18Th Century Watercolour Painting Of A Friesian Bull By Aert Schouman

18th Century Dutch watercolour painting of a Friesian bull by Aert Schouman (Dordrecht, 1710 - 1792).
Signed and inscribed in pen and brown ink on the verso ‘A.S.ft’. Pencil, watercolour and gum arabic, heightened with white, pen and black ink framing lines, on laid paper.
With minor foxing and time staining throughout, otherwise the watercolour is very fresh and the paper in an excellent condition. It is hinged with conservation tape in the upper margins onto a conservation and not laid down
Provenance: from Henry Rogers Broughton, 2nd Baron Fairhaven (1900-1973). Major The Hon. Henry Rogers Broughton was a significant benefactor to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and there is a gallery (Gallery 17, which is dedicated to flower paintings) which includes works all from his collection. In the prints and drawings department at the same museum this work by Aert Schouman (PD.127-1973).
The artist: Aert Schouman is regarded today, as well as in his day, as one of the unrivalled watercolourists of the period. Around the age of 15 he began an 8 year apprenticeship with Adriaan van der Burg in his native Dordrecht. After his master’s death Schouman became an in dependent artist, earning his living chiefly as a painter of portraits and wall hangings, although he accepted more modest commissions. Like many of his colleagues Schouman also worked as an art dealer. Beginning in 1735 he received commissions from the province of Zeeland, and in particular from the town of Zeeland, where his brother Cornelis was active as painter. From around 1748 he lived alternatively in Dordrecht and The Hague. It was in The Hague, where the stadtholder had his court, that Schouman came into his own as an artist. Niemeijer regarded Schouman’s, ‘rendering of animals and birds, some in oils, but most in watercolour, are probably his most important contribution to eighteenth-century Dutch art. In them he combined an exceptionally radiant palette with a rapid, transparent handling of the brush and an assured mise en page’.
Henry was born in America and educated at St. Paul’s School, in the USA, before going to Harrow and being commissioned at Sandhurst and Royal Horse Guards in 1920. Five years later he and his brother bought the Barton Stud near Bury St. Edmunds, and the following year Anglesey Abbey.