Lot Essay
While Saftleven's early landscapes are reminiscent of Jan van Goyen and Pieter Molijn, from 1643-47 his paintings unquestionably reflect the influence of Jan Both, who had returned to Saftleven's hometown in 1641.
The present painting -- with its golden light, a central group of trees, the open view over a wide landcape and a group of travellers -- is an impressive rendering of the Roman campagna--all the more stunning as Saftleven never travelled to Italy. As Frederik Duparc and Linda L. Graif point out in the catalogue of the exhibition, Italian Recollections, Dutch Painters of the Golden Age, Montreal, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, June 8-July 22, 1990, p. 178, Both's Landscape with a Draughtsman, in the Carter collection, Los Angeles, is the kind of painting Saftleven chose as a model. A year after painting the Avery Landscape, he began to turn away from the Italian miniature landscape and towards the panoramic views of Rhenish river banks with miniature-like detail that was to absorb his interests for the next thirty years.
The present painting -- with its golden light, a central group of trees, the open view over a wide landcape and a group of travellers -- is an impressive rendering of the Roman campagna--all the more stunning as Saftleven never travelled to Italy. As Frederik Duparc and Linda L. Graif point out in the catalogue of the exhibition, Italian Recollections, Dutch Painters of the Golden Age, Montreal, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, June 8-July 22, 1990, p. 178, Both's Landscape with a Draughtsman, in the Carter collection, Los Angeles, is the kind of painting Saftleven chose as a model. A year after painting the Avery Landscape, he began to turn away from the Italian miniature landscape and towards the panoramic views of Rhenish river banks with miniature-like detail that was to absorb his interests for the next thirty years.
