Paysage: a horseman and merchants conversing near a river

The present painting, depicting travellers on a beautiful sunlit afternoon was painted in 1825, and is one of the first paintings Koekkoek painted after he had finished his training at the Amsterdam Academy. Barend Cornelis was born as the eldest of four children and grew up in an artistic environment. His father and first teacher was the renowned river- and seascape painter Johannes Hermanus Koekkoek (1778–1851). His brothers Hermanus (1815–1882) and Marinus Adrianus (1807–1868) were both successful artists. In 1817 Barend Cornelis enrolled at the Drawing Academy of Middelburg, where he studied under Abraham Krayestein (1793-1855). A scholarship awarded by the Dutch Government made it possible for Koekkoek in 1822 to attend the Royal Acadamy of Arts in Amsterdam, where he became a pupil of Jean Augustin Daiwaille (1786-1850) whom he befriended and worked with during the rest of his career. In Amsterdam he studied for four years at the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten, and by 1824, at 19 years of age, he voiced his ambition to become a painter of landscapes. He set out into nature and creating a large number of landscape studies and paintings of which the present lot is a beautiful example. In the catalogue of the sale of the present lot at Frederik Muller in Amsterdam in 1881, the painting was described as: 'Bellé qualite du maître' (see: auction catalogue 1881).