war in the south in 1584 and living in various northern towns until he settled in Amsterdam where he worked until his death in 1593. Bol's travels are reflected in his paintings and drawings of various cities as he adapted to the local markets, for example the gouache of Antwerp dated to the year before he moved to the north formerly with Bob Habolt, Paris, or the views of Delft of 1586 and Amsterdam of 1589 in private collections, van Suchtelen, op. cit., figs. 3, 2 and 7 respectively.
Other examples of Bol basing bodycolor drawings - presumably intended as independent works - on earlier drawings, include the Hermitage bodycolor of Winter which incorporates a view of Brussels taken from a sheet in the Rijksprentenkabinett, Amsterdam (K.G. Boon, Netherlandish Drawings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, The Hague, 1978, I, no. 82, II, illustrated) and a gouache, also of a winter scene, in the Residenz, Munich, which is inspired by a drawing in an American public collection, W.W. Robinson, The Age of Breughel, exhib. cat., Washington, National Gallery of Art and New York, The Pierpont Morgan Museum, 1986-7, no. 15, illustrated (the Munich drawing as fig. 2 on p. 74)