Entry by
Susan Anderson,
completed November 01, 2017:
This study of peasants under an arbor is a very close copy of a drawing by Adriaen van Ostade in the Städtische Wessenberg-Galerie, Konstanz. As Franklin Robinson has pointed out, the two are almost exactly the same size; their slightly different dimensions may be because the Konstanz sheet has been trimmed at the lower edge. They are also very close in detail, down to the repetition in our drawing of Van Ostade’s multiple attempts at the arm of the well. (Given that this is a direct copy—perhaps a training exercise done under Van Ostade’s watchful eye—the goal would have been to adhere to the original.) Otherwise, the basket in the Konstanz work was changed to a log in our drawing, and a dark brown wash was applied across much of our sheet.
Though our drawing is close to the one in Konstanz, its attribution remains vexing. I accept it as a work by Cornelis Dusart, Van Ostade’s last student, but with reservations. Robinson and Bernhard Schnackenburg both have attributed it to Dusart, noting stylistic similarities to his secure work, especially the use of dark wash. Passages of penwork, such as the renderings of the seated man and the walking man in the foreground, are indeed very comparable to Dusart’s early style and form the basis of the attribution. But the foliage and the background figures display a less precise approach than typically seen in Dusart’s early works. And while Dusart is known to have used a broadly applied dark brown wash in his own drawings, its application here (as well as the application of gray wash) is more haphazard than that usually seen in Dusart’s works.
The monogram of Isaac van Ostade at the lower right, “I.V.O.,” is in a darker ink than the drawing, which implies that a later hand added it. Nonetheless, it has been suggested (in a note in the Harvard Art Museums’ curatorial files) that the drawing might be by Isaac van Ostade, Adriaen’s younger brother, with overworking by Dusart. Isaac’s approach to facial representation, however, is consistently far more nuanced, expressive, and detailed than seen here, and his fluid figural contours are simply lacking in our sheet.
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