View of the ‘hortillonages’ in Amiens

The seventeenth-century, undoubtedly autograph inscription allows this view to be identified as one of the area north of Amiens known as the ‘hortillonages’, an extensive neighbourhood of market gardens which has existed since the Middle Ages and partly survives today. The drawing may well be the earliest surviving view of the site. The handwriting of the inscription and style of the drawing are close to those of Josua de Grave, an artist known from a large number of topographical landscapes in Holland and present-day Belgium and France, some worked up with watercolour. He visited Paris around 1667-1668 (see S. Alsteens and H. Buijs, Paysages de France dessinés par Lambert Doomer et les artistes hollandais et flamands des XVIe et XVIIe siècles, Paris, 2008, p. 325), and the present drawing may well date from that time. The eighteenth-century printmaker Hendrik Spilman made a print in reverse after the drawing, of which a hand-coloured impression is included in this lot; another is at the Rijksmuseum (inv. RP-P-1897-A-19598).