Two Figures resting by a Farmhouse

Beck (loc. cit., 1987) dates this to circa 1631. When discussing a painting of a farm with peasants of 1630 or 1636 in a New York Private Collection, Peter Sutton erroneously used the copy after the present lot, now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts at Besançon (inv. no. 776, P. Sutton, Masters of 17th-Century Dutch Landscape Painting, exhib. cat., Amsterdam Boston Philadelphia, 1987-8, under no. 34, illustrated p. 324) as a comparison. In fact the present drawing is closely related to a farm in Van Goyen's painting dated 1631 in the Musée des Beaux-Arts at Carcassonne, Beck, op. cit, 1973, II, no. 998, illustrated, which concurs with Beck's dating of the drawing. In the early 1630s Van Goyen mostly used few and simple motifs placed in a diagonal design, drawn in an almost mannerist way reminiscent of farmhouses by Abraham Bloemaert. The artist painted almost exclusively in monochrome in these years, and even in his drawings the various elements in the landscape seem to form part of the landscape itself. His monochrome painting of this period is reflected in the use of light and dark effects providing the depth seen in this drawing.