ATTRIBUTED TO CASPER CASTELEYN (HAARLEM CIRCA 1625-AFTER 1661)

This sheet is the largest of a group of three pure landscape drawings of high quality, which can be tentatively attributed to the little-known Haarlem history painter Casper (or Jan or Jasper) Casteleyn on the basis of an early eighteenth-century inscription on one of them (Rijksmuseum, inv. RP-T-1959-266); the third drawing is in the same collection, where it was previously attributed to Herman Naiwincx (inv. RP-T-1974-29; for both sheets, see Wuestman and Stefes, op. cit.). The inscription on the latter sheet is thought to be in the hand of the collector and art dealer Jan Pietersz. Zomer, and all three may indeed have been among the ‘capital landscapes’ by Casteleyn and others mentioned in the catalogue of the sale of Zomer’s collection (see Provenance). Other landscapes are also recorded, for instance in the sale of the collection of Gerard van Rossem sale (Amsterdam, 8 February 1773 and after, album H, lot 587). Certainly, the style of the present drawing and the two in Amsterdam is very similar, and not at all inconsistent with that of a drawing of a shepherd and a shepherdess in a landscape signed by Casteleyn, also at the Rijkmsuseum (inv. RP-T-1881-A-101; see Wuestman and Stefes, op. cit., s.v.).