Andries Both, the highly talented elder brother of Jan Both, was born in Utrecht, Netherlands where he studied with Abraham Bloemaert, whose stylistic influence is very evident in this lively drawing. By 1633, Both was on the way to Italy, whence he never returned; in 1642, at the age of only twenty-nine or thirty, he fell in a Venetian canal and drowned.

Though most of Both's surviving landscape drawings reflect the impact of his stay in Italy, a few are also known that must, on grounds of both style and subject matter, have been executed before his journey south. Some of these drawings are in pen and ink while others, like this, are in black chalk, but all are very reminiscent of Bloemaert's technique and compositional approach, w...