Signed and dated J: C inv/ 1776 (verso) and signed on the mount J: Cats/ fec 1776

Black chalk, pen and brown ink and watercolour, heightened with gum arabic, pen and brown ink framing lines

83 x 58 mm. (3 x 2 in.)

SOLD

Jacob Cats was a painter and draughtsman, and he owes his fame largely due to his activities as a landscape artist. Indeed the art connoisseur C. Josi (1765-1828) (Lugt 573) commented on Jacob Cats watercolours: His compositions are done with a great facility. His rural scenes are rich, charming and natural. Jacob Cats was the son of Johannes Cats, a Dutch book dealer, who moved back to Amsterdam from Germany following the death of his second wife. Jacob trained as a bookbinder, and as an engraver, first under Abraham Starre and later with Peter Louw. Cats had further training with the pattern designer Gerard van Rossum, and he became a wallpaper painter in the Amsterdam factory of Jan Hendrick Troost van Groenendoelen. Cats established his own wallpaper factory with financial assistance from his relative Willem Writs, Jan de Bosch and Johann Goll van Franckenstein the elder.

The size of our drawings is not unusual for the artist and is very comparable to Winter Landscape with Skaters, measuring 101 x 76 mm, which was on the art market in 2003 and another of Skating in Winter a watercolour that was from the collection of Bernard Houthakker.1

The winter subject matter was one that appealed to Jacob Cats and there are many examples of his winter scenes. 2

1. Anonymous sale, Sothebys Amsterdam, 4 November 2003, lot 88, and Sotheby Mak van Waay, 17 November 1975, 'The collection of the Late Bernard Houthakker', lot 227.

2. See Een Kunstkast gaat open. Tekeningen uit de verzameling Teding van Berkhout, Teylers Museum, Haarlem, 15 September 1995-7 January 1996, number 47, Winter, and another watercolour of February: Men Cutting Ice, Sotheby Mak van Waay, Amsterdam, 14 November 1983, lot 14.