Woman and a child on a horse.

Drawing, black chalk, framing lines in black ink, 30,5 x 20,7 cm, laid paper with watermark, signed in black chalk at lower right "JRoos fecit" (some minor decolouration of paper at corners).

Johann Heinrich Roos (1631-1685) was a prolific German painter and etcher, whose family had emigrated to Amsterdam in the 1640s due the Thirty Years War. During this time he was influenced by the Dutch landscape painters Nicolaes Berchem and Karel Dujardin. When the Roos family had moved back to Frankfurt-am-Main in 1653, it was Johann Heinrich who introduced the Dutch pastoral landscapes with rustic ruins and animals into German art. The present drawing is good example of an idyllic pastoral scene of a mother with a young child on horseback. Possibly a study for a larger painted composition. Drawings and paintings by Roos are in major European collections such as the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Städelsches Kunstinstitut Frankfurt and the Musée de Grenoble.
Ref. H. Jedding, Johann Heinrich Roos: Werke einer Pfälzer Tiermalerfamilie in den Galerien Europas, Frankfurt 1998. - S.n., Der Tiermaler Johann Heinrich Roos 1631-1685 : Gemälde, Zeichnungen, Druckgraphik, Kaiserslauten 1985. - https://rkd.nl/nl/explore/artists/68071.