Lot Essay
Adam Pijnacker, one of the greatest exponents of the Dutch Italianate style, was born in circa 1620 in the port town of Schiedam. In addition to beginning his career as a painter, he acted as a merchant, and, according to Arnold Houbraken, spent three years in Italy (De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, II, The Hague, 1719, pp. 96-97). While we do not know the exact dates of his sojourn, it must have been at a time prior to 1649, as he was frequently documented in Holland after this date. By the time of his arrival in Amsterdam in 1661, the city was already one of the most important artistic centers in Europe, attracting wealthy patrons, merchants and art dealers.
Pijnacker painted this cabinet-size picture late in life, probably around 1670. By this time he had abandoned the compositional format developed over the previous decade, reverting to the style of works produced in the first decade of his career. Betraying his debt to Jan Both, Pijnacker here paints with less regard for minute detail, favoring instead a more impressionistic representation of nature, with the effect of the brilliant, flickering light aided by more agitated brushwork. Sharper strokes capture the subtle contrasts of light and shade, intensified by the shaft of light looming over the distant hill to the left, which highlights the center of the composition and its earthy ground. Echoes of Nicolaes Berchem’s influence can be felt in the depiction of the staffage, attesting to the artists’ mutual influence on one another in the second half of the 1660s and early 1670s.