price: U.S. $6,500

ANTON OVERLAET

Anvers 1720 — 1774 ?

Study of a Girl after Rubens

black chalk underdrawing, pen & brown ink. 10 x 7 1/8" (254 x 183mm). inscribed by the artist: Invente par P.P. Rubens fait par A. Overlaet.

provenance:
private collection, British Columbia, Canada

By 1760, Overlaet was master engraver in the guild of Antwerp. He worked prodigiously, copying in pen & ink the works of the Flemish Old Masters, particularly Ostade and Rembrandt after whom he also made engravings . The source for this face in Ruben's work has not yet been identified. Overlaet has imposed much of his own esthetic on the facial features and so it looks less Rubensian than it might have had the interpretation been less inspired. Instead the head is transformed, an original conceit, an alluring subject depicted in a strong, proficient engravers' technique, reminiscent of that in Goltzius' drawings and paintings. Comparable pen & ink drawings of heads, though male, are at Windsor Castle.1
1

Leo van Puyvelde, The Flemish Drawings in the Collection of His Majestythe King at Windsor Castle, Oxford U Press, 1942, pp. 44-45, cat. #'s 275 & 276 (5159 & 5160), illustrated.