Rijksmuseum

Object data

black and red chalk, on vellum; framing lines in black (upper and lower border) and brown ink (left and right border)

height 164 mm × width 133 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed on verso, in pencil: lower centre, 26; below this (with the numbering of Hofstede de Groot), T 98 228 / h 166 / b 134

Provenance

…; collection Leonard Marius Beels van Heemstede (1825-82), Amsterdam;¹ his wife, Agnes Henriette Beels van Heemstede-van Loon (1829-1902), Amsterdam;² by whom donated, as Cornelis Visscher, to the museum, 1898

Object number: RP-T-1898-A-3727

Credit line: Gift of A.H. Beels van Heemstede-van Loon

Entry

In the past, scholars have described the less detailed, more mechanically rendered drawing in the Rijksmuseum as an autograph copy after a signed drawing by Visscher in the Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris (inv. no. 6332).³ Although Visscher made autograph copies on various occasions, Hawley argued that the present sheet is more likely to be a copy by an anonymous pupil or follower of Visscher.⁴ By comparing the two drawings carefully, it becomes clear that the copyist did not fully understand some aspects of the original; for example, the dog’s right eye, its collar and its hindquarters are executed less convincingly in the museum’s drawing. Another difference between the two drawings is the rendering of the setting. After having copied the dog, the copyist seems to have lost his concentration and forgot to indicate the horizon line of the ground to the right of the dog. He paid even less attention to the repoussoir motif at the lower left, which Visscher executed in a much more detailed and refined way.

Although Visscher is better known for his portrait drawings and prints, a handful drawings of animals by him have come down to us, such as a double-sided sheet in the Amsterdam Museum, with the Study of a Sleeping Dog on the recto and the Study of a Standing Horse on the verso (inv. no. TA 10360),⁵ and the Sleeping Cat of 1657 in the Louvre, Paris (inv. no. 563 DR). The dog in the present drawing probably represents a continental toy spaniel or papillon dog, recognizable by its butterfly wing-like ears, short muzzle, slightly protruding eyes and long, fine coat. In earlier times, papillon dogs were a popular breed among the well-to-do in Europe. They occasionally appear in portrait paintings and genre scenes by Dutch seventeenth-century artists, for example, in the Lady Teaching a Child to Read by Caspar Netscher (1635/36-1684) in the National Gallery, London (inv. no. NG844).⁶ The dog in Visscher’s original drawing probably belonged to a wealthy owner, who commissioned a portrait of his beloved pet.

Bonny van Sighem, 2000/Marleen Ram, 2019

Literature

E.W. Moes, Oude teekeningen van de Hollandsche en Vlaamsche school in het Rijksprentenkabinet te Amsterdam, 2 vols., coll. cat. Amsterdam 1905-06, no. 90 (as Cornelis Visscher); A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, II (1910), p. 796 (as Cornelis Visscher); Hollandsche teekenkunst in de Gouden Eeuw, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet) 1935, no. 161 (as Cornelis Visscher); K.G. Boon and L.C.J. Frerichs, Hollandse tekeningen uit de Gouden Eeuw. Keuze uit openbare en particuliere Nederlandse verzamelingen, exh. cat. Brussels (Koninklijke Bibliotheek Albert I)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Hamburg (Hamburger Kunsthalle) 1961, p. 133, under no. 134 (as Cornelis Visscher); L.J. Bol, Bekoring van het Kleine, exh. cat. Dordrecht (Dordrechts Museum)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1959-60, no. 41 (as Cornelis Visscher); C. van Hasselt (ed.), Dessins flamands et hollandais du dix-septième siècle: Collections Musées de Belgique, Musée Boymans-van Beuningen Rotterdam, Institut Néerlandais Paris, exh. cat. Paris (Institut Néerlandais) 1974, p. 164, under no. 119 (as Cornelis Visscher); C. van Hasselt, Rembrandt and his Century: Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century from the Collection of Frits Lugt, Institut Néerlandais, Paris, exh. cat. New York (Pierpont Morgan Library)/Paris (Institut Néerlandais) 1977-78, p. 179, under no. 122 (as Cornelis Visscher); M. van Berge-Gerbaud et al., Collectionner, passionnément: Les plus beaux dessins dans les collections hollandaises du XVIIIe siècle, exh. cat. Haarlem (Teylers Museum)/Paris (Institut Néerlandais) 2001-02, p. 199, under no. 118 (as Cornelis Visscher)

Citation

B. van Sighem, 2000/M. Ram, 2019, 'anonymous, Seated Dog, c. 1650 - c. 1700', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.63634

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