PHILIPS WOUWERMAN (HAARLEM 1619-1668)
PHILIPS WOUWERMAN (HAARLEM 1619-1668)
PHILIPS WOUWERMAN (HAARLEM 1619-1668)
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This lot is offered without reserve.
PHILIPS WOUWERMAN (HAARLEM 1619-1668)

A landscape with falconers

Details
PHILIPS WOUWERMAN (HAARLEM 1619-1668)
A landscape with falconers
signed with initials ‘PHLS W’ (‘PHLS’ linked, lower right)
oil on panel
12 1/4 x 17 5/8 in. (31.1 x 44.8 cm.)
Provenance
[Meffre aîne]; his sale, François and Wéry, Paris, 25 February 1845, lot 104.
Mr. Piérard, Valenciennes; (†) his sale, Laneuville and Le Roy, Paris, 20 March 1860, lot 100 (FF 18,800).
Baron Alphonse de Rothschild (1827-1905), Paris, by descent to his son,
Baron Edouard de Rothschild (1868-1949), Paris,
Confiscated after May 1940 from the above following the Nazi occupation of Paris.
Transferred to the German Embassy, Paris and then to the Jeu de Paume, Paris (Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg no. R 100).
Selected by Hermann Göring for the planned “Führermuseum” (Linz no. 1482), 5 February 1941, and sent to the Führerbau, Munich.
Recovered by the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section from the salt mines at Alt Aussee (Aussee no. 2104).
Transferred to the Munich Central Collecting Point, 8 July 1945 (MCCP no. 2989).
Repatriated to France, 20 September 1945, and returned to,
Baron Edouard de Rothschild (1868-1949), Paris, by descent to his daughter,
Batsheva de Rothschild (1914-1999), Tel Aviv; (†), Christie’s, London, 13 December 2000, lot 40, where acquired by the present owner.
Literature
C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century, II, London, 1909, p. 443, no. 613.
H. Miles, Dutch and Flemish, Netherlandish and German Paintings, I, Glasgow, 1961, p. 154, under no. 626.
B. Schumacher, Philips Wouwerman: The Horse Painter of the Golden Age, I, Doornspijk, 2006, pp. 226-227, no. A143; II, pl. 134.
Special notice
This lot is offered without reserve.

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Lot Essay


Philips Wouwerman painted landscapes with falconers on horseback frequently throughout his career, with further examples today in various public collections, including those of the Gemäldegalerie Alter Meister, Dresden (inv. no. 1422); Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (inv. no. 22) and the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (inv. no. 833). While establishing a chronology of Wouwerman’s development is inhibited by the fact that only twenty-five autograph paintings are dated, the monogram in use here cannot be found in the artist’s work before 1646. Birgit Schumacher proposed in her catalogue raisonné a comparatively early dating of circa 1650-52 for this painting. The early 1650s were a period in which the artist first succeeded, as Schumacher has noted, in ‘capturing convincing depth using an ideational diagonal’ (see Schumacher, op. cit., p. 65). Similarly, in this period Wouwerman’s staffage became less dominant and the artist better integrated them within a landscape bathed in a diffuse, cool light.

Only rarely did Wouwerman repeat a composition; however, another autograph version of this painting is in the collection of the Glasgow Art Gallery and Museums (see Schumacher, op. cit., no. A138). At various points, each of these paintings has been regarded as the prime example, but Schumacher, who knew the Glasgow painting in the original and the present work from a transparency, was unable to discern a difference in quality and determine which version was painted first (loc. cit.).

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