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Studies of Three Arms and Hands
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Abraham Bloemaert

Studies of Three Arms and Hands

Stephen Ongpin Fine Art

Medium Red chalk, pen and brown ink

Dimension 14.3 x 15.8 cm (5⁵/₈ x 6¹/₄ inches)

Sheets of studies such as the present sheet were an integral part of Abraham Bloemaert’s working method. While in some cases the different studies on a sheet – of heads, hands, arms, draperies, legs and so forth - were simply exercises, at other times the artist seems to have been working towards a painting, with the drawing intended to prepare different parts of a single multifigural composition. As Stijn Alsteens has noted of Bloemaert’s study sheets, ‘The dating of these drawings is difficult; it can be assumed that many were made from life, with a model posing. Some studies are preparatory for Bloemaert’s painted compositions or print designs…In most study sheets, however, the artist seems to have had no specific…narrative in mind, and these collages of heads, limbs and drapery should be considered as part of the tradition of model sheets…However, it cannot be excluded that Bloemaert made them to accommodate collectors with a taste for such examples of pure, and superior, draftsmanship.’

This drawing was once part of a large group of around 140 studies by Bloemaert - mostly figure studies drawn in red chalk - that were at one time in the collection of the French landscape painter André Giroux (1801-1879), and were dispersed at auction in Paris in 1904. Most of these drawings are numbered on the upper right corner of the sheet, up to 162, which suggests that they may have formed part of an album, perhaps one assembled by one of the artist’s sons. Jaap Bolten has suggested that the Giroux drawings were drawn between 1595 and 1630, and were not meant as preparatory studies for paintings but as a sort of model-book or sketchbook of motifs to be copied by Bloemaert’s students. Cecile Tainturier has suggested, however, that the drawings in the Giroux album may be more precisely dated to the decade of the 1620s.

Other drawings by Bloemaert from the ex-Giroux group are today in the collections of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Darmstadt, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Frits Lugt Collection (Fondation Custodia) in Paris, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen, and elsewhere. 

The present sheet later belonged to the French agricultural commodities broker and collector James F. Bismuth (1931-2020).


Red chalk, pen and brown ink, on buff paper, with framing lines in brown ink.
Numbered 2 at the upper right.
Laid down.

Medium: Red chalk, pen and brown ink

Dimension: 14.3 x 15.8 cm (5⁵/₈ x 6¹/₄ inches)

Provenance: Part of an album of drawings by Abraham Bloemaert belonging to the artist André Giroux, Paris
The posthumous vente Giroux, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 18-19 April 1904, part of lot 175 (‘Etudes de personnages, de paysages et d’animaux. Cent trente-six dessins, la plupart exécutés à la sanguine, un certain nombre avec d’autres croquis au verso’), the album thence broken up and the drawings dispersed
Galerie Patrick Perrin, Paris, in 1990
James F. Bismuth, Neuilly-sur-Seine
Thence by descent.

Literature: Paris, Patrick Perrin, De Callot à Tiepolo, Paris, n.d. (1990), unpaginated, no.33; Jaap Bolten, Abraham Bloemaert: The Drawings, Leiden, 2007, Vol.I, p.350, no.1094, Vol.II, p.380, fig.1094 (where dated between 1595 and 1605).

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