Wooded Landscape with Figures by a Pond

Hendrik Gerrit ten Cate

1826 · Black chalk, point of brush and gray wash, partial black chalk framing lines · Drawings and Prints

This is a beautiful, early drawing by the early nineteenth-century landscape painter Hendrick Gerritsz ten Cate. He depicted a wood with two travelers heading into the distance on the left. While the part depicted on the left looks like deep forest, a small fence on the right brings the viewer back to civilization. The focus of the landscape is the pair of trees in the center which he masterfully rendered with layers of gray and black washes to evoke the dappled light that falls on the trunk and the leaves. Ten Cate's technique here is unusual in that he used black chalk not just as an underdrawing but also to provide an added layer of definition over the wash - he created with it texture on the bark of the tree and accentuated the forms of the leaves.

Artist

Hendrik Gerrit ten Cate

Date

1826

Medium

Black chalk, point of brush and gray wash, partial black chalk framing lines

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Frits and Rita Markus Fund, 2018