Description: Black chalk, 74 x 61 mm. All four corners cut. Laid down. Collector’s mark of J. G. De la Gardie (Lugt 2722a).

Adam Bartsch attributed this and the following two drawings to Van Laer (entries 230-232). These three small fragments have been mounted on a cardboard support, within square frames with strips of gold paper. Black framing lines are drawn outside each square, but also outside the whole ensemble; this outer frame is missing at the bottom, showing that the board was larger and most likely contained more drawings. The drawings that follow in Bartsch’s catalogue might be considered, but they seem to have been larger: no. 4 showed morra players “E.H. in 4:to”, no. 5 a horse being shoed “E.L. in folio”, no. 6 a barefooted man lying on the ground, dated 1670, also in folio, and no. 7 a man smoking, dated 1669, in folio. 

Thus the last two drawings are too late to be by Laer, although Bartsch gives his dates as c. 1613–73. For the fifth drawing, Bartsch informs us that there is an etching “in the manner of C. Visscher”.  

Visscher also engraved figures like the present ones after Brouwer and Ostade. The manner is very close to that of Ostade.  Were it not that the traditional attribution seems so unlikely that it might be true, one would not hesitate in attribute the drawings to Ostade or his close circle. Perhaps at one time van Laer imitated Ostade. [Magnusson, Dutch Drawings no. 230]

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Pieter Laer | Bonde med krus | Nationalmuseum

Pieter Laer | Man with a Jug | Nationalmuseum

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