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Lot Essay
Pieter Post was one of the most celebrated architects of the Dutch Golden Age, but first made a career as a painter. Only thirteen paintings - all landscapes - have been preserved from the short span of his activity (1630-33). These constitute an original contribution to the early development of Dutch realistic landscape painting and helped shape the landscape style of his younger brother Frans Post (1612-1680).
The present landscape is a variation on a grand scale of Post's small, signed and dated panel of 1631 in the Lugt Collection, Paris. Measuring nearly a meter in width, this is his largest and most ambitious landscape. Close to the present painting in composition and nearly identical in size is the View of the Haarlem Dunes in Heino, Hannema-de Stuers Fundatie, by Post's presumed teacher Cornelis Vroom (1590/91-1661). Datable to around 1631, the present expansice panoramic view shows Post as a pioneer of the genre, as it seems to predate similar works by Vroom, such as the aforementioned, all of which are undated but were executed in the late 1630's.
This panorama may well be topographically accurate. The landscape consists of meadows, screens of trees and a river or lake with boats, beyond. The immense setting dwarfs the scattered figures. The overwhelming luminosity of the overcast sky and the overall muted tonality convey a strong sense of atmosphere.
The painting once belonged to the eminent Dutch art historian and Mauritshuis director Wilhelm Martin (1876-1954). Martin also owned Post's Landscape with haystack of 1633, which is now in the collection of the Mauritshuis, The Hague.
The present landscape is a variation on a grand scale of Post's small, signed and dated panel of 1631 in the Lugt Collection, Paris. Measuring nearly a meter in width, this is his largest and most ambitious landscape. Close to the present painting in composition and nearly identical in size is the View of the Haarlem Dunes in Heino, Hannema-de Stuers Fundatie, by Post's presumed teacher Cornelis Vroom (1590/91-1661). Datable to around 1631, the present expansice panoramic view shows Post as a pioneer of the genre, as it seems to predate similar works by Vroom, such as the aforementioned, all of which are undated but were executed in the late 1630's.
This panorama may well be topographically accurate. The landscape consists of meadows, screens of trees and a river or lake with boats, beyond. The immense setting dwarfs the scattered figures. The overwhelming luminosity of the overcast sky and the overall muted tonality convey a strong sense of atmosphere.
The painting once belonged to the eminent Dutch art historian and Mauritshuis director Wilhelm Martin (1876-1954). Martin also owned Post's Landscape with haystack of 1633, which is now in the collection of the Mauritshuis, The Hague.