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Description: Black chalk, watercolour, 170 x 210 mm. Verso: Houses by a canal, black chalk, pen and brown ink, watercolour. The present verso was treated as the main subject when the sheet was in the Anckarsvärd Collection, and it has turned brown from exposure to the light. There are remains of framing lines in brown ink. The present recto was only discovered when the drawing was removed from the mount, and is better preserved. It was once visible, and has ruled framing lines in brown ink. The corners, apart from the lower right one, are cut off. No watermark. Chain lines: c. 30 mm. Inscribed in the lower right corner, in pen and brown ink, Blomaert.

The same brick wall with a well at the far end, where it adjoins a higher wall, is depicted in a finished drawing in Leiden.  This served as a model for a painting Rural Landscape with Tobias and the Angel, dated 1640.  The other end of the wall, with adjoining buildings, is depicted in a drawing in the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, Mass.  In that case, too, the motif has been used in a painting, Farmyard with the Prodigal Son, dated 1637.  

Bloemaert made numerous studies of ruined buildings, or parts of them, viewed from different angles. One such drawing, in the Hermitage, includes a sketch of a woman seen from behind as in the present drawing.  Similar small studies, many lightly washed, are found in a number of study sheets in various collections. The two women in the upper left corner correspond to the women in the foreground of the painting The Preaching of St John, although in reversed order.  Roethlisberger dates the painting to 1625–30. Connected with it is a drawing in Utrecht, where the woman leaning on her right arm also appears.  This figure, furthermore, is reproduced, in reverse, in one of the engravings by Frederick Bloemaert for the Tekenboek. Next to her, in reverse, there is also the woman lying down, drawn at the bottom left of the present drawing. 

The drawing on the verso is similar in motif and manner of execution to a series of landscape drawings, mostly depicting houses or villages under the trees. Several of them have figure studies on the reverse. The scene with houses along a canal can be compared to a drawing in the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, with figure studies of the kind discussed above on the verso.  

The recto and verso seem to express two different concepts of architecture, the one showing the general setting, the other focusing on a detailed description of the building. However, they go hand in hand. Surroundings similar to those of the verso of the present drawing are displayed in the painting Landscape with the Rest on the Flight, datable to around 1600.  The same picturesque cottage that occupies the middle ground of the painting is present in reverse in the middle ground of the contemporary print Farmyard with the Prodigal Son, but there a dilapidated building, carefully rendered, dominates the foreground.

While Bolten dates the landscapes and studies of buildings to the period 1595–1605, he suggests the 1620s for the figure studies discussed here. In that case, the sheet must have been reused. But there seems little reason to separate the figure studies in the present drawing from the study of the brick wall. In fact, the way the wall stops short of the reclining women suggests that they were drawn first. 
 
[Magnusson, Dutch Drawings no. 54]

Titel (sv): Bondkojor vid stranden av en flod; kring den nakna träd, stubbar och buskar, till vänster en liten brygga
Titel (en): Studies of a Brick Wall and Some Figures, Seen from Behind
Titel (en): Studies of a Brick Wall and Resting Figures