A bodycolour drawing of a rugged landscape, with a man and his wife, with a retinue of servants and animals travelling along a track to the left. There is a wooden bridge over the river on the right, and a town on a hill above. On the verso, a village with a church beside a river crossed by a bridge.

Gerrit van Battem specialised in imaginary landscapes executed in watercolour and bodycolour, intended to be framed and hung. This type of landscape was one of his favourite compositions, and several variants exist, depicting the journey of a man and wife with their retinue of servants and animals through a romantically rugged landscape. Such scenes were popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, often ostensibly depicting the journeys of the Old Testament patriarchs (a specialism of Castiglione), though no specific subject is apparent here.

Around sixty drawings have been identified in the Royal Collection that were included in the auction of Abraham van Broyel’s collection, held in Amsterdam in 1759. These were among over a hundred Dutch and Flemish drawings acquired at the sale by the art dealer Pieter Yver, who, if not acting directly for the Prince of Wales (later George III), presumably sold the group of sixty to the Prince (or King) shortly thereafter. This gouache was one of a pair by van Battem that brought the large sum of 132 guilders each, described as ‘a rare and agreeable landscape with a waterfall and additional fine figures, drawn with watercolours. The same, Winter, being a view of a town with a castle, with many figures, with watercolour and of the same size, 11 x 16 [Dutch] inches’; the other gouache of the pair is also to be found in the Royal Collection. Together with three other gouaches by the artist, and thirty watercolours and gouaches by other Dutch and Flemish artists, these hung in Buckingham Palace until 1950, presumably since their acquisition in the eighteenth century.

Signed lower left: Battem

Text adapted from Holbein to Hockney: Drawings from the Royal Collection