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(Tilburg 1777-1847 Berlicum)

In 1809 Knip went to Rome with a grant from Louis Napoleon, the then King of the Netherlands, to complete his training as an artist. His numerous studies include a number of impressive landscape drawings which, after his return from Italy, would form the basis for a group of paintings. He made four studies in pencil and watercolours of the landscape around Palestrina, some thirty kilometres to the east of Rome, but he must also have carried oil paint with him as this wonderfully atmospheric study in oil on paper shows every sign of having been made on the spot.