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Lot Essay
Jan van Goyen was one of the greatest and most prolific 17th Century Dutch landscapists. Prior to 1626 his early works closely resembled those of his teacher Esaias van de Velde. From the 1630s onwards, Van Goyen and his famous Haarlem colleagues, Salomon van Ruysdael, Pieter de Molijn and Jan Porcellis, developed a new tonal manner, with an almost monochrome palette.
The present lot, which is dated 1632, is an early and beautiful example for the change in van Goyen's approach to landscape design towards an unified structure and palette. The view of a calm river landscape under an overcast sky describes a low horizontal line which falls away into the distance to the right. Human figures are reduced in scale and number and play a more subordinated role whilst the attention is given to the depiction of space, light and atmosphere. The earth colors are muted and limited in their range of value but the palette is not yet almost monochrome like in the later works of this period.
The present lot, which is dated 1632, is an early and beautiful example for the change in van Goyen's approach to landscape design towards an unified structure and palette. The view of a calm river landscape under an overcast sky describes a low horizontal line which falls away into the distance to the right. Human figures are reduced in scale and number and play a more subordinated role whilst the attention is given to the depiction of space, light and atmosphere. The earth colors are muted and limited in their range of value but the palette is not yet almost monochrome like in the later works of this period.