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Lot Essay
Portrait drawings by Abraham Bloemaert are exceedingly rare; in his catalogue raisonné of the artist's drawings Professor Jaap Bolten only lists four of which three portray clerics and one an unknown woman (Bolten, op. cit., nos. 636-639). Two of these portraits were engraved: the Portrait of Tomas à Kempis, reading in his Cell, now in the Stadtmuseum Nordico in Linz (inv. S V/285; Bolten, op. cit., no. 637), was engraved by Frederick Bloemaert (1614/17-1690) and The Priest Martinus Conincx, also called Regius was engraved by Cornelis Bloemaert the Younger (1602/04-1692) (present whereabouts of the drawing unknown; Bolten, op. cit., no. 638).
The drawing on the recto of the present sheet shows a nun who could possibly be identified as Abraham’s half-sister Barbara, a nun in the Convent of Saint Clare in Den Bosch from 1606 to 1650. The kneeling man on the verso of this drawing could have been a study for a Prodigal Son or one of the shepherds in a composition of The Adoration of the Shepherds (Bolten, op. cit., no. 1033). The number ‘75’ in the upper right corner of the recto of this sheet could indicate that the drawing was originally in the so-called Giroux Album passed out of Bloemaert family hands early in the 18th Century.
The drawing on the recto of the present sheet shows a nun who could possibly be identified as Abraham’s half-sister Barbara, a nun in the Convent of Saint Clare in Den Bosch from 1606 to 1650. The kneeling man on the verso of this drawing could have been a study for a Prodigal Son or one of the shepherds in a composition of The Adoration of the Shepherds (Bolten, op. cit., no. 1033). The number ‘75’ in the upper right corner of the recto of this sheet could indicate that the drawing was originally in the so-called Giroux Album passed out of Bloemaert family hands early in the 18th Century.