Abraham Bloemaert

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Abraham Bloemaert

1564-1651

The Holy Family at the Foot of a Tree

Pen and brown ink, over black chalk, olive-green wash, with white opaque watercolor, on paper tinted light pink-tan; lightly traced with the stylus.

9 1/2 x 7 3/16 inches (241 x 182 mm)

Purchased by Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) in 1909.

I, 229

Inscription:

Numbered at upper left of old mount, in graphite, "168".
Inscribed on verso of old mount, in three different hands, in graphite, "A true drawing and very good W / Bloemaert has been called the German Baroccio / True. has been engraved Ph".
Watermark: Serpent wrapped around staff, centered between chain lines. Lead white on drawing is visible in beta radiograph.

Provenance:

Unidentified English collector; Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919), London and Florence; from whom purchased through Galerie Alexandre Imbert, Rome, in 1909 by Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913), New York (no mark; see Lugt 1509); his son, J. P. Morgan, Jr. (1867-1943), New York.

Bibliography:

Collection J. Pierpont Morgan : Drawings by the Old Masters Formed by C. Fairfax Murray. London : Privately printed, 1905-1912, I, 229, repr.
Stampfle, Felice, with the assistance of Ruth S. Kraemer and Jane Shoaf Turner. Netherlandish Drawings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries and Flemish Drawings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in the Pierpont Morgan Library. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1991, p. 18, no. 29, repr.

Watermark: