Bosboom received formal training in The Hague before traveling to Germany and France, where he experienced artistic successes and made life-long, instrumental contacts with artists such as Andreas Schelfhout. He produced multiple church interiors, which echo the seventeenth-century examples of Jan Saenredam and Emmanuel de Witte. In selecting such conventional subject matter, Bosboom would seem out of step with the current artistic climate, but in fact his extremely rigorous handling of medium—whether chalk, watercolor, or paint—in his search for atmospheric effect is very much in keeping with the interests of his time. The present drawing appears to relate to another, more finished sheet in the British Museum. That drawing represents the interior of the Hervormde Kerk in Breda, with the monument of Engelbert of Nassau in the left foreground. The MFA’s drawing might represent an earlier step in the evolution of this design.

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