Sale 6673, Lot 697 Pieter Holsteijn II (c. 1614-1673/83) A tulip book, containing 42 drawings of tulips Watercolor and bodycolor, bound in 17th Century Dutch vellum Estimate: £80,000-120,000	The sensitivity - and breadth - of taste exemplified throughout the Dreesmann Collection is also expressed in his Old Master Drawings. Dr Dreesmann turned his attention to Old Master Drawings quite soon after he took up collecting, and it is no surprise to find there the same breadth of interest as is celebrated elsewhere in these pages. He seems by instinct to have favored the Dutch School, and certainly they take pride of place in numbers, but the sensibility that attracted him to French furniture, and to exquisite craftsmanship on a small scale, led him also to appreciate the delicacy and precision of Watteau and his followers. A significant proportion of his French and Dutch drawings were studies of figures, taken from the life whether observed singly or in small groups; and, despite his interest in city topography, there are comparatively few examples of 'pure' landscape or elaborate composition studies. He owned only one Spanish drawing, the unusual portrait by Goya in red chalk of Felipe de Liaño (one of a series he made of earlier Spanish artists to illustrate a dictionary being prepared by a friend), where the style and presentation seem to owe something to Ottavio Leoni (1578-1630), the Italian specialist in subtly observed small portrait drawings. There are only twenty Italian drawings, but these cover three centuries. From the 16th century come a noble male head in silverpoint of around 1510 by Perugino or a close associate; a recently discovered Correggio study in red chalk for an apostle in the cupola of the Church of San Giovanni Evangelista, Parma, 1520-23; a Madonna and Child by Parmigianino; and a Barocci study for the head of the Virgin in the Visitation of 1584 in the Chiesa Nuova, Rome. A fine Guercino of a young woman effectively represents the 17th century, while 18th century Venice yields a large Fontebasso chalk study of girls' heads and a delightfully informal Canaletto pen sketch of figures at a garden table. Equally informal are the Dutch figure studies of the 17th century taken from life and sometimes translated into oil paint. Imagine the collector's satisfaction when he was able to acquire at a Christie's sale in 1991 Adriaen van de Velde's Boy leaning on a flagon used for a picture of 1655 which Dr Dreesmann had owned since 1973. He sought out other notable figure studies by Aertsen, Goltzius, Bega, Metsu, Saftleven, Dusart and the short-lived but marvelously gifted Moses Ter Borch, and two charming watercolors by Avercamp. No eminent Dutch collector would fail to pursue Rembrandt and his school, and though Dr Dreesmann was unfortunate in that two of his drawings formerly accepted by Rembrandt scholars have recently been questioned, his eye for quality has been recently re-affirmed. It has been suggested that the Old man leaning on a window-sill, bought in 1973 as an outstanding work by Rembrandt's pupil Ferdinand Bol, is in fact by Rembrandt himself: a small but masterly exercise, like a miniature picture, on paper tinted brown, executed in pen and iron-gall ink, the wash fluently added with broad sweeps of the brush, datable to 1638 or 1639. There are also fine examples by other draughtsmen who came under Rembrandt's spell, such as Hoogstraten, Nicolaes Maes and Philips Koninck. However, the most sumptuous contribution to the Dutch section, and a great rarity, is the Tulip Book, one of only forty known, with 42 different tulips exquisitely drawn in watercolor by Pieter Holsteijn II, one per page, in a contemporary vellum binding. Watermarks suggest a date of about 1650. Dr Dreesmann owned a fine Claude drawing. Characteristically, instead of a landscape, he chose one of the often underrated close-up studies of pastoral figures with animals - important for dating other similar drawings as the figures appear in the Pastoral Landscape of 1644, now at Grenoble, and boasting a rare academic nude in red chalk on the back. Clearly though, his preference in French draughtsmanship lay in the 18th century. Besides two Watteau sheets of studies (one copied from a picture by Adriaen van de Venne, now in the Louvre; the other, of about 1711-13, supplying figures for pictures in the Prado and at Troyes), there are drawings by later generations that Watteau inspired, notably Boucher and Fragonard, whose Susannah and the Elders is a typically graceful achievement in brown wash. The Saint-Aubin brothers, Gabriel and Augustin, are well represented. And there is a host of seductive figure and genre subjects by many of the era's less famous but highly talented draughtsmen. The dispersal of this collection, formed by an individual of impressively independent taste and judgement, provides an extraordinary opportunity to a new generation of collectors and connoisseurs to make their own choices and discoveries at most levels of the market. Noël Annesley is Chairman of the International Fine Art Specialist Group, Christie's. Read the Old Master Paintings article "Golden Era" by Gregory Martin. 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