2012.57: Woman Milking a Cow

Identification and Creation

Object Number

2012.57

People

Nicolaes Berchem the Elder, Dutch (Haarlem, Netherlands 1620 - 1683 Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Title

Woman Milking a Cow

Other Titles

Alternate Title: Bäuerinnen mit ihrem Vieh

Classification

Drawings

Work Type

drawing

Date

c. 1658

Culture

Dutch

Persistent Link

https://hvrd.art/o/340091

Physical Descriptions

Medium

Black chalk and gray wash, partly incised, on cream antique laid paper, mounted down entirely

Dimensions

26.2 x 20.5 cm (10 5/16 x 8 1/16 in.)

Inscriptions and Marks

• Signed: upper right, black chalk: CPB [in ligature] erchem f.
• collector's mark: verso, lower center, brown ink: L. 816 (William Esdaile)
• collector's mark: verso, lower center, black ink stamp: L. 2799 (William Mayor)
• inscription: verso, lower center, brown ink: Berchem
• inscription: verso, lower left, brown ink: No. 175. 2 [or Z?]
• collector's mark: lower left, black ink stamp: L. 2799 (William Mayor)
• watermark: mount: Posthorn in a shield with 4, WR and 1786 (Related to Heawood 2732, Leiden, 1704)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History

Simon Fokke, Amsterdam, sold; [Van der Schley et al., Amsterdam, 6 December 1784, kb C, lot 183]. William Esdaile, London (L. 816, verso, lower center), sold; [Christie's, London, 18 June 1840, lot 774]; to William Mayor, London (L. 2799, lower left and verso, lower center). Martin Johann Jenisch the younger, Hamburg, Germany and later collection Von Jenisch, Blumendorf castle, sold; to [Martin Moeller, Hamburg, sold]; to Harvard Art Museums, 2012; Marian H. Phinney Fund, 2012.57.

NOTES:
1. Simon Fokke (1712-1784)
2. William Esdaile (1758-1837)
3. William Mayor (d. 1874)
4. Martin Johann Jenisch the younger (1793-1857)

Published Text

Catalogue

Drawings from the Age of Bruegel, Rubens, and Rembrandt: Highlights from the Collection of the Harvard Art Museums

Authors

William W. Robinson and Susan Anderson

Publisher

Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 2016)

Catalogue entry no. 4 by William W. Robinson:

Nicolaes Berchem is best known as seventeenth-century Holland’s outstanding painter of Italianate landscapes, but his large and varied oeuvre also includes Dutch views, winter scenes, nocturnes, battles, Mediterranean harbors, and biblical and allegorical subjects.¹ It is doubtful that Berchem ever crossed the Alps.² He capitalized on the popularity of imagery that evoked the landscape, light, ancient ruins, and timeless pastoral life of the Italian campagna by adapting the compositional types and atmospheric effects he studied in works by Pieter van Laer, Jan Both, and Jan Asselijn, all of whom had spent time in Rome.³

More than 350 drawings by Berchem have survived.⁴ Most represent landscapes, but he also produced attractive studies of figures and animals. While only a few are directly preparatory for his paintings and autograph etchings,⁵ models for prints executed by specialist engravers comprise a larger group of designs for works in other media. During the 1640s and early 1650s, Berchem etched his own plates with series of animals, and landscapes with herders and cattle, some of them based on figure studies and studies of animals from life.⁶ Around 1655, he temporarily gave up etching and began to collaborate with other printmakers for the purpose of publishing his compositions. Many of the prints after Berchem’s designs reproduce drawings from the middle of the 1650s.⁷

The Harvard work provided the model for an etching by Cornelis Visscher, the third in a set of four upright landscapes with pastoral scenes (Fig. 1).⁸ Visscher, who executed eleven prints after Berchem, probably finished this suite shortly before his death in 1658.⁹ The drawing is partially incised to transfer the design to the plate, and the etching reproduces the composition in reverse. Berchem signed the drawing at the upper right, and in the corresponding space at the upper left of the print Visscher identified him as the designer (CBerghem Delinea) above his own signature (C. Visscher f.). Berchem’s models for two other prints in the set are known. The design for Shepherdess Riding on a Donkey, now in the Prentenkabinet der Rijksuniversiteit, Leiden, belonged, with the Harvard drawing, to the Amsterdam artist and collector Simon Fokke (1712– 1784) and appeared as the lot following it in his sale.¹⁰ The model for The Ford was on the art market in Germany in 2003.¹¹ Like the Harvard work, both were executed in gray wash and black chalk and were partially incised to transfer the design.¹²

