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Lot Essay
Although H.U. Beck (Kýnstler um Jan van Goyen, 1991, pp. 273-291, n0s 758-810) has provided the first catalogue raisonné of Molijn's work, his reputation is still overshadowed by that of his fellow townsmen, Jan van Goyen and Salomon van Ruysdael, and deserves a re-assessment, especially so far as later works are concerned. Following W. Stechow, Dutch Landscape Painting, 1980, p.23, who acknowledged Molijn's innovations in the 1620's but judged him "falling behind considerably" later on, these later pictures have so far been judged as close adaptations of the successful idiom of both Van Goyen and Van Ruysdael. The present picture, to be dated circa 1656 and to be compared with the picture offered at Lempertz Cologne, 22 November 1984, lot 101, ill. (H.U. Beck, op. cit., p.288, n0793, ill.), is by no means the work of a mere follower. In the diagonally receding river-bank and the warm colour scheme it is clearly Haarlem in spirit, but in contrast to Van Goyen and Van Ruysdael, Molijn's landscapes do not so much concentrate on the sky and on the changing weather, as on the grandness of trees in full leaf.