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Lot Essay
Hans Verbeek has seen the original and confirmed the attribution, pointing out that this is after the picture in the Louvre by Gabriel Metsu, A. Brejon de Lavergnée, J. Foucart and N. Reynaud, Ecoles flamande et hollandaise, Paris, 1979, inv. no. 1469, illustrated.
Battem is best known for his finished bodycolour landscapes, such as those sold in these Rooms, 21 November 1989, lot 73, illustrated, and 25 November 1991, lots 146-8, illustrated. Only one other copy by him, after G.A. Berckheyde's painting of the Binnenhof, The Hague, is known, with Douwes, Amsterdam, 1974. These are rare examples of finished works in bodycolour drawn after a contemporary artist and obviously for collectors. In this case it confirms the popularity of what has been called one of Metsu's Chefs d'Oeuvre, which was executed in circa 1660, and was engraved twice in the 18th Century when it was already in France. Other than Battem's bodycolours only one drawing in pen and ink is known, the verso of a bodycolour at Windsor, C. White and C. Crawley, The Dutch and Flemish Drawings of the Fifteenth to the early Nineteenth Centuries in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, Cambridge, 1994, no. 296, illustrated.
Battem is best known for his finished bodycolour landscapes, such as those sold in these Rooms, 21 November 1989, lot 73, illustrated, and 25 November 1991, lots 146-8, illustrated. Only one other copy by him, after G.A. Berckheyde's painting of the Binnenhof, The Hague, is known, with Douwes, Amsterdam, 1974. These are rare examples of finished works in bodycolour drawn after a contemporary artist and obviously for collectors. In this case it confirms the popularity of what has been called one of Metsu's Chefs d'Oeuvre, which was executed in circa 1660, and was engraved twice in the 18th Century when it was already in France. Other than Battem's bodycolours only one drawing in pen and ink is known, the verso of a bodycolour at Windsor, C. White and C. Crawley, The Dutch and Flemish Drawings of the Fifteenth to the early Nineteenth Centuries in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, Cambridge, 1994, no. 296, illustrated.