No place, unpublished, but ca. 1800. Single sheet (28.0 x 24.1 cm, visible: 27.0 x 23.5 cm), in early 20th-century floral embossed wooden frame (54.5 x 49.8 cm).

A fine, very elegant, detailed watercolour of a peony ( Paeonia). The artist is most probably the Dutch still-life painter Albertus Jonas Brandt (1787-1821), whose works are in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam and the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen in Rotterdam. Brandt was one of the most promising young flower painters of the early 19th century, but died early of tuberculosis. Provenance: the Unicorno Collection, sold by Sotheby's in 2004. Art Daily describes how this collection was put together over a period of more than fifty years by the collectors Mr Saam Nijstad and Mrs Lily Nijstad-Einhorn. It comprises around 500 drawings, all of which have been housed in the Unicorno collection for many years. In the autumn of 1949, the couple acquired their first drawings for the Unicorno Collection. Over the span of more than half a century, the collection has expanded to become one of the most important in this field, and one of the most well-known collections of Old Master drawings in the Netherlands. No one could have thought at the time, least of all the collectors, that it would grow to be a collection of no fewer than 500 sheets of museum quality, and that parts of the collection would be the subject of museum exhibitions in the Museum Het Rembrandthuis Amsterdam (1993), the Dordrechts Museum (1994-95) and the Haags Historisch Museum (2001). A few small spots, slightly age-toned, otherwise in very good condition.