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Lot Essay
Regarded by Waagen as one 'of the most beautiful pictures of the master' (loc. cit.) and described in the catalogue of the Van Leyden sale as being 'sans contredit le chef-d'oeuvre de son Auteur, et même de son genre', this landscape belongs to a small group of works painted late in the artist's career and remarkable for their size. Others from this group include most notably the Landscape with the Draughtsman in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, as well as a Landscape with Mercury and Argus (Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, on loan to Schloss Schleissheim), a Landscape with banditti conducting prisoners (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts), a Landscape with travellers (Paris, Louvre), an Italianate landscape (Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst) and a Landscape with a view of the Tiber (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum). In them, Both excels in his use of a warm palette of green and brown, brought together by the luminous atmosphere, creating a romantic ideal of the Italian countryside that was so greatly to influence his own and the next generation of Dutch landscape painters, as well as critics and collectors for the next two centuries.
The son of a glass painter, Dirck Joriaensz. Both, Jan is recorded by von Sandrart as having been apprenticed, with his elder brother Andries, to Abraham Bloemaert in their native Utrecht (a record debated by Burke, op. cit., p. 35, and p. 37, note 13), before proceeding to the Utrecht academie between 1634 and 1637. By at least 1638 Jan had followed Andries to Rome. There, Both became close to Herman van Swanevelt and Claude Lorrain, collaborating with them in 1640-41 on two series of large landscapes commissioned for the Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid by the Marqués de Castel Rodrigo, the ambassador of King Philip IV of Spain. Like Claude and van Swanevelt, Both arranged his landscapes along diagonal lines in order to achieve a greater feeling of depth, unifying the composition by means of a glowing, golden light that was also inspired by Claude and came to characterize his entire output. Shortly after completing that commission, both brothers travelled to Venice in 1641, where, according to von Sandrart, Andries drowned in a canal, after which Jan returned to Utrecht.
This picture has a particularly notable provenance, having formerly belonged to the famous seventeenth-century collector, Pieter Cornelis, Baron van Leyden and Lord of Vlaardingen (1717-1788). Van Leyden is best known as the greatest of all Dutch print collectors, whose collection forms the basis of the Rijksprentenkabinett (see J.W. Niemeijer, 'Baron van Leyden, Founder of the Amsterdam Print Collection', trans. P. Wardle, Apollo, June 1983, pp. 461-468); he came from an family of noted patrons - his parents were patrons of Van Mieris, and one if his brothers formed an important collection that included Hals's Merry Drinker (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) - and he began to collect as a young man, his first purchases dating from the 1730s. The print collection soon became famous throughout Europe, and several accounts survive of academics' visits to Van Leyden; one of these, that of the Dresden scholar Heinecken, mentions the collection of paintings, but gives no details, as it appears that they were not for public view. This is confirmed by Pieter Cornelis' son's introduction to his sale of 1804, which states that 'Quoique ce Cabinet ait [sic] presque toujours fermé à tous les regards il n'en jouissait pas moins de la plus haute et de la plus juste renommée.' Consequently, few details, beyond the catalogue, are known of Van Leyden's art collection, which in 1804 consisted of 116 works, practically all of them by Northern and Southern Netherlandish artists, and which was was divided between his two houses, no. 48 Rapenburg, Leiden (which still stands today), and Abtspoel Castle, near Leiden. It included masterpieces such as Vermeer's The Concert (Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum), Rembrandt's Portrait of Jacob III de Gheyn (London, Dulwich Picture Gallery), de Hooch's Interior with a Woman drinking with two Men, and a Maidservant and Ter Borch's Swearing of the Oath of Ratification of the Treaty of Münster (both London, National Gallery) and Van Goyen's Winter scene near the ruins of Merwede Castle (Paris, Louvre), as well as another Both, an Italian landscape in the Wallace Collection, London (no. P28), which sold in 1804 for 4,030 francs, and important works by Pynacker, Brouwer, van Ostade, Metsu and Netscher, amongst others. His son and heir, Diederick, had moved the collection to Amsterdam, to the famous 'House with the Heads' on the Keizersgracht (see I.H. van Eeghen, 'Amoena Geertruyda Schey en de kunstcollecties van Diederik Baron van Leyden', Jaarboek Amstelodamum, 1973, pp. 137-65), and, when sold, most of the works were unrestored and still in their original frames. Most were said to have been acquired directly from the artists by Van Leyden's ancestors, and the rest to have come from Europe's leading collections, although one can there detect a certain degree of hyperbole on the catalogue's part.
Shortly after the Van Leyden sale, the work had entered into the important collection formed by the banker, politician and connoisseur, Alexander Baring, subsequently 1st Baron Ashburton (1774-1848), of whom Waagen wrote: 'uniting an ardent love for the fine arts with extraordinary wealth, he expended very large sums in the gratification of this taste, and succeeded in acquiring a choice collection of Dutch and Flemish pictures from the most celebrated cabinets in Europe' (op. cit, p. 97). The majority of Baring's collection was housed at his London residence, Bath House, on Piccadilly, that he had had renovated in 1821 by Henry Harrison (Bath House was sold later in the century to Baron Maurice de Hirsch, and following his death, became the residence of Sir Julius Wernher, 1st. Bt.). Baring's collection included such notable works as Mantegna's Adoration of the Magi and the Pan and Echo by Dosso Dossi (both Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum), Bellini's Madonna and Child (Cardiff, National Museum of Wales, on loan) and Steen's The Skittle Players (London, National Gallery).
