A young Boy seated on a Trunk, in profile to the right

 

Signed ‘A Van Strij’.

Black chalk, pen and brown ink and brown wash.

10 7/8 x 9 inches (276 x 227 mm).

 

Provenance:

Amsterdam, Sotheby Mak van Waay, 3 April 1978, lot 178.

 

Exhibited:

Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Nederlandse figuurstudies 1700-1850, 1994, no. 105.

Dordrecht, Dordrecht Museum, and Enschede, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, In helder licht, Abraham en Jacob van Strij, 2000, no. 109, p. 157, fig. 227.

 

 

This lively drawing was executed later in Abraham van Strij’s career, circa 1805-1815. It was probably part of an album of figures studies Abraham drew while he was working at the Picturasociety in Dordrecht. The society was founded in 1774 by van Strij with Reiner Goudsbergen, Willem van der Koogh and Pieter Hofman, after van Strij returned from four years studying in Antwerp.

 

The Picturasociety was a confraternity of artists, whose role was to promote draughstmanship, but also to give lectures on art theory and to help the poor. The group assembled on Monday and Friday afternoons, hired models, and drew together. Later the society enlisted a number of new artists and by the first quarter of the 19thCentury, its membership was very large, as evidenced by the signed register of 1823.[i]  An album of figures created at Picturawas exhibited in Dordrecht.[ii]

 

The young boy depicted in this drawing was also drawn by other artists from Picturaand appears in many pictures by van Strij, such as in a painting in a private collection exhibited in Dordrecht.[iii]Another drawing of the same boy by van Strij is in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. RP-T-1948-267).

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