A Sunken Track with Travelers outside Brussels

A Sunken Track with Travelers outside Brussels

Jan de Bisschop

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Brown wash beautifully evokes the subtle play of light on the rocks and foliage in this landscape that depicts a road on the outskirts of Brussels. The Dutch artist Jan de Bisschop drew almost exclusively in brown wash along with lines of pen and brown ink. He employed this technique in numerous copies of earlier works of art but he used it as well to render landscape. He probably created this drawing during a trip to Flanders in 1649. A small piece of paper inscribed in an early hand "buyten Brussel" (outside of Brussels), is attached to the verso of this sheet. A number of other drawings related to this trip that depict the area around Brussels are known. De Bisschop was a lawyer by trade but he mingled with an elite circle of intellectuals and artists in The Hague where he had set up a law practice in 1652.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A Sunken Track with Travelers outside BrusselsA Sunken Track with Travelers outside BrusselsA Sunken Track with Travelers outside BrusselsA Sunken Track with Travelers outside BrusselsA Sunken Track with Travelers outside Brussels

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.