The son of a glass painter, Dirck Joriaensz. Both, Jan is recorded by von Sandrart as having been apprenticed, with his elder brother Andries, to Abraham Bloemaert in their native Utrecht (a record debated by Burke, op. cit., p. 35, and p. 37, note 13), before proceeding to the Utrecht academie between 1634 and 1637. By at least 1638 Jan had followed Andries to Rome. There, Both became close to Herman van Swanevelt and Claude Lorrain, collaborating with them in 1640-41 on two series of large landscapes commissioned for the Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid by the Marqués de Castel Rodrigo, the ambassador of King Philip IV of Spain. Like Claude and van Swanevelt, Both arranged his landscapes along diagonal lines in order to achieve a greater feeling of depth, unifying the composition by means of a glowing, golden light that was also inspired by Claude and came to characterize his entire output. Shortly after completing that commission, both brothers travelled to Venice in 1641, where, according to von Sandrart, Andries drowned in a canal, after which Jan returned to Utrecht.
This picture has a particularly notable provenance, having formerly belonged to the famous seventeenth-century collector, Pieter Cornelis, Baron van Leyden and Lord of Vlaardingen (1717-1788). Van Leyden is best known as the greatest of all Dutch print collectors, whose collection forms the basis of the Rijksprentenkabinett (see J.W. Niemeijer, 'Baron van Leyden, Founder of the Amsterdam Print Collection', trans. P. Wardle, Apollo, June 1983, pp. 461-468); he came from an family of noted patrons - his parents were patrons of Van Mieris, and one if his brothers formed an important collection that included Hals's Merry Drinker (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) - and he began to collect as a young man, his first purchases dating from the 1730s. The print collection soon became famous throughout Europe, and several accounts survive of academics' visits to Van Leyden; one of these, that of the Dresden scholar Heinecken, mentions the collection of paintings, but gives no details, as it appears that they were not for public view. This is confirmed by Pieter Cornelis' son's introduction to his sale of 1804, which states that 'Quoique ce Cabinet ait [sic] presque toujours fermé à tous les regards il n'en jouissait pas moins de la plus haute et de la plus juste renommée.' Consequently, few details, beyond the catalogue, are known of Van Leyden's art collection, which in 1804 consisted of 116 works, practically all of them by Northern and Southern Netherlandish artists, and which was was divided between his two houses, no. 48 Rapenburg, Leiden (which still stands today), and Abtspoel Castle, near Leiden. It included masterpieces such as Vermeer's The Concert (Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum), Rembrandt's Portrait of Jacob III de Gheyn (London, Dulwich Picture Gallery), de Hooch's Interior with a Woman drinking with two Men, and a Maidservant and Ter Borch's Swearing of the Oath of Ratification of the Treaty of Münster (both London, National Gallery) and Van Goyen's Winter scene near the ruins of Merwede Castle (Paris, Louvre), as well as another Both, an Italian landscape in the Wallace Collection, London (no. P28), which sold in 1804 for 4,030 francs, and important works by Pynacker, Brouwer, van Ostade, Metsu and Netscher, amongst others. His son and heir, Diederick, had moved the collection to Amsterdam, to the famous 'House with the Heads' on the Keizersgracht (see I.H. van Eeghen, 'Amoena Geertruyda Schey en de kunstcollecties van Diederik Baron van Leyden', Jaarboek Amstelodamum, 1973, pp. 137-65), and, when sold, most of the works were unrestored and still in their original frames. Most were said to have been acquired directly from the artists by Van Leyden's ancestors, and the rest to have come from Europe's leading collections, although one can there detect a certain degree of hyperbole on the catalogue's part.
Shortly after the Van Leyden sale, the work had entered into the important collection formed by the banker, politician and connoisseur, Alexander Baring, subsequently 1st Baron Ashburton (1774-1848), of whom Waagen wrote: 'uniting an ardent love for the fine arts with extraordinary wealth, he expended very large sums in the gratification of this taste, and succeeded in acquiring a choice collection of Dutch and Flemish pictures from the most celebrated cabinets in Europe' (op. cit, p. 97). The majority of Baring's collection was housed at his London residence, Bath House, on Piccadilly, that he had had renovated in 1821 by Henry Harrison (Bath House was sold later in the century to Baron Maurice de Hirsch, and following his death, became the residence of Sir Julius Wernher, 1st. Bt.). Baring's collection included such notable works as Mantegna's Adoration of the Magi and the Pan and Echo by Dosso Dossi (both Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum), Bellini's Madonna and Child (Cardiff, National Museum of Wales, on loan) and Steen's The Skittle Players (London, National Gallery).