Figures in an Outdoor Tavern

In this dimly lit nightscape our attention is drawn to a figure in a cloak and hat, standing in the center of the picture plane. His appearance is lit by a source located behind the pillar next to him. Further to the left, various people are huddled together around a table, and in the right background a person is drawing water from a well.

Jan Asselijn, to whom this drawing is attributed, was one of the most important Dutch Italianate artists. His paintings and drawings typically show picturesque views of antique ruins in sunlit landscapes or genre scenes set in the Italian countryside.

Drawings on blue paper form a distinct group within Asselijn’s oeuvre. In the past, their authorship has been questioned, as their style shows significant differences with the artist’s other works. In her catalogue raisonné on the artist’s drawings, however, Anne Charlotte Steland has identified a core group of twenty-nine drawings on blue paper - including this sheet – which, she argues, are authentic works by Asselijn.[1]

Many of these drawings carry the inscription ‘Jan Asselijn’ in pen and brown ink on the verso. These may have been written by the artist Willem Schellinks (1623-1678), who, after Asselijns death, acquired his drawings on blue paper.

Asselijn made cunning use of the properties of the colored paper, brown washes and white highlights to effectively create the suggestion of form and depth as well as a sense of suspense in the dusky scene. This play with chiaroscuro recurs in the majority of Asselijn’s drawings on blue paper, and it seems he reserved the medium especially for such nightscapes.

[1] A. C. Steland, Die Zeichnungen des Jan Asselijn, Fridingen: Graf Klenau, 1989, pp. 79-94.

[2] A. C. Steland, Die Zeichnungen des Jan Asselijn, Fridingen: Graf Klenau, 1989, p. 80; P. Schatborn, Drawn to Warmth. 17th-Century Dutch Artists in Italy, Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum), 2001, pp. 108-09.