Large upright landscapes. The little hunchback.

Born near Lille in north-eastern France, Anthonie Waterloo seems to have been a self-taught artist, predominantly active as a draughtsman of landscapes. By 1630 he and his mother had moved to Amsterdam, where they were registered as members of the Walloon Church, and he was still in the city in 1640, when there is a record of his marriage. He made several sketching tours in the north and south of Germany, as well as in Italy and Belgium, and recorded these landscapes both in elegant pen-and-ink drawings and also in his etchings. However, he does not seem to have had a great commercial success as an artist during his lifetime, and made his living as an art dealer. It was throughout this profession that he became familiar with the works of many contemporary artists, such as Simon de Vlieger and Jacob van Ruisdael, who had a profound impact on his style. Shortly after his marriage, he moved from Amsterdam to Leeuwarden and then to Maarssen, near Utrecht. 

This etching, depicting a man, a child and a frisky dog crossing a bridge over a stream in a lush, wooded landscape with a valley to the right, is typical of Waterloo's style and genre. It is traditionally called The little hunchback, with minimum political correctness, to describe the man's apparent form. The same characters appear throughout the series, the so-called Six large upright landscapes (Hollstein 119-124: 121) and was presented to the National Art Gallery by Wellington collector and philanthropist Sir John Ilott in 1966. Four prints in the same series were already in the collection at the time; these had been presented to the Colonial Museum by Bishop Ditlev Monrad in 1869. 

Sources: 

Christie's, 'Anthonie Waterloo', http://artist.christies.com/Anthonie-Waterloo--50433.aspx

Metropolitan Museum of Art, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/382748

Dr Mark Stocker    Curator, Historical International Art      May 2019