Lam­bert Doomer, Dutch, 1624-1700

: Village Scene with Houses and a Bridge, 1645 

It is unclear if Lam­bert Doomer spent time in Rembrandt’s stu­dio, but in 1640 Rem­brandt paint­ed por­traits of his father, Her­man Doomer (c. 1595 – 1650), an ebony frame-maker who sup­plied the artist with frames, and his moth­er, Baert­je Martens (c. 1596 – 1678).1

Lam­bert is best known today for his draw­ings, about 300 of which sur­vive, many result­ing from his trav­els in France and the Rhineland.2

They remain valu­able as records of his­tor­i­cal build­ings and topog­ra­phy and as exam­ples of his appeal­ing and dis­tinc­tive style of drafts­man­ship. He exe­cut­ed a large num­ber of high­ly fin­ished color repli­cas of many of his draw­ings in sub­se­quent years, such as the group on ledger paper from the early 1670s that repro­duced his trav­els in France in 1645 – 46.3

Lam­bert under­took this first major voy­age as a young man, meet­ing his mer­chant broth­ers Maerten (1621 – before 1678) and Hen­drick (d. 1670) in Nantes, where they had busi­ness con­cerns. The artist Willem Schellinks (1623 – 1678) joined him there on May 17, 1646, accord­ing to his jour­nal. Doomer and Schellinks then trav­eled up the Loire River, record­ing many views along the way.4

The present draw­ing, which Doomer signed and dated 1645 on the verso, dates to the same peri­od as these early trav­els. It was once a mat­ter of debate whether Doomer was already in Nantes by 1645, since Wolf­gang Schulz believed that he only arrived in early 1646, short­ly before Schellinks joined him.5

Peter Schat­born, how­ev­er, con­vinc­ing­ly argued that a num­ber of Doomer’s views in and around Nantes bear the cor­rect date of 1645, even though these views are much later repli­cas on which Doomer wrote the date of the orig­i­nal rather than the date of repro­duc­tion, and despite the fact that Schulz believed Doomer’s mem­o­ry had slight­ly failed him when he did so.6

The Peck draw­ing poses two ques­tions relat­ed to these issues. One is whether this mod­est and charm­ing vil­lage scene can indeed be con­nect­ed to Doomer’s time in France. The sec­ond is whether this draw­ing bears its actu­al date of cre­ation, or is one of Doomer’s many later repli­cas in which he record­ed the orig­i­nal date rather than the date of exe­cu­tion. Schulz con­sid­ered both the locale and date of exe­cu­tion of this draw­ing dif­fi­cult to deter­mine.7

Wern­er Sumows­ki assumed the vil­lage was set in France, and this sheet must be a repli­ca of a lost draw­ing first made in 1645.8

If the present view is set in France, it seems more like­ly to have been in a near­by vil­lage rather than a city like Nantes, which was fair­ly large and urban in Doomer’s day, espe­cial­ly since he also trav­eled to sur­round­ing vil­lages dur­ing his stay there in 1645 and early 1646.9

One can­not help won­der­ing, how­ev­er, if this scene depicts a Dutch vil­lage rather than a French one. Fea­tures such as the stepped-gable house in the cen­ter back­ground, the soft­ly ris­ing bridge over a canal or stream, and the woman peer­ing out from a half door on the right all seem to point to a loca­tion clos­er to home. None of these char­ac­ter­is­tics would specif­i­cal­ly rule out a set­ting in France, but Doomer’s known vil­lage views in France often fea­ture the half-tim­ber domes­tic archi­tec­ture more com­mon­ly found there, rather than the brick or slat-board struc­tures seen in this work. Doomer was also in the habit of label­ing the loca­tion of his draw­ings in France.10

Most of those set in and around Nantes bear quite spe­cif­ic inscrip­tions record­ing their loca­tion, where­as he inscribed this sheet sim­ply with his name and the year. If, in fact, set in the Nether­lands, the Peck draw­ing would be one of his only Dutch vil­lage views that can be placed secure­ly at the begin­ning of his career. He drew many such views later, espe­cial­ly after he moved to Alk­maar around 1669. 

Whether or not this sheet actu­al­ly dates to 1645 is dif­fi­cult to say, espe­cial­ly with­out the pres­ence of a water­mark, but the slight­ly wider chain lines are more com­mon­ly (though not exclu­sive­ly) found on papers from a few decades later. It has long been assumed that most of Doomer’s draw­ings bear­ing dates of 1645 and 1646 num­ber among his later repli­ca draw­ings. In this case, how­ev­er, the evi­dence of style seems to sug­gest an early work. Its sim­pler use of media, which con­sists only of pen lines and a sim­ple appli­ca­tion of wash­es, con­trasts with the fuller array of col­ors he often used in his later repli­cas. The loose and live­ly style of foliage also argues for a draw­ing in his early man­ner, in which he used a brush alone to gen­er­ate cer­tain branch­es and foliage inde­pen­dent of the pas­sages defined by pen. Doomer was inclined to use a tighter and more focused style of pen work in his later draw­ings.11