A forest border with a woman milking a cow

The Middelburg artist François Ryckhals is primarily known for his still-life paintings, but a handful of surviving drawings attest to the artist's talents as a draughtsman. His known drawings show carefully observed landscapes, often depicting a dense forest border, with one gnarled tree standing out, as is the case in the present sheet. The treatment of the foliage and the strong outlines, combined with accents in chalk, seem characteristic of the artist's technique. It can be found in a number of Ryckhals's drawings published by Hans-Ulrich Beck (Künstler um Jan van Goyen. Maler und Zeichner, Augsburg, 1991, nos. 1037-1049, ill.). Two further drawings, both signed, are part of the so-called Abrams Album (W.W. Robinson, 'The Abrams Album: An Album Amicorum of Dutch Drawings from the Seventeenth Century', Master Drawings, LIII, no. 1, figs. 24 and 26), and a third is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 2004.300).