Two pages from a sketchbook: A ramshackle cottage with peasants resting; and An overgrown garden wall, a cottage beyond

These drawings belong to a group of small landscape studies, all with the same dimensions, which probably originally formed part of a sketchbook and may have been executed during van Goyen's travels in the Southern Netherlands. Another example from the group is in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris (Beck, op. cit., no. 662), while two others were in the collection sales of Curt Otto in Leipzig (7 November 1929, lot 67; Beck, op. cit., no. 660a) and P. Geismar in Paris (15 November 1928, lot 148; Beck, op. cit., no. 661). The group has been dated to 1645-50, but may even date from slightly earlier: the cottage which is seen from different angles in the present drawings appears again on one of the leaves of a sketchbook from 1644 (H.-U. Beck, Ein Skizzenbuch von Jan van Goyen, The Hague, 1966, p. 68, illustrated). The second drawing in the present lot was used by van Goyen as the basis for two larger, more elaborate drawings executed almost ten years later in 1652-53 (Beck, op. cit., nos. 291 and 423).