Like many prints by and after Berchem, the etching after the Harvard drawing provided other artists with motifs for their compositions. The Haarlem painter Job Berckheyde used it as a point of departure for the design of a picture, and an anonymous Delftware decorator adapted the tree, cows, and figures for a ceramic plaque dated 1660.¹³

Notes

¹ Jennifer M. Killian, “Berchem Nicolaes (Pietersz.)” in Jane Turner, ed., The Dictionary of Art (New York, 1996), vol. 3, pp. 757–60; Pieter Biesboer, ed., Nicolaes Berchem: In het licht van Italië (Haarlem: Frans Hals Museum; Zurich: Kunsthaus Zürich; Schwerin, Germany: Staatliches Museum Schwerin, 2006), pp. 11–32.

² Annemarie Stefes in “Nicolaes Pietersz. Berchem (1620–1683). Die Zeichnungen” (Unpublished thesis. Bern, Switzerland, 1997, pp. 9–15, 42, and 76–80), was the first to argue thoroughly and cogently that Berchem never visited Italy. Biesboer in Nicolaes Berchem: In het licht van Italië agreed, corroborating her findings through his knowledge of Haarlem documents.

³ Stefes, pp. 76–80; Biesboer, pp. 20–24.

⁴ Stefes in Biesboer, p. 165 (n. 1).

⁵ Ibid., pp. 97–115; Gerdien Wuestman in Biesboer, p. 127.

⁶ Gerdien Wuestman in Biesboer, pp. 119–26, and under cat. P78, p. 154.

⁷ Ibid., pp. 127 and 167 (n. 24).

⁸ Cornelis Visscher, after Nicolaes Berchem, Woman Milking a Cow (Fig. 1). Etching and engraving, 269 × 213 mm, London, British Museum, F,2.22. Hollstein, vol. 40, no. 70, p. 87. For the series, see that volume, nos. 68–71, pp. 84–88, and Gerdien Wuestman in Biesboer, cats. P89 and P90, pp. 156–57.

⁹ Wuestman in Biesboer, p. 127, and under cat. P89, p. 156.

¹⁰ The print Shepherdess Riding on a Donkey is Hollstein 69 (see note 8). The drawing was catalogued by Stefes, cat. II/104. The Harvard work was Kunstboek C, lot 183, and the Leiden drawing Kunstboek C, lot 184, in the Fokke sale (see Provenance).

¹¹ The print The Ford is Hollstein 68 (see note 8). The drawing is Stefes, cat. II/103A. The drawing was unknown to Stefes when she completed her dissertation in 1997. After it came to light with Kunsthandel Ingrid Knirim, Muenster, in 2003, she assigned it a provisional A number.

¹² My thanks to Annemarie Stefes for sharing with me the entries from her unpublished dissertation on the three drawings connected to prints in the series; Stefes, cats. II/103A, II/104, and II/105.

¹³ Gerdien Wuestman, “Nicolaes Berchem in Print: Fluctuations in the Function and Significance of Reproductive Engraving,” Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, vol. 24, no. 1 (1996): 19–53, p. 30; and Gerdien Wuestman in Biesboer, pp. 130–31.

Figures

Fig. 1 Cornelis Visscher, after Nicolaes Berchem, Woman Milking a Cow

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Marian H. Phinney Fund

Accession Year

2012

Object Number

2012.57

Division

European and American Art

Contact

am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu

Permissions

The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request.

Publication History

• Hugo Helbing, Handzeichnungen alter Meister aus verschiedenen Sammlungen (Munich, Germany, 1902), repr.
• F. W. H. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish etchings, engravings, and woodcuts, ca. 1450-1700., Menno Hertzberger (Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1949-2010), vol. 40, under no. 70, p. 87
• Annemarie Stefes, "Nicolaes Pietersz. Berchem (1620-1683). Die Zeichnungen" (1997), Unpublished, cat. no. II/105
• Pieter Biesboer, Nicolaes Berchem. In het Licht van Italië, exh. cat., Frans Hals Museum and Ludion Publishers (Haarlem and Ghent, 2006), under cat. no. P89, p. 156
• Dr. Moeller & Cie, auct. cat., Dr. Martin Moeller Kunsthandel (Hamburg, Germany, 2012), cat. no. 12, repr.
• William W. Robinson and Susan Anderson, Drawings from the Age of Bruegel, Rubens, and Rembrandt: Highlights from the Collection of the Harvard Art Museums, Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 2016), p. 23; cat. no. 4, pp. 37-39, repr. p. 38

Subjects and Contexts

• Dutch, Flemish, & Netherlandish Drawings

Verification Level