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Lot Essay
This picture exemplifies the tonal technique developed in Haarlem in the 1630s and '40s, and of which Van Goyen is one of the greatest masters (see note to lot 541). With an almost monochrome palette, a composition based around a low horizon and with depth defined through carefully chosen areas of light and dark, Van Goyen brilliantly depicts the broad, open landscape of southern Holland, dominated by water and sky. The brown tonality, permeated through the picture by the deliberate partial exposure of the panel, helps to create the limpid atmosphere with which so many of Van Goyen's works are imbued.
The Oude Wachthuis was situated on the Kil, south of the 's-Gravendeel; built at the beginning of the seventeenth century by the Admiraliteit van de Maze (River Maes Admiralty board) as a tollhouse, it was constructed on stilts in the water in order not to have to be evacuated during flooding. Unfortunately, its wooden construction made it prone to rot and by 1656 it was already reported to be danger. Soon after, in 1667, the Kil was drained and with the subsequent draining of the Beversoord in 1670 the building lost its original function, the New Tollhouse for cargo which was now imported or exported over the road having been constructed in 1669. The Oude Wachthuis was documented in detail in drawings by both Jan van Goyen and Aelbert Cuyp.
Arthur Kay was a distinguished Glaswegian collector of Dutch Old Master pictures and the leading light in the Scottish Modern Arts Association, one of the first important collectors to patronise Nicholson with the purchase in circa 1906 of the Portrait of J.M. Barrie (Edinburgh, Scottish National Portrait Gallery). His collection of Old Masters, amassed mainly in the late-nineteenth century, included Pieter Saenraedam's Buurkerk at Utrecht, which Kay presented in 1902 to the National Gallery, London, and his Grote Kerke, Haarlem, also now in the National Gallery. He was, in particular, an avid collector of works by Van Goyen; Beck (op. cit.) lists no fewer than seventeen, including the present picture, as having been in his collection. At the end of his life Kay published a biography Treasure Trove in Art (1939), in which he detailed much of his collection and the story of its accumulation.
The Oude Wachthuis was situated on the Kil, south of the 's-Gravendeel; built at the beginning of the seventeenth century by the Admiraliteit van de Maze (River Maes Admiralty board) as a tollhouse, it was constructed on stilts in the water in order not to have to be evacuated during flooding. Unfortunately, its wooden construction made it prone to rot and by 1656 it was already reported to be danger. Soon after, in 1667, the Kil was drained and with the subsequent draining of the Beversoord in 1670 the building lost its original function, the New Tollhouse for cargo which was now imported or exported over the road having been constructed in 1669. The Oude Wachthuis was documented in detail in drawings by both Jan van Goyen and Aelbert Cuyp.
Arthur Kay was a distinguished Glaswegian collector of Dutch Old Master pictures and the leading light in the Scottish Modern Arts Association, one of the first important collectors to patronise Nicholson with the purchase in circa 1906 of the Portrait of J.M. Barrie (Edinburgh, Scottish National Portrait Gallery). His collection of Old Masters, amassed mainly in the late-nineteenth century, included Pieter Saenraedam's Buurkerk at Utrecht, which Kay presented in 1902 to the National Gallery, London, and his Grote Kerke, Haarlem, also now in the National Gallery. He was, in particular, an avid collector of works by Van Goyen; Beck (op. cit.) lists no fewer than seventeen, including the present picture, as having been in his collection. At the end of his life Kay published a biography Treasure Trove in Art (1939), in which he detailed much of his collection and the story of its accumulation.