Philips Wouwerman* (1619-1668)

A mountainous river Landscape with Travellers and their Livestock on a Path waiting for a Ferry

Details

Philips Wouwerman* (1619-1668)
A mountainous river Landscape with Travellers and their Livestock on a Path waiting for a Ferry
signed with monogram and initials and dated 'PLsW 1649'
oil on canvas
27 x 32¾in. (68.6 x 83.2cm.)

Provenance

Probably Anon. Sale, Amsterdam, Aug. 9, 1739, lot 4 'het volk wagt om over gezet te worden, met Paarden, Koeyen en Schaapen, extra geschildert 1659' (fl. 160).
Empress Catherine II, acquired in the 1770s, and hanging at the Hermitage Palace, St. Petersburg.
Anon. Sale, Helbing, Frankfurt am Main, May 3, 1931, lot 122.
Anon. Sale, Sotheby's, London, July 23, 1982, lot 10.
with French and Co., New York.
Linda and Gerald Guterman; their sale, Sotheby's, New York, Jan. 14, 1988, lot 46 ($210,000).

Literature

G. Hoet, Catalogus of Naamlyst van Schilderyen, I, 1752, p. 596.
P. Lacrois, Musée du palais de l'Ermitage sous le règne de Catherine II, Revue universelle des arts, XIII-V, 1861-2, p. 246.
G.F. Waagen, Der Gemäldesammlung in der Kaiserlichen Ermitage zu St. Petersberg, 1864, p. 217.
Ermitage Impérial. Catalogue de la galerie de tableaux, 1870, II, no. 1016.
U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler, XXXVI, 1947, p. 217.
C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné, etc., II, 1907, p. 358, nos. 362-3.
F.J. Duparc, Philips Wouwerman, 1618-1668, Oud Holland, CXVII, no. 3, 1993, p. 270, fig. 16.

Exhibited

New York, Minskoff Cultural Center (to benefit the Appeal of Conscience Foundation), The Golden Ambience: Dutch Landscape Painting in the Seventeenth Century, 1985, (catalogue by Walter Liedtke), no. 17, illustrated.
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Masters of 17th Century Dutch Landscape Painting, Oct. 2, 1987-Jan. 3, 1988; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Feb. 3-May 1, 1988, and Philadelphia, Museum of Fine Art, June 5-July 31, 1988, no. 119, pl. 91 (entry by Alan Chong).

Lot Essay

Although he had dated at least one painting ten years earlier (sold, Christie's, London, October 10, 1972, lot 13; Duparc, op. cit., fig. 2) Philips Wouwerman dated this work and three others (ibid., figs. 14, 15 and 17) in this still relatively early but best documented year in his career. By this point in his development he had shed some of his initial reliance on the art of Pieter van Laer (Arnold Houbraken, the chronicler of Dutch artist's lives, reported that Wouwerman acquired van Laer's sketches at the latter's death) and become more interested in the art of the Dutch Italianate landscapists, above all Jan Asselijn and Jan Both. The present work's subject, evoking a landscape in northern Italy or the Alps and its style, notably the lightened tonality and atmospheric effects with strong accents of colors, specifically recall Asselijn's landscapes, while anticipating those of Adam Pynacker. As Chong observed (in the catalogue of the exhibition, op. cit., pp. 528-9), Wouwerman often depicted riders and other travellers waiting for a ferry and on at least one occasion depicted an Italian port scene with a barge being loaded (the lost work recorded in an engraving by Justus Danckerts).