Lot Essay
The timeless, Arcadian setting of the present work is typical of the early Italianate views Pynacker made while living in his hometown of Schiedam, near Rotterdam, after his return from Italy c. 1648. The waterfall, plains and rocky outcroppings evoke the countryside around Tivoli, which was within a day’s ride of Rome and a magnet for artists because of its Classical associations and fine modern villas. Pynacker's scene shows a herdsman tending his cattle while a peasant rides his donkey through the golden sunset, whose low rays cast filaments of gold across the path and adorns the distant blue mountains with a crown of apricot light.
The subtle glow which suffuses the present image recalls the works of Pynacker's contemporary, the Utrecht painter Jan Both (c. 1618-1652), who was in Italy from 1638 to 1641. Like Both's Italianate pictures, the present work also organizes the composition into a series of wedges, leading the viewer's eye deep into the landscape and employing the slender trees as delicate repoussoirs. Pynacker's observation of the flora and fauna, however, is uniquely naturalistic, brilliantly evoking the changing light on the waterfall as it falls smoothly or breaks into droplets of spray, and the individually articulated leaves, illuminated by the lowering sun as it is filtered through the trees.
The rocks and waterfall at left can be compared to Pynacker's very large upright Landscape with waterfall and shepherd, signed and dated 1654 (Bode-Museum, Berlin, inv. 897); the motif of the waterfall in both works probably derives from a sketch that the artist made in Italy. A similar waterfall appears in A stony creek (Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, inv. 575), which Harwood also dates c. 1654 due to its relationship to the Berlin painting.
The present work has passed through distinguished French and English collections; it was owned by the soldier, diplomat and statesman César-Gabriel de Choiseul-Praslin, 1st Duc de Praslin (1712-1785) and then descended in the collection of the Earls Cowper.
The subtle glow which suffuses the present image recalls the works of Pynacker's contemporary, the Utrecht painter Jan Both (c. 1618-1652), who was in Italy from 1638 to 1641. Like Both's Italianate pictures, the present work also organizes the composition into a series of wedges, leading the viewer's eye deep into the landscape and employing the slender trees as delicate repoussoirs. Pynacker's observation of the flora and fauna, however, is uniquely naturalistic, brilliantly evoking the changing light on the waterfall as it falls smoothly or breaks into droplets of spray, and the individually articulated leaves, illuminated by the lowering sun as it is filtered through the trees.
The rocks and waterfall at left can be compared to Pynacker's very large upright Landscape with waterfall and shepherd, signed and dated 1654 (Bode-Museum, Berlin, inv. 897); the motif of the waterfall in both works probably derives from a sketch that the artist made in Italy. A similar waterfall appears in A stony creek (Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, inv. 575), which Harwood also dates c. 1654 due to its relationship to the Berlin painting.
The present work has passed through distinguished French and English collections; it was owned by the soldier, diplomat and statesman César-Gabriel de Choiseul-Praslin, 1st Duc de Praslin (1712-1785) and then descended in the collection of the Earls Cowper.