JAN VAN GOYEN (LEIDEN 1596-1656 THE HAGUE)
JAN VAN GOYEN (LEIDEN 1596-1656 THE HAGUE)
JAN VAN GOYEN (LEIDEN 1596-1656 THE HAGUE)
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Property from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
JAN VAN GOYEN (LEIDEN 1596-1656 THE HAGUE)

River landscape with a ferry and a church

Details
JAN VAN GOYEN (LEIDEN 1596-1656 THE HAGUE)
River landscape with a ferry and a church
signed and dated ‘VG / 165[6]’ (lower right, on the boat)
oil on panel
18 ½ x 26 ¼ in. (47 x 66.7 cm.)
Provenance
Edward Balfour, Esq. (1849-1927), Balbirnie House, Fife, Scotland; his sale, Christie’s, London, 31 May 1907, lot 139, where acquired for 780 gns. by the following,
with Gooden and Fox, London, where acquired for $16,650 with paintings by Jacob Adriaensz. Bellevois (07.499), Jan Miense Molenaer (07.500) and Melchior d’Hondecoeter (07.501) by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, on 8 August 1907.
Literature
‘In the Sale Room,’ The Connoisseur, XVIII, May-August 1907, p. 193.
‘Pictures by Dutch Artists,’ Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, V, no. 28, August 1907, p. 49.
‘Three Dutch Pictures,’ Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, V, no. 29, October 1907, pp. 57-58, illustrated.
Handbook of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, 1910, p. 143, illustrated.
J. de Wolf Addison, The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1910, p. 74.
Handbook of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, 1914, p. 162, illustrated.
Catalogue of Paintings: Preliminary Edition, Boston, 1921, pp. 50-51, no. 117.
Handbook of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, 1925, p. 13, no. 117, illustrated.
C. Hofstede de Goot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century, VIII, London, 1927, pp. 186-187 and 204, nos. 731 and 803.
Selected Oil and Tempera Paintings and Three Pastels, Boston, 1932, n.p., illustrated.
Summary Catalogue of European Paintings in Oil, Tempera and Pastel, Boston, 1955, p. 29.
H.-U. Beck, Jan van Goyen, 1596-1656, II, Amsterdam, 1973, p. 350, no. 780, illustrated, as dated ‘165(5)’.
A.R. Murphy, European Paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue, Boston, 1985, p. 122, illustrated.
C.E. Roth, The Sky Observer’s Guidebook, New York, 1986, p. 196, illustrated.
P.C. Sutton, A Guide to Dutch Art in America, Washington, D.C. and Grand Rapids, 1986, p. 29, as dated ‘165(5?)’.
R. Baer, The Poetry of Everyday Life: Dutch Painting in Boston, exhibition catalogue, Boston, 2002, p. 31.
Exhibited
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Art of Our Allies: The Netherlands, 2 March-11 April 1943.

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Lot Essay

The date inscribed on this exceptionally attractive late river landscape has been variously read as ‘1655’ (see, for example, H.-U. Beck, op. cit.) and, more recently, ‘1656’. If the latter dating is correct, as seems to be the case, the painting is one of only two dated works from the last year of Jan van Goyen’s life, the other of which being his Fishing boats on a wide inland lake in the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main (fig. 1). This marks a precipitous drop-off in van Goyen’s activity from the previous year, which proved to be among the artist’s most productive, with some forty surviving dated paintings known.

Compared with the painting in Frankfurt, whose earthen tone suffused in silver-tinged light is characteristic of van Goyen’s late activity, the broader tonal range and brilliant blue skyscape evident in the present painting is less frequently encountered in his work of the 1650s. The painting is also a fine demonstration of the continuing artistic dialogue between van Goyen and Salomon van Ruysdael, both of whom played a leading role in the development of tonal landscape painting in the second half of the 1620s and 1630s. Just as in the 1640s van Ruysdael borrowed from van Goyen large expanses of river and lake, introducing subtle variations of color into what had been largely monochromatic scenes, so too has van Goyen here adopted van Ruysdael’s brighter palette and included details like the ferry boat viewed perpendicularly in the painting’s lower right foreground. Such ferry boats were a ubiquitous compositional device found in van Ruysdael’s river scenes of the latter 1640s and early 1650s and lend his compositions of the period a greater sense of structure and visual appeal.

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