CHARLES ROCHUSSEN (1824 - Rotterdam - 1894)

A Bejeweled Queen

graphite. 7 1/8 x 7" (181 x 178 mm). drawing within a circle of 6 3/4". monogrammed CR.

Provenance: private Northern European Collection

Charles Rochussen, like his Dutch-born contemporaries, Ary Scheffer and Alma-Tadema, was part of a culture that thought art ought to portray beauty to elevate mankind and that that beauty, not present in everyday drab reality, was best taken from history, ancient history preferably. Charles, or Karel, was a distinguished painter of battles and an engraver and lithographer of historical scenes, landscapes and animals. He was a great illustrator and the present drawing, with it's neo-Gothic cast, was likely a design for such work, perhaps intended to appear in a beautifully ornamented book at the beginning of a new chapter.