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Lot Essay
In his notes (now at the British Library, London, Lansdown Ms. 802), the Italian collector Sebastian Resta provides some details about
the enigmatic ‘Monsu Habe’, a Fleming who would have been a pupil of Van Dyck, a friend of Rubens, and whom Resta knew personally when he spent time in Italy. Through his heirs, Resta acquired some of the major Flemish sheets in his collection, including drawings by Rubens now at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan. Jeremy Wood has proposed an identification with an otherwise obscure artist, Maximilien l’Abbe, an artist from Mechelen, recorded there between 1635 and 1661, who died in 1675 (‘Padre Resta's Flemish Drawings. Van Diepenbeeck, Van Thulden, Rubens and the School of Fontainebleau’, Master Drawings, XXVII, 1990, p. 7; and op. cit., 2010, p. 75). Given Resta’s personal acquaintance with ‘Habe’, his attribution of this drawing to the Flemish artist can be considered highly reliable, making this the hitherto only identified work by him. The nervous penmanship of the drawing and overly elegant figures can indeed be related to that of Van Dyck, while the mixed technique and layered use of small pieces of paper of irregular size seem to be entirely Habe’s own.
the enigmatic ‘Monsu Habe’, a Fleming who would have been a pupil of Van Dyck, a friend of Rubens, and whom Resta knew personally when he spent time in Italy. Through his heirs, Resta acquired some of the major Flemish sheets in his collection, including drawings by Rubens now at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan. Jeremy Wood has proposed an identification with an otherwise obscure artist, Maximilien l’Abbe, an artist from Mechelen, recorded there between 1635 and 1661, who died in 1675 (‘Padre Resta's Flemish Drawings. Van Diepenbeeck, Van Thulden, Rubens and the School of Fontainebleau’, Master Drawings, XXVII, 1990, p. 7; and op. cit., 2010, p. 75). Given Resta’s personal acquaintance with ‘Habe’, his attribution of this drawing to the Flemish artist can be considered highly reliable, making this the hitherto only identified work by him. The nervous penmanship of the drawing and overly elegant figures can indeed be related to that of Van Dyck, while the mixed technique and layered use of small pieces of paper of irregular size seem to be entirely Habe’s own.