Egbert van Drielst (Groningen 1745-1818 Amsterdam)

The prolific artist Egbert van Drielst worked in the heydays for large-scale wall paintings, ‘behangsels’ in Dutch, when the bourgeoisie favoured decorating their canal houses and manors with Dutch and Italianated landscapes. Van Drielst studied with Jan Augustini (1725-1773) in Haarlem, and is documented in 1765 as apprentice with Hendrick Meijer (1744-1793) in Amsterdam and subsequently in 1768 with Jan Smeijers (1714-1813). Nowadays only few wall hangings of Van Drielst have been preserved, as many perished over the centuries with changing fashions in interior decoration. It is telling that these three paintings were saved, belonging to his mature career when Van Drielst painted his very best pictures. Two years after their execution, Isaac Schmidt praised the present lot in his manuscript of 1812, kept in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem: “Deze schilderijen die allen 9 voet en 6 duim hoog zijn, zouden in een grote vorstelijke gallery gesteld en in bijzondere lijsten gevat, om derzelver uitvoerigheid en schone verdiensten, als uitmuntende kabinetstukken kunnen pronken” (op. cit., 1812).

The three landscapes are painted with great attention to detail, using motives from earlier drawings of his much-loved landscape of Drenthe, a region in the northeast of the Netherlands still known today for its dense forests, peat lands and heaths. The farmhouse seen through the trees in the centre piece, derives from a drawing of 1801 of a house in De Haar, in the Amsterdam Museum and the couple with child conversing can be seen in his drawing of 1794 entitled ‘View of Emmen’. Also the bridge in the upright piece, features in multiple drawings, such as his ‘View of Hoogeveen’ of 1793 in the Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Brussels. Whereas the present lot is most likely not a topographical depiction, Schmidt, in his account of 1812, identified the upright composition with the corn field at the edge of a wood as a ‘View on the Haarst’ (see op. cit., 1995, pp. 44, 106, note 66). Van Drielst travelled on many occasions to Drenthe, in search for nature known through paintings by his 17th century predecessors Jacob van Ruisdael and Meindert Hobbema, earning him his nickname “the Hobbema of Drenthe”.

Little is known of the Amsterdam commissioner Hendrik de Roo Hendriksz. He married twice, and is recorded on these both occasions, in 1774 and 1805, as living on the Herengracht. As far as can be verified, the present paintings have never left the town of Amsterdam since their execution by the artist. A reconstruction of their history is given by Bert Gerlach (op. cit., 1995, p. 46).