The present Dragonflies and a Spider once belonged to a sketchbook with twenty-five drawings in the possession of the Earl of Arundel, hence the attribution Master of the Arundel Sketchbook. In the 1960s, this sketchbook was broken up and dispersed in the London art market.[1] Two of the drawings, A Turkey and a Great Green Bush Cricket are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.[2]

Three artists have been suggested: Georg Hoefnagel, Jacques de Gheyn II and the Bohemian printmaker and draughtsman Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677), whom seems to be the most likely candidate. The perhaps anecdotal evidence tying the album to the Earl of Arundel and Hollar indicates that, at the time, at least, they were believed to have been by the same hand and from one source. One of the drawings from the album has a partly visible foolscap watermark, common in England and Holland, circa 1640-1680.

Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel (1585-1646) was a prominent English courtier during the reigns of King James I and King Charles I, but he made his name as a Grand Tourist and art collector rather than as a politician, which brought him the nickname “the Collector Earl”. When he died, he possessed 700 paintings, along with large collections of sculptures, books, prints, drawings and antique jewelry. His collection of Roman antique sculptures, the Arundel Marbles, was the most important in England and later bequeathed to Oxford University, now in the Ashmolean Museum. Arundel was born in relative penury, his aristocratic family having fallen into disgrace during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. In 1606, Arundel married Lady Alethea Talbot, daughter of Gilbert Talbot, 7th Earl of Shrewsbury, and they had four children together. The Countess of Arundel (1585-1654) would inherit vast estates. Even with this large income, Arundel’s collecting and building activities would lead him heavily into debt. During the reign of Charles I, Arundel served several times as special envoy to some of the great courts of Europe, encouraging his interest in collecting.

In 1620 Rubens painted Alethea and her retinue, jester, dwarf and dog in Antwerp on her way to Italy. In 1633 Lady Arundel purchased a small villa, known as Tart Hall, located just south of Buckingham Palace. In 1641, during the English Civil War, the Arundels fled to the Netherlands. In 1642 her husband accompanied the Queen and Princess Mary for her marriage to William II of Orange and decided not to return to England, instead settling first in Antwerp and then into a villa near Padua, where he died in 1646 and Aleathea moved to Alkmaar. She then moved to Amersfoort in 1649 and rented a pied-a-terre in Amsterdam at Singel 292, an elegant house, with a courtyard facing Herengracht.[3] Alethea inherited the collection of 600 paintings and 5000 drawings by Dürer, Holbein, Brueghel, Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck and Titian, which he had bought with her money. On 3 June 1654 Alethea died in Amsterdam without a will.[4]

Born in Prague, Hollar studied in Frankfurt under Matthaus Merian. His first book of etchings was published in 1635 in Cologne. The following year Hollar came to the attention of the renowned art collector the Earl of Arundel and became a part of his household, settling in England in 1637. Hollar travelled through Germany in the service of Arundel and followed Arundel to Antwerp in 1642. He was one of the most skilled and prolific etchers of his or any other time, which is all the more remarkable given that he was almost blind in one eye.

[1] Franklin W. Robinson, Dutch Drawings from the Abrams Collection, Wellesley College, 1969, cat.no. 33

[2]https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/385465?deptids=9&ft=turkey&offset=0&rpp=40&pos=1

[3] S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, “De graaf en graven van Arundel in ballingschap in de Nederlanden en in Italië” in: Maandblad Amstelodamum, 1991, pp. 31-34

[4] F.H.C. Weijtens, De Arundel-Collectie : commencement de la fin, Amersfoort 1655, 1971, p. 18.