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Lot Essay
Born in Haarlem, but working in Amsterdam from 1660, Jan Wynants was one of the foremost of the Dutch artists of the second half of the seventeenth Century who moved away from the restricted palette of the 1620s and 1630s. His paintings are predominately landscapes and dunescapes, following the tradition established by Pieter de Molijn, Philips Wouwerman, Jacob van Ruisdael and others. The using of groups of trees, and paths receding into the middle ground, is typical of his creation of a sense of space, highlighted by strategic areas of sunlight. Wynants' work appealed strongly to the eighteenth-century English taste for Dutch landscapes, and his work influenced artists such as Franois Boucher and Thomas Gainsborough, the impact on the latter being particularly striking in the present picture.
Adriaen van de Velde was one of a famous Netherlandish family of artists. His father and brother, the Willems van de Velde I and II, were marine painters, who in 1672/3 moved to England, working for the Stuart monarchs. Adriaen, by contrast, as one of the most gifted of Dutch landscapists. Houbraken relates that he first studied in Amsterdam under his father, but, inclining towards landscapes, he was sent to Haarlem to study under Wynants. During a career of less than two decades, he produced an extensive and varied body of paintings, drawings and prints. Amongst these, meadows and Italianate views with herdsmen and cattle predominate, although he also painted beaches, dunes, forests winter scenes, portraits in landscapes and historical pictures. Due to his skill in painting figures and animals, van de Velde was often employed to add staffage to pictures by fellow artists, including Wynants (as in the present picture), Ruisdael, Hobbema, van der Heyden and de Moucheron.
There are similar compositions by Wynants in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (inv. no. 38, 22.2 x 27.9 cm., one of a pair) and the National Gallery of Ireland (inv. no. 508, 94 x 120 cm.); the 1972 Vienna catalogue, loc. cit., notes another similar composition, formerly in the Matsvanszky collection, Vienna.
Adriaen van de Velde was one of a famous Netherlandish family of artists. His father and brother, the Willems van de Velde I and II, were marine painters, who in 1672/3 moved to England, working for the Stuart monarchs. Adriaen, by contrast, as one of the most gifted of Dutch landscapists. Houbraken relates that he first studied in Amsterdam under his father, but, inclining towards landscapes, he was sent to Haarlem to study under Wynants. During a career of less than two decades, he produced an extensive and varied body of paintings, drawings and prints. Amongst these, meadows and Italianate views with herdsmen and cattle predominate, although he also painted beaches, dunes, forests winter scenes, portraits in landscapes and historical pictures. Due to his skill in painting figures and animals, van de Velde was often employed to add staffage to pictures by fellow artists, including Wynants (as in the present picture), Ruisdael, Hobbema, van der Heyden and de Moucheron.
There are similar compositions by Wynants in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (inv. no. 38, 22.2 x 27.9 cm., one of a pair) and the National Gallery of Ireland (inv. no. 508, 94 x 120 cm.); the 1972 Vienna catalogue, loc. cit., notes another similar composition, formerly in the Matsvanszky collection, Vienna.