Abraham de Verwer (1585 - 1650)
Riviergezicht, River View, “Flusslandschaft”
Watercolour drawing 13,5 x 33,5 cm.
Abraham de Verwer (1585-1650) was a contemporary and colleague of Rembrandt (1606-1669) and also lived and worked in Amsterdam. He is known as a self taught painter and drawer. His works are collected in all the worlds important museums and private art collections.
This Dutch river view (Flushing, Dordrecht ?) by Verwer must be “a first sighting” for most mortals because, to my surprise another example cannot be found in the Internet. Among Verwer’s extensive oeuvre is however described the existence of a handful of other also oblong format marine drawings and watercolours. All of great artistic quality.
This facsimile “copy” was found locally in a junk shop in an incomplete set (folio) of reproductions published by Dr. Felix Becker in 1923. 100 years old and as such it is an example of the incredible “analog” printing skills of our (great)-grandfathers.
These folios, found in auctions and bookshops are often found incomplete. Because of the “Fehlblätter”, the missing sheets, they are usually inexpensive. Complete and fine condition folios of these quality reproductions on the other hand are collectable and sought after.
HANDZEICHNUNGEN HOLLÄNDISCHER MEISTER
Aus der Sammlung Dr. C. Hofstede de Groot im Haag
Neue Folge
Vierzig (40) ausgewählte Zeichnungen Rembrandts, seines Kreises und Seiner Zeit.
Herausgegeben von Prof. Dr. Felix Becker
1923
Verlag Bernhardt Tauchnitz - Leipzig. Edition of 525.
“Neue Folge” is referring to the accompanying also 1923 previous edition of 50 selected works from Hofstede de Groot’s collection:
HANDZEICHNUNGEN HOLLÄNDISCHER MEISTER
Aus der Sammlung Dr. C. Hofstede de Groot im Haag.
Fünfzig (50) ausgewählte Zeichnungen Rembrandts seines Kreises und seiner Zeit in Farblichtdruck.
Prof. Dr. Felix Becker (1864-1928) was a German art historian who together with Ulrich Thieme (1865-1922) created (he was involved 1907-1910 in the first 4/40 volumes) “Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart”. Because of his health Becker retired from the monumental and importent project that has their name.
Verwers river view, his best IMHO compared to the other examples, was printed as facsimile, (exact copy, replica) and catalogued as nr. 39, “Flusslandschaft”). It was created photo-lithographically as “Farbenlichtdruck” in the ”Kunstanstalten von F(riedrich) Bruckmann (1814-1898) A-G München”.
The folio’s cover (missing in my left-over bunch), the beautiful typeface title page, was designed by Germany’s most famous book and typeface designer-artist Walter Thiemann (1867-1951) and is a work of art in itself.
In 1923 Verwer’s drawing was already described as not being part of the original collections of Dr. Hofstede de Groot since the original (Hofstede’s) drawing was sold 1921 to British art dealers and auction houd Edwin Parsons & Sons in London.
Parsons & Sons was a fine bookseller and art dealer existing 1850-1950s until the last family member had died. The firm had a notable client base reportedly including the writer William Makepeace Thackeray, Sir John Pierpoint Morgan (of J.P. Morgan (1837-1913), The British Museum, and Napoleon III.
It needs a detective to find it where the original might be today. Because no pictures can be found I suppose its desire is to stay unfound……
What is interesting to me is: today creating a near perfect copy of any artwork has become very simple thanks to affordable computer and printer technologie and iPhone’s perfect scanning function: Childs work.
Besides Verwer’s spectaculair river view, between the obvious the “left-overs” folio containing 24 from the original 40 facsimiles was also found one of my absolute favourite old-masters drawings. In 1923, when it was reproduced as fac-simile for this folio it was still attributed to Rembrandt as titled: “Finding Moses”. The Bible, the legend, tells us that Moses , in his basket, was found by Thermuthis daughter of the Egyptian Pharao in the company of her sisters. She was the daughter of Seti I or his son Ramses II (subsequently ruling over Egypt between c. 1290 and 1213 BC). After finding the infant she became foster mother of Moses.
Today however the drawing is attributed to Rembrandt’s student Ferdinand Bol (1616-1680). If it could fool Hofstede de Groot it fooled me. But who cares ?
As a companion to Bol’s drawing Rembrandts composition of “finding Moses”. Very oriental, almost “Japonistic”.