Landscape
by ASCH, Pieter Jansz. van, Black chalk on vellum, 110 x 155 m
This drawing is a folio of the Abrams Album (named after the donor) in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Although Pieter van Ast’s friendly landscapes definitely have a naive charm, they hardly ever seem to be a product of his own imagination. They alternate in their debt to the work of Salomon van Ruysdael, Cornelis Vroom, and the Italianate Jan Both. Although we can see Van Asch portrayed by Verkolje with a landscape drawing or print in his hand, no work on paper by him of any subject has survived, with the exception of one sheet, his contribution to the Abrams Album.