ADRIAEN FRANS BOUDEWIJNS

ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS

ADRIAEN FRANS BOUDEWIJNS
Brussels 1644 – 1719 Brussels

Pen and ink with grey wash, squared in red chalk, on paper
20.4 × 28.5 cm / 8 × 11.2 in, with frame 46 × 56 cm / 18.1 × 22 in

PROVENANCE
Zurich, Koller Auktionen, 15 June 1995, lot 4218
London, Phillips, 9 July 2001, lot 43
Zurich, Galerie Meissner
By descent to a Swiss private collection

REGISTERED
RKD, The Hague, no. 35560

WATERMARK
Single-headed eagle with monogram, Briquet 178 (Rheinbischoffshein, 1580)

This drawing belongs to the early period of Adriaen Frans Boudewijns’ career, shortly after his return from Paris to Brussels in the mid-1670s. It was likely conceived as a preparatory study for a now-lost painting, possibly one of the works destroyed during the bombardment of Brussels in 1695, when a large part of the artist’s output perished.
Executed in pen and grey wash, the composition reflects Boudewijns’ transition from the classical rigour of his Paris years — spent in the studio of Adam Frans van der Meulen, where he designed Gobelins tapestries for Louis XIV — to a more intimate Flemish idiom. The sheet is squared in red chalk for transfer, suggesting that it served as a working model. The delicate interplay of line and wash already reveals the artist’s command of spatial rhythm and his ability to orchestrate a complex narrative within a balanced architectural setting.
The scene, the Adoration of the Shepherds, is treated with an almost theatrical sense of space: the humble shelter, rendered with rustic solidity, opens onto a procession of figures advancing in a gentle crescendo of movement. The drawing displays Boudewijns’ characteristic balance between structure and animation — a harmony that would define his later landscapes and collaborations with Pieter Bout and Matthys Schoevaerdts.
Born in Brussels in 1644, Adriaen Frans Boudewijns trained under Ignatius van der Stock before joining van der Meulen’s workshop in Paris. There, he contributed to the royal tapestry designs of the Gobelins manufactory and engraved numerous compositions after van der Meulen and Abraham Genoels. Returning to Brussels around 1675, he established a successful studio and trained several important pupils, including Mathys Schoevaerdts and his nephew Adriaen Frans the Younger. His painted landscapes — classical, luminous, and serene — bridge the Flemish naturalist tradition with the Roman classicism of Claude Lorrain and Poussin, while his drawings remain among the most refined examples of late-seventeenth-century Flemish draftsmanship.
The paper bears a watermark of a single-headed eagle with monogram (Briquet 178), datable around 1580 and typical for papers produced in Rheinbischoffshein, suggesting that Boudewijns used an older, high-quality stock reserved for finished drawings.