Allaert van
Everdingen (1621–75)
“La Butte” (The
Knoll), 1636–75
Etching on fine
laid paper trimmed to the image borderline.
Size: (sheet) 13.4
x 18.9 cm
State iii/iii
(based on a pencil inscription verso)
Inscribed with
the artist’s monogram at lower left edge: “AVE”.
Bartsch
II.216.100; Hollstein 100.II
The British
Museum offers the following description of this print: “The hill; two peasants
seated next to a large boulder at centre; a third peasant walking past them and
the hut at right; at left a wild stream passing a tall tree; in left background
a monastery on a hill.” (http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=1634435&partId=1&searchText=+Everdingen&page=6)
Condition:
crisp and richly inked impression, trimmed to the borderline in good condition.
Verso shows an ink setoff from when the original printer left this impression
on top of another still wet impression (a fascinating piece of historical evidence
about the printing practice at the time). There are remnants of mounting and inscriptions
from previous collectors (verso).
I am selling
this early etching capturing the spirit of the Nordic landscape for AU$125 in
total (currently US$95.62/EUR85.66/GBP73.97 at the time of posting this
listing) including postage and handling to anywhere in the world.
If you are
interested in purchasing this old master print with the rare ink setoff from
another impression (verso), please contact me (oz_jim@printsandprinciples.com)
and I will send you a PayPal invoice to make the payment easy.
This print has been sold
What is find
fascinating about this artist’s landscapes is not simply that he portrays
Nordic scenes with babbling brooks, lumpy rocks and lush trees. What really
makes his landscapes special to me is that the babbling brooks, lumpy rocks and
lush trees are invariably underpinned with a rigid framework of straight lines
that make his landscapes compositionally strong. In this etching, for instance,
note how the angles of the architectural features—the monastery in the far
distance on the left and the two huts on the right—act like compositional “bones”
that give structure to the image.
This print also
has a “special” hidden attribute that can only be seen on the back of the
print: an offset print (i.e. a mirror image in printer’s ink) from another
impression of the same print left when the printer laid this impression on the
other still wet impression. Ideally such an offset impression should never
happen, as all printers know that freshly pulled prints should not be stacked
on top of one another. Nevertheless, I love seeing such revealing acts of
dreadful negligence by ancient printers. The German language has the perfect
word for it: schottenfreude.
