SIMON DE VLIEGER
CIR 1601–1653CA
112 Landscape with Haymakers
Black chalk and gray wash, two joined sheets; H: 38.1
cm (15 in.); W: 71.3 cm (28 in.)
87.00.105
MARKS AND INSCRIPTIONS: (Recto) at top right corner,
inscribed aen d Doornwaerd in brown ink; at bottom right
corner, inscribed 1026 in black ink.
PROVENANCE: Kunsthalle, Bremen (stolen during
World War II, recovered and deaccessioned in 1987); art
market, London.
EXHIBITIONS: None.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: None.IT IS PROBABLY CORRECT TO TRANSLATE THE DRAW-
ing's inscription identifying the site as referring to the
flood plain (waerd) in the vicinity of Doornwerth, a town
to the west of Arnhem, between it and the Rhine. The
attribution of this sheet to de Vlieger rather than to An-
thonie Waterloo, with whose drawings his are often con-
fused, is supported by a comparison with a signed sheet
in the Institut Néerlandais (inv. 4383) that depicts a
wheatfield similar to that in the present drawing. A num-
ber of elements found in the Museum's drawing—such
as the field sloping down to the left around which a
wooded road curves, the stretch of earth eroded into
wavelike mounds, and the snaking river in the dis-
tance—appear in the painting Wooded Landscape with
Sleeping Peasants: Parable of the Sower of 1550-53 (Cleve-
land Museum of Art),^1 the period during which the pres-
ent drawing was probably also made.i. The last digit of the date on the painting is illegible, with a
terminus ante quern of 1653, the year of de Vlieger s death. See P.
Sutton, Masters of ijth-Century Dutch Landscape Painting, exh.
cat. (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and other institutions,
1987), pp. 512-13, no. ii2.200 DUTCH SCHOOL • DE VLIEGER