As a painter, Simon de Vlieger (1601–1653) specialized in marine scenes ranging from stormy shipwrecks to ceremonial parades. Although he also occasionally painted forest scenes, it was as a draughtsman that he most fully explored the genre of landscape, and the Crocker drawing typifies this important aspect of his career. As Odilia Bonebakker has noted, de Vlieger’s finished landscape studies fall into two categories: smaller vertical scenes and larger horizontal compositions like this one.(1) These detailed black and white chalk drawings on blue paper, often touched with gray wash, were finished works of art in their own right, not studies for paintings or for the landscape etchings that de Vliegher also produced.
While de Vlieger sometimes signed these drawings, many lack signatures, including the Crocker work. The similarity of Vlieger’s draftsmanship to that of his contemporaries Anthonie Waterloo, Jan van Kessel, and Joris van der Haagen has led to recurring confusion, as have monograms or signatures added by collectors over the past three centuries.(2) A group of signed landscapes by Vlieger, acquired by the Rijksmuseum in 1985, has clarified some aspects of his draftsmanship and assisted in the attribution of many of the unsigned drawings.(3) Even now, however, the hands of Vlieger and Waterloo are difficult to differentiate, though some scholars believe that Waterloo only rarely used blue paper.(4) The linear treatment of the distant landscape in the Crocker drawing, for instance, resembles the view of Haarlem in the background of a drawing in Brussels, but scholars are divided on the attribution of that sheet.(5)
Several aspects of the Crocker drawing’s style point toward Simon de Vlieger as the artist. The use of white chalk to suggest patches of dappled sunlight as well as the strong contrast between patches of sun and shade on the ground both resemble the description of light in de Vlieger’s drawings, including the example in Ottawa.(6) The serpentine tree branches also recall those in a number of drawings by de Vlieger, and the motif of the path winding into the distance recurs in several of his landscapes. Although de Vlieger used a variety of techniques to evoke different types of foliage, the spiky bunches of leaves and broad areas of wash seen here both appear in his other drawings. The composition of the Crocker drawing is especially close to that of an example now in Budapest, while the gentle hills recall the terrain in the Budapest drawing and one in The Hague.(7)
Because most of Vlieger’s landscape sketches are undated, it is difficult at the present time to establish a chronology for these drawings. In addition, the artist moved several times during the course of his career, living at various times in Delft, Amsterdam, and Rotterdam. Both factors complicate any attempt to pinpoint the settings of his landscape drawings. Two sheets, however, bear inscriptions locating the landscapes in the woods outside of The Hague, offering one possibility for their inspiration whether or not they were actually drawn from life.(8)
Stacey Sell, in William Breazeale, with Cara Denison, Stacey Sell, and Freyda Spira, A Pioneering Collection: Master Drawings from the Crocker Art Museum, exh. cat. Sacramento and tour, 2010
Notes:
(1) In Joaneath Spicer, Dutch and Flemish Drawings from the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 2004, p. 136. Similar drawings survive in collections all over the world: see, for example, ibi, no. 57; Marijn Schapelhouman and Peter Schatborn, Land & Water, Dutch Drawings from the 17th Century in the Rijksmuseum Print Room, Amsterdam, 1987, p.34; Stefaan Hautekeete, Dessins du siècle d'or hollandaise, la collection Jean de Grez, exh. cat. Brussels, 2007, no. 41; Michiel Plomp, The Dutch Drawings in the Teyler Museum, Haarlem, 1997, nos. 513–517; Felice Stampfle, Rubens and Rembrandt in their Century, Flemish and Dutch Drawings of the 17th Century from the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, 1979, no. 65. For Vlieger’s pen drawings, see Christiaan P. van Eeghen, “Simon de Vlieger as a Draftsman, I: The Pen Drawings,” in Master Drawings, vol. XLIV, no. 1, 2006, pp. 3–47.
(2) For van der Haagen and de Vlieger, see Hautekeete 2007 as in note 1 above, p. 129. For Jan van Kessel, see Dennis Farr and William Bradford, The Northern Landscape, Flemish, Dutch, and British Drawings from the Courtauld Collections, exh. cat. New York, 1986, no. 67, p. 158.
(3) Hautekeete 2007 as in note 1 above, p. 132, and “Keuze uit de aanwisten,” in Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum, 1986, no. 1, pp. 37–38 and 44–45.
(4) Schapelhoumann and Schatborn 1987 as in note 1 above, p. 34.
(5) Hautekeete 2007 as in note 1 above, no. 42
(6) Bonebakker in Spicer 2004 as in note 1 above, no. 57.
(7) Both drawings are attributed to Vlieger by Charles Dumas and illustrated in Andrea Czére, ed., In Arte Venustas, Studies on Drawings in honour of Teréz Gerzsi presented on her eightieth birthday, Budapest, 2007, p. 162.
(8) ibidem, p. 162
Inscriptions: verso, graphite, lower left: No. 129; dark brown ink, lower left: 180 z
Provenance: Edwin Bryant Crocker, Sacramento, by 1871; gift of his widow Margaret to the Museum, 1885
Literature: William Breazeale, with Cara Denison, Stacey Sell, and Freyda Spira, A Pioneering Collection: Master Drawings from the Crocker Art Museum, exh. cat. Sacramento and tour, 2010, no. 22; Numa S. Trivas, Old Master Drawings from the E. B. Crocker Collection, the Dutch and Flemish Masters, unpubl. ms., Sacramento, 1942, no. 136; Numa S. Trivas, Three Centuries of Landscape Drawing, exh. cat. Sacramento, 1940, no. 52
