Rijksmuseum

Object data

point of brush and brown, grey and various shades of green watercolour, with some opaque white and pen and brown ink, over traces of black chalk; framing line in dark brown ink

height 566 mm × width 418 mm

Inscriptions

stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: shield, apparently empty (indistinct), generally related to Italian watermarks; cf. Woodward, no. 281 (Rome: 1592)

Condition

Horizontal fold in centre; creases lower left; brown spots lower right; some smaller holes

Provenance

…; sale, Amsterdam (Christie’s), 12 November 1990, no. 14, fl. 50,000; donated by De Ster Holding B.V. to the museum (L. 2228), 1991

Object number: RP-T-1991-16

Credit line: Anonymous gift

Entry

In 1990, the present drawing was offered for sale as ‘attributed to Adriaen Honich’, based on the suggestion of Marcel Roethlisberger,¹ who published two articles on this still enigmatic artist.² Though not signed, the drawing fits in well in Honich’s oeuvre. Of the drawings traditionally attributed to the artist, four likewise represent scenes of the cascades at Tivoli: two drawings in the Frits Lugt collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris (inv. nos. 8004 and 1974_T.31);³ one in the Courtauld Gallery, London (inv. no. D.1952.RW.4008);⁴ and one in the Special Collections of the Library of the University of Leiden (inv. no. [PK-T-AW-544](
http://hdl.handle.net/1887.1/item:1278153)).⁵

Unlike the others, the present view of Tivoli is not drawn on grey paper, but the handling is similar. Like one of the Lugt drawings (inv. no. 8004), it features the same thin pen lines running parallel as if frozen, often interspersed with little dots, as well as the cauliflower-like outlines where the foaming water falls into its pool. There is even a comparable application of opaque white in these areas (though here it has partially oxidized). The main difference is in the use of the brush: Honich’s other views of Tivoli are dominated by the pen, though they have a similar painterly effect created by multi-coloured ink on a toned ground, in contrast to the present work’s range of greenish watercolour hues.

The present drawing was not done on the spot. As was first pointed out by Gerszi, it largely accords with a View of the Great Cascade at Tivoli in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest (inv. no. 1911-507), done in the same pen and watercolour technique but on smaller scale (378 x 298 mm).⁶ According to Gerszi, the Budapest drawing, dated 1618 and monogrammed IB, is a copy by Jan Brueghel II (1601-1678) after a lost drawing by his father, Jan Brueghel I (1568-1625). The presumed original could also have served as the model for the present sheet, presumably executed in Italy, since it is done on Italian paper. The same original by Jan Brueghel I was probably also copied by a drawing, dated 5 dece f 1593, in the Louvre, Paris (inv. no. 20981).⁷

Annemarie Stefes, 2019

Literature

‘Keuze uit recente schenkingen en legaten’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 40 (1992), pp. 306-07 (fig. 20; entry by M. Schapelhouman); T. Gerszi, ‘Idösebb Jan Brueghel: Egy elveszett Tivoli-Ábrázolásának rekonstrukciója’, Müvészettörténeti értesítö 43 (1994), pp. 35, 39 (fig. 3); T. Gerszi, 17th-century Dutch and Flemish Drawings, Budapest 2005, p. 57, under no. 42

Citation

A. Stefes, 2019, 'attributed to Adriaen Honich, View of the Great Cascade at Tivoli, Rome, c. 1667 - c. 1683', in J. Turner (ed.), (under construction) Drawings 2, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200146150

(accessed 11 December 2025 11:27:24).