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Lot Essay
We are grateful to Dr. Marijke de Kinkelder for the attribution, given on the basis of a transparency.
Van Vries entered the Leiden Guild of Saint Luke in 1653 and that of Haarlem in 1657, although the last reference to him is in Amsterdam in 1681; stylistically, he was extremely influenced by the oeuvre of Jacob van Ruisdael. This painting, however, was for long regarded as the work of Ruisdael's most famous pupil, Meindert Hobbema, and certainly elements of it, particularly the background landscape, recall that master's work of the early 1660s, suggesting a comparable dating for the present picture. Stylistically this picture is very comparable with such works as the Farmstead in the Dunes in the Bredius Museum, The Hague (inv. no. 127-1946), particularly, for example, in the depiction of the weeds gathering on the sluggish stream.
Mrs. Borthwick-Norton acquired a number of notable Dutch seventeenth-century pictures in the post-war years and bequeathed these, with portraits by Gainsborough and others that she had inherited, to the Royal Scottish Academy. Other works from the Borthwick-Norton collection included Velázquez's Portrait of Archbishop Fernando de Valdés (London, National Gallery) and Titian's Portrait of a friend of Titian (San Francisco, Fine Arts Museums, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, Kress Collection).
Van Vries entered the Leiden Guild of Saint Luke in 1653 and that of Haarlem in 1657, although the last reference to him is in Amsterdam in 1681; stylistically, he was extremely influenced by the oeuvre of Jacob van Ruisdael. This painting, however, was for long regarded as the work of Ruisdael's most famous pupil, Meindert Hobbema, and certainly elements of it, particularly the background landscape, recall that master's work of the early 1660s, suggesting a comparable dating for the present picture. Stylistically this picture is very comparable with such works as the Farmstead in the Dunes in the Bredius Museum, The Hague (inv. no. 127-1946), particularly, for example, in the depiction of the weeds gathering on the sluggish stream.
Mrs. Borthwick-Norton acquired a number of notable Dutch seventeenth-century pictures in the post-war years and bequeathed these, with portraits by Gainsborough and others that she had inherited, to the Royal Scottish Academy. Other works from the Borthwick-Norton collection included Velázquez's Portrait of Archbishop Fernando de Valdés (London, National Gallery) and Titian's Portrait of a friend of Titian (San Francisco, Fine Arts Museums, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, Kress Collection).