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Lot Essay
The artist was one of a number of landscapists who moved from the Southern Netherlands to the United Provinces at the beginning of the seventeenth century; in 1602 he was living in Utrecht, moving in 1610 to Amsterdam. Houbraken records that the young artist 'who had learned to paint in his youth for his own pleasure (as was common at the time), applied himself to portraiture to earn money, since he and his father found themselves stripped of their belongings'. None of his early portraiture is known to survive, however, and Houbraken notes that he soon 'turned to painting landscapes afterwards as well, taking Roelant Savery and David Vinckboons as his examples'.
The present pair of pictures, painted ten years after Hondecoeter's departure from Utrecht, demonstrate the abiding influence of the former artist. At the same time, Hondecoeter has, under the influence of his Dutch contemporaries, introduced a greater note of realism and concentration on the effects of light to denote space and distance. This fusion of influences is typical of Hondecoeter's work of the period; one might compare this pair with, for example, the landscape of 1618 in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Brunswick, or that of 1620 in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
The present pair of pictures, painted ten years after Hondecoeter's departure from Utrecht, demonstrate the abiding influence of the former artist. At the same time, Hondecoeter has, under the influence of his Dutch contemporaries, introduced a greater note of realism and concentration on the effects of light to denote space and distance. This fusion of influences is typical of Hondecoeter's work of the period; one might compare this pair with, for example, the landscape of 1618 in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Brunswick, or that of 1620 in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.