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Lot Essay
This work is a fine example of Van Goyen's early style, comparable with pictures such as his Landscape with a farmhouse of 1625 in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The son of a cobbler, Van Goyen was apprenticed to a variety of Leiden-based artists before training from 1617-18 with Esaias van de Velde (for whom, see lots 524 and 526) in Haarlem. Van de Velde, his senior by six years, had a major impact on the younger artist, and his influence is particularly clearly visible in Van Goyen's work of circa 1618-26. The present picture can thus be compared with lot 526 in this sale.
Van Goyen repeats the circular format that Van de Velde took from Flemish tradition, and also bases the composition on clear gradations of perspective - the group of figures conversing in the foreground, the buildings, ferry and tree in the middle ground and the scrub landscape in the background. The tree is used in both works to break up the otherwise strongly horizontal compositions, the branches echoing the circular format of the panel. Furthermore the shorthand used to represent leaves on the tree clearly owes to Van de Velde - particularly when compared with a later work of Van Goyen's (such as lot 541, painted in 1648) when his brushwork has softened considerably.
Even at this relatively early stage in his career, Van Goyen's work is possessed of a facility of handling that presages his subsequent oeuvre, the figures and buildings depicted with fluid strokes that belie the careful composition. In addition, it is interesting to note how Van Goyen deliberately allows the grain of the wood to show through to a greater extent than Van de Velde, a technique that he was to favour throughout his career, and which assists the atmospheric uniformity of tone for which so much of his later work was to be renowned.
Van Goyen repeats the circular format that Van de Velde took from Flemish tradition, and also bases the composition on clear gradations of perspective - the group of figures conversing in the foreground, the buildings, ferry and tree in the middle ground and the scrub landscape in the background. The tree is used in both works to break up the otherwise strongly horizontal compositions, the branches echoing the circular format of the panel. Furthermore the shorthand used to represent leaves on the tree clearly owes to Van de Velde - particularly when compared with a later work of Van Goyen's (such as lot 541, painted in 1648) when his brushwork has softened considerably.
Even at this relatively early stage in his career, Van Goyen's work is possessed of a facility of handling that presages his subsequent oeuvre, the figures and buildings depicted with fluid strokes that belie the careful composition. In addition, it is interesting to note how Van Goyen deliberately allows the grain of the wood to show through to a greater extent than Van de Velde, a technique that he was to favour throughout his career, and which assists the atmospheric uniformity of tone for which so much of his later work was to be renowned.