Jan van der Heyden* (1637-1712)

A View of Goudestein with a Woman and Child walking beside a Dyke

Details
Jan van der Heyden* (1637-1712)
A View of Goudestein with a Woman and Child walking beside a Dyke
indistinctly signed with monogram 'JVH'
oil on panel
9 x 11in. (23 x 28.5cm.)
Provenance
By descent to the artist's son, Jan van der Heyden.
G.J. Maxwell Lefroy, Itchen Manor, Hants, England.
Arthur Grenfell, London; Christie's, London, June 26, 1914, lot 16.
with Julius Bhler, Munich, 1915.
Literature
Oud Holland, XXX, 1912, p. 124.
C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue raisonn etc., 1927, VIII, p. 350, no. 72.
H. Wagner, Jan van der Heyden, 1971, pp. 95-6, no. 128 (as by Jan van der Heyden with the figures executed by Adriaen van de Velde).

Lot Essay

Hofstede de Groot (op. cit.) identifies the present work as possibly no. 34 of the pictures assigned to the painter's son Jan in the inventory of his widowed mother's effects taken on May 18, 1712.

Built for the Huydecoper family on the River Vecht, near Maarssen, between Utrecht and Muiden, Goudestein was one of the grandest of the country retreats commissioned by wealthy Amsterdam merchants in the 17th century. The estate remained in the Huydecoper family until 1955 when it was sold to the town of Maarssen.

The original 17th century house is known to us today from the numerous contemporary paintings and engraving as well as from a number of works by van der Heyden who treated the subject on several occasions.