Landscape with Rocks

1770-1794

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Maria Catharina Prestel and Nicolaes Berchem

Landscape with Rocks

Artist: Maria Catharina Prestel
Artist: Nicolaes Berchem

Landscape with Rocks

1770-1794

Physical Qualities Color softground etching, Mount: 413 x 593 mm. (16 1/4 x 23 3/8 in.) Sheet (cut within platemark): 271 x 411 mm. (10 11/16 x 16 3/16 in.)

Credit Line Garrett Collection

Object Number 1946.112.13233

In eighteenth-century Europe, there were many printmakers who specialized in creating sophisticated facsimiles of drawings. Prints such as Landscape with Rocks could be purchased for a fraction of the price of the original. Maria Catharina Prestel used two plates to reproduce Nicolaes Berchem the elder’s black and white chalk drawing on blue paper. One plate was printed with blue ink to suggest the original paper color; the other was printed with black ink to depict the black chalk lines. Most impressively, Prestel created the white passages in this print by allowing areas of the white paper to show through.

BMA, Jacobs rotation, January 21, 2009 - June 11, 2009.

Signed: 2 (light blue and black)

Inscribed: Sheet: Verso: at lower right in graphite diamond with: "10256"; Mount: recto: at left center, in graphite : "Printed from two plates in / greenish blue and black on / white paper, in imitation of / a drawing in lead pencil on / blue paper, heightened with white"; at lower center, in graphite: "Page 269 x 411"; at lower left, in graphite: "Berghem"; at center, in graphite: "Maria Catharina (Holl) Prestel / (1747-1794) / (Winter landscape with rocks) / after / Claes Pietesz Berchem / (1620-1683) / Le B 46; at lower right, in graphite: "MC Prestel"; Mount: verso: at lower left, in graphite: "M. G. 19 x 25"; at center, pasted lettering of print [in plate]: "Dessin de Nicolas Berchem de Harlem: No 12 / M.C. Prestel sc."

Markings: CM: Claghorn WM on mount: D &C B with coat of arms