Gilles van Coninxloo III

Originally attributed to the Flemish artist Gillis van Coninxloo, this sheet is representative of many drawings that were made in imitation of his style and technique. Coninxloo was one of the artists who popularized wooded landscape compositions that depict dense tangles of branches and undergrowth. Unlike this drawing, his forest interiors typically obscure the horizon line. The copyist's hand is indicated by the unfinished borders of the drawing, where the lines trail off and lose their specificity. This suggests that the artist was copying from another source, rather than inventing his own composition. The dark, tangled forest is not realistically described: the trees are treated as design elements, rather than individualized objects. Drawings in this ornamental style are often related to tapestry designs becasue of their flatness and the schematic handling of the light and shadows.