Peasants and animals fording a stream, below town walls

We are grateful to Dr. Annemarie Stefes for confirming the attribution to Berchem based upon a photograph and suggesting a date of circa 1657-59. Dr. Stefes compares the style of the drawing to two others - Woman with a bundle crossing a brook and Woman on horseback next to a woman milking a goat (see A. Stefes, Nicholaes Pietersz. Berchem - Die Zeichnungen, unpublished dissertation, Bern, 1997, II/97 and II/98). She compares the composition with two designs for prints, Shepherdess at a well and Shepherd and shepherdess with cattle on a rocky path (M. Plomp, The Dutch Drawings in the Teyler Museum: artists born between 1575 and 1630, Doornspijk, 1997, II, pp. 68-69, nos. 40 and 41) and suggests that Berchem may at some point have planned to reproduce the composition as a print.
Dr. Stefes will include the drawing in her forthcoming catalogue raisonné on the artist.