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Lot Essay
Formerly regarded as a work by Esaias van de Velde (for whom see lots 524 and 526), that attribution was rejected by George Keyes in his monograph on the artist (loc. cit.). Keyes instead suggested that the picture was more closely related to the work of Pieter Molyn, who would have been familiar with Van de Velde's work from the latter's years in Haarlem between 1612 and 1618. Dr. Hans-Ulrich Beck, to whom we are very grateful, has confirmed the attribution to Molyn on the basis of photographs, and suggested a date for the painting of circa 1630.
Molyn was one of the leading figures of Dutch seventeenth-century landscape painting and the master of Allaert van Everdingen. One of the earliest exponents of tonal painting (seen, for example, in his 'Sandy Road': a dune landscape with trees and a wagon in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Brunswick), his oeuvre has been seen as forming a bridge between the manneristic devices of the previous century and the new naturalism of the seventeenth century.
The earliest evidence of Molyn's presence in the Netherlands is his entry at the age of twenty-one into the Guild of Saint Luke in Haarlem in 1616, although no dated works by him before 1625 are known. Throughout the 1630s and 1640s Molyn held the office of Dean and Commissioner in the Guild of Saint Luke, and in 1637-8 was the Guild's alms collector. Although Houbraken devoted only a small entry to him, he was appreciated as one of the foremost artists of his day by Samuel Ampzing (Beschryvinge der stad Haarlem in Holland, Haarlem, 1628) and Theodor Schrevelius (Harlemum, Haarlem, 1647). A measure of his contemporaries' admiration for him may be judged by his being buried in St. Bavo's cathedral, Haarlem.
Molyn was one of the leading figures of Dutch seventeenth-century landscape painting and the master of Allaert van Everdingen. One of the earliest exponents of tonal painting (seen, for example, in his 'Sandy Road': a dune landscape with trees and a wagon in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Brunswick), his oeuvre has been seen as forming a bridge between the manneristic devices of the previous century and the new naturalism of the seventeenth century.
The earliest evidence of Molyn's presence in the Netherlands is his entry at the age of twenty-one into the Guild of Saint Luke in Haarlem in 1616, although no dated works by him before 1625 are known. Throughout the 1630s and 1640s Molyn held the office of Dean and Commissioner in the Guild of Saint Luke, and in 1637-8 was the Guild's alms collector. Although Houbraken devoted only a small entry to him, he was appreciated as one of the foremost artists of his day by Samuel Ampzing (Beschryvinge der stad Haarlem in Holland, Haarlem, 1628) and Theodor Schrevelius (Harlemum, Haarlem, 1647). A measure of his contemporaries' admiration for him may be judged by his being buried in St. Bavo's cathedral, Haarlem.