A Farm with the Manor Kostverloren on the River Amstel, near Amsterdam (recto); Farm buildings (verso)

Visscher used his drawing of the Karthuizerklooster near Amsterdam from the same series (B. Bakker, E. Fleurbaay, A.W. Gerlagh, De verzameling Van Eeghen, Amsterdamse Tekeningen 1600-1950, Zwolle/Amsterdam, 1988, p. 57, no. 1, now in the Municipal Archives, Amsterdam) for another etching in the series of four small views near Amsterdam (Hollstein XXXVIII, no. 142). That and the present lot are part of a larger series of drawings of comparable format, technique and handling with topographical views of and near Amsterdam, Abcoude, Bussum, Haarlem and The Hague, mostly dated 1607-8, in the Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam; the Prentenkabinet der Rijksuniversiteit, Leiden; the Municipal Archives, Haarlem and Amsterdam and other collections, M. Simon, Claes Jansz. Visscher, dissertation, Freiburg, 1958, Katalog der Zeichnungen, nos. 1/2,16,21,25,39,41,47,49,53,63, and 70/71). The series show the influence of David Vinckboons' drawing technique on Visscher, while it was J.G. van Gelder who first pointed out the importance of Visscher's drawings for the development of Dutch landscape art in the 17th Century.
Kostverloren, later depicted by Rembrandt, Jacob van Ruisdael, Jan van Goyen and many others, was first mentioned circa 1500, and was demolished in 1822. No trace of it remains today. Seymour Slive most recently discussed the depiction of this castle in the history of Dutch art, The Manor Kostverloren: Vicissitudes of a Seventeenth Century Dutch landscape motif in The Age of Rembrandt, Studies in Seventeenth Century Dutch Painting, Pennsylvania, 1988, II, 6, pp. 133-68.