Landscape with horseman. From: Small landscapes

Both Schelte Adamsz. and his older brother, Boetius à Bolswert worked in Amsterdam and Haarlem before settling in Antwerp. For the last five years of his life Boetius worked exclusively on engravings after Peter Paul Rubens. Following his death in 1633, Schelte was employed by Rubens in his place,working closely with the painter, who sometimes retouched his proofs.He continued to engrave his works after Rubens's death in 1640. Bolswert's plates were worked entirely with the graver and he does not seem to have made any use of the drypoint. An early critic, Basan, said of his work: 'The freedom which this excellent artist handled the graver, the picturesque roughness of etching, which he could imitate without any other assisting instrument, and the ability he possessed of distinguishing the different masses of colours, have always been admired by the conoisseurs". Joseph Strutt, after quoting this passage, adds that Bolswert "drew excellently, and without any manner of his own; for his prints are the exact transcripts of the pictures he engraved from". His plates are generally signed with his name.

The landscape painting on which this engraving is based is lost, but it certainly evokes the lushness of Rubens's late style, which often focussed on his manor house and estate, Het Steen, not far from his native Antwerp. The engraving is part of a larger series of twenty based on Rubens paintings, and a further one is after Andires van Eertvelt. To most people the title, <em>Small Landscapes</em>, seems puzzling because these are large engravings, but Bolswert made a series of even larger prints called for obvious reasons the <em>Large Landscapes</em>. 

See:

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 'Schelte Adamsz. Bolswert', https://art.famsf.org/schelte-adamsz-bolswert

Wikipedia, 'Schelte a Bolswert', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schelte_a_Bolswert

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art    February 2018