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Lot Essay
Frederik Marinus Kruseman belonged to an important family of artists, whose members included both the history painter Cornelis Kruseman and the portrait painter Jan Adam Kruseman Jansz. This distinguished heritage, as well as the connections it had given his family within the broader artistic community, was the driving force behind his decision to pursue a career as an artist. Kruseman started his training as an apprentice to the respected still-life painter Jan Reekers, who had provided a guiding hand in the tutelage of Kruseman's cousin Jan Adam as well, who had been appointed the Director of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam. After Reekers, Kruseman was apprenticed with Andreas Schelfhout's son-in-law, Nicolaas Roosenboom.
Attracted to the rural landscape in the vicinity of Hilversum, the artist lived there for a year in 1835, when he met Jan van Ravenswaaij, who taught him a great deal about the staffage of his paintings with animals. After his stay in Hilversum, Kruseman returned to Haarlem, only to leave shortly afterwards for Cleves, where the most famous of the 19th century Dutch landscape painters, Barend Cornelis Koekkoek, had settled a few years earlier. When interviewed by the art historian J. Immerzeel, Jr., then compiling his work on Dutch and Flemish painters, Kruseman listed Koekkoek as one of his masters, despite the fact that officially Koekkoek was not accepting any pupils at that time. Regardless of whether they had a formal teaching relationship or not, the fact that Kruseman counted Koekkoek among his teachers is reflective of the unmistakable influence the older artist had on Kruseman's oeuvre. His consistently high degree of finish in his paintings alongside his seemingly effortless technique, can only have been the result of close proximity to the artist considered the ‘Prince of Dutch Romantic Landscape painting.’
The present work, painted in 1855, is a suite of 12 small paintings, each representing a different month of the year. The months are captured not just with different views on the landscape, but also different leisure, agricultural and liturgical activities which would have helped define both the year and the seasons in 19th century Dutch rural life. These range from planting (March) and lambing (April) to bird shooting (October) and attending Advent services (December).
Attracted to the rural landscape in the vicinity of Hilversum, the artist lived there for a year in 1835, when he met Jan van Ravenswaaij, who taught him a great deal about the staffage of his paintings with animals. After his stay in Hilversum, Kruseman returned to Haarlem, only to leave shortly afterwards for Cleves, where the most famous of the 19th century Dutch landscape painters, Barend Cornelis Koekkoek, had settled a few years earlier. When interviewed by the art historian J. Immerzeel, Jr., then compiling his work on Dutch and Flemish painters, Kruseman listed Koekkoek as one of his masters, despite the fact that officially Koekkoek was not accepting any pupils at that time. Regardless of whether they had a formal teaching relationship or not, the fact that Kruseman counted Koekkoek among his teachers is reflective of the unmistakable influence the older artist had on Kruseman's oeuvre. His consistently high degree of finish in his paintings alongside his seemingly effortless technique, can only have been the result of close proximity to the artist considered the ‘Prince of Dutch Romantic Landscape painting.’
The present work, painted in 1855, is a suite of 12 small paintings, each representing a different month of the year. The months are captured not just with different views on the landscape, but also different leisure, agricultural and liturgical activities which would have helped define both the year and the seasons in 19th century Dutch rural life. These range from planting (March) and lambing (April) to bird shooting (October) and attending Advent services (December).