Lot 66: JAN PORCELLIS GHENT BEFORE 1584 - 1632 ZOETERWOUDE

signed with initials, lower centre: I P.

bears Goll van Franckenstein numbering in brown ink, verso: N^o 1376.
black chalk, within black ink framing lines
Inv.nr. N 451

137 by 196 mm.

D. Hannema, Catalogue of the H.E. ten Cate Collection, Rotterdam 1955, vol. 1, p. 152, no. 271;
Amsterdam/Dordrecht 1994-5, p. 19, reproduced fig. 15

Jhr. J. Goll van Franckenstein (L.2987);
H.E. ten Cate, Oldenzaal (L.533b);
With C.G. Boerner, Düsseldorf, December 1964, cat. no. 82;
From whom purchased by the present owner, 2 January 1965 (together with Inv.nr. N 450)

This drawing is comparable with a small group of similar chalk drawings of beach and harbour scenes, including two in the British Museum, one in Berlin, one in the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, two sold Amsterdam, Sotheby's (9 November 1999, lot 109 and 4 November 2003, lot 93), and one in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (see M. Schapelhouman and P. Schatborn, Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Artists born between 1580 and 1600, 2 vols., Amsterdam 1998, cat. no. 270, reproduced). The Unicorno drawing, the Rijksmuseum sheet and three of the others are signed with the initials IP (or JP); as Schapelhouman and Schatborn have pointed out, although Jan Porcellis and his son Julius both signed paintings in this way, there is no good reason to attribute the drawings to the latter, who is totally unknown as a draughtsman.