inscribed with the zodiac sign of Fishes in the upper centre and with inscription ‘Jan Wildens/Februar’ and ‘32128/ gbafrog’ and ‘1401/50/104’ and ‘4707’ and ‘68’(verso) traces of graphite, point of the brush grey wash, watermark Strasburg lily with letters WR, 24.3 x 34.5 cm

Provenance:
Possibly with Henri Graves & Co. (trading years 1827-1926), London, their (?) stamped number ‘81415’ (cf. L. 2990).
Anonymous sale; Berlin, 7 May 1923, lot 1856 (as Jan van de Velde).
Antonie (Tony) Straus-Negbaur (1859–1942), Frankfurt/Berlin (L. 2459a);
Anonymous sale; Paul Cassirer, Berlin, 25 November 1930, lot 100 (as Jan van de Velde). H. Goldsche (1881-1953), Berlin, his mark (L. 1310a), sold through
Galerie Matthiesen, Berlin; exhib. cat., Landschaften des 17., 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts Zeichnugen, September/October 1950, no. 33, sold to
Dr. Walter Beck (1895-1960), Berlin, his mark (L. 2603b), by descent to
Dr. Hans-Ulrich Beck (1930-2010), Augsburg (his mark, not in Lugt), and by descent.

Literature:
J.G. van Gelder, Jan van de Velde, The Hague, 1933, no. 278 (as possibly copy after P. Stevens).
C. van Hasselt, Dessins Flamands du Dix-Septieme Siècle, exhib, cat., Paris, Collection Frits Lugt, Institut Néerlandais, Paris and elsewhere, 1972, p. 166, under no. 121 (as possibly a copy after J. Wildens).

In 1589 the Antwerp merchant Adriaen van Nieulandt I left Antwerp for Amsterdam together with his wife and three sons: Jacob (circa 1593-1634), Guilliam II (1584-1635) (often erroneously called Willem) [1] and Adriaen II, all of whom would become painters. While little is known about Jacob, the life of Guilliam II, the most famous of the three brothers, is well documented; he had an international career and gained considerable success in Rome where he was a pupil of Paul Bril (1553/1554-1626). Adriaen II, on the other hand, remained in Amsterdam throughout his life. He was trained by the painter Pieter Isaacsz (1568-1625) [2] and Frans Badens (1571-1618). Like many of his contemporaries, Adriaen II was not only active as an artist, but also as an art dealer, appraiser and real estate agent. That this led to considerable wealth and important connections in the Amsterdam art world is attested, amongst others, by a portrait engraving of the artist from a series of 75 portrait prints by the Antwerp engraver and publisher Johannes Meyssens (1612-1670), published in 1649 [3] and by a painting from 1613 by Jan Tengnagel (1584-1635), now in the Amsterdam Museum, showing the Banquet of civic guardsmen of the company of Captain Geurt van Beuningen and Lieutenant Pieter Hoefijzer. [4] Adriaen II is shown in the foreground, richly dressed and pointing at the empty chair.
The artist received his most important commission in 1619/1620 when his former teacher, Pieter Isaacsz, asked him to produce a number of paintings for the prayer room of king Christiaan IV (1696-1648) in Frederiksborg in Denmark. Isaacsz was king Christiaan IV’s most important art adviser and he had brought 23 copper panels to Amsterdam in order to have them painted by a number of artists, including Adriaen II who painted most of the panels. [5]

Besides being a painter, Adriaen II was active as a draughtsman too, although the number of his surviving drawings appears to be quite small. The present drawing, executed in Van Nieulandt’s characteristic technique in which he uses the point of the brush throughout the composition, shows a quintessential Dutch 17th century subject; a winter landscape with figures on the ice playing kolf, ice-skaters and horse drawn sledges. As indicated by the zodiac-sign of fishes at top, the sheet depicts the month of February. The barren trees, especially the gnarled trees at right, underline the harsh nature of the Dutch winters in the 17th century. This is contrasted by the figures, and dog, dotted around the composition clearly making the most of the icy and snowy landscape. The drawing is part of a series of the months of which two other sheets, depicting March and May, are in The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. [6] The technique of this sheet, furthermore, can be found in a drawing showing a mountainous landscape with a castle in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam [7] and a signed and dated sheet in the Prentenkabinet Universiteit Leiden. [8]




[1] See E.J. Sluijter, ‘Career choices of migrant artists between Amsterdam and Antwerp.The Van Nieulandt brothers’, De Zeventiende Eeuw, 31 (2015), footnote 2.
[2] See M. Roding, ‘Adriaen van Nieulandt – Pieter Isaacsz’s Versatile Pupil’, in B. Noldus and J. Roding, Pieter Isaacsz (1568-1625). Court Painter, Art Dealer and Spy, Turnhout, 2007, pp. 219-229.3 See Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. RP-P-OB-61.265.
[4] See E.J. Sluijter, op. cit., p. 125, fig. 9.
[5] A.M. Abelmann, Adriaen van Nieulandt fecit in Amsterledam. Een catalogus van schilderijen van Adriaen van Nieulandt. Antwerpen 1587-Amsterdam 1658, unpublished ma thesis, Universiteit Utrecht 1986, p. 32.
[6] Inv. PD.514-1963 and PD.515-1963.
[7] Inv. RP-T-1885-A-456.
[8] Inv. PK-T-AW-611.