Curtis_O_Baer_2010

10. Leonart Bramer Dutch, 1596 – 1674

Men on a Balcony verso: Old Man Pointing to a Book Held by a Boy 1640 s or 1660 s

Brown and black ink wash 7 1 ⁄ 2 x 11 1 ⁄ 4

inches ( 19 . 3 x 28 . 6 cm)

provenance New York, Drey Gallery; Collection Curtis O. Baer

exhibitions Atlanta, 1985 , cat. no. 39 , p. 79 ; Milwaukee, The Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art , Leonaert Bramer, A Painter of the Night , December 4 , 1992– February 28 , 1993 , cat. no. 53 a and 53 b, pp. 114 – 15, illus. literature Frima Fox Hofrichter, Leonaert Bramer, A Painter of the Night, excat 1992 , pp. 116 – 17 ; Jane Ten Brink Goldsmith and Michael Plomp, Leonaert Bramer, Ingenious Painter and Draftsman in Rome and Delft , 1994 , excat. no. 61 , p. 207 . The painter and prolific draftsman Leonaert Bramer traveled extensively in France and Italy ( 1614 – 1628 ), and drew on various Northern Italianate and Dutch sources in developing his mature style. Most of Bramer’s extant paintings are small-scale works depicting religious and allegorical subjects in nocturnal settings with dramatic light effects. During his lifetime, however, he was also celebrated as a painter of wall and ceiling frescoes—a technique rarely employed in the Netherlands; as a painter of illu sionistic ceilings in fresco, oil on board, and oil on canvas; and as a prolific draftsman with a distinct style. Due to the damp Dutch climate, none of Bramer’s frescoes sur vive, and there is but one extant example of his illusionistic ceiling decorations ( Ascension of Christ with Music-Making Angels , 1668 – 69 , Prinsenhof, Delft). Of the approximately 1300 surviving drawings, most depict religious and genre subjects; these were often executed in series, intended to be purchased as a group by drawings

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