Johannes Christiaan SCHOTEL

Although Johannes Schotel is much better known for his marine paintings and drawings, a large number of figure studies by the artist are known, amounting to more than four hundred sheets. Many of these may have been drawn during one of the life drawing classes Schotel regularly attended at Pictura, the artist’s society in The Hague, and as such are generally dated between 1805, when Schotel joined the society, and around 1810. Such figure drawings by Schotel often reflect the influence of the artist’s older contemporaries in Dordrecht, the brothers Abraham and Jacob van Strij. According to the artist’s son, writing in an account of his father’s work published in 1840, Schotel often found it difficult to draw hands and feet, which may explain the fact that those parts of the figure in this drawing are left unfinished.

The present sheet can be compared, in both stylistic and thematic terms, with a group of six oval figure studies of men and women by Schotel, mounted together on one mount, formerly in the collections of Hans van Leeuwen and Charles Ryskamp. A group of similar figure drawings by Schotel are in the Teyler Museum in Haarlem, and other examples are in the Rijksprentenkabinet in Amsterdam, the Dordrechts Museum in Dordrecht, the Morgan Library and Museum in New York, and elsewhere.