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Lot Essay
This is a beautifully preserved example of Isaac van Ostade’s idyllic vision of the local Dutch countryside around Haarlem where he lived throughout his brief but illustrious career. While Isaac trained initially in the studio of his brother Adriaen, it is likely, given the technical bravura that landscapes such as this example display, that he may also have spent time in the studio of a painter specialising in that genre. The most likely candidate is Saloman van Ruysdael, not only because of certain parallels between his work and Ostade’s, but because of a legal suit he brought against Adriaen van Ostade in 1640 for ‘sums due for board and tuition’, which are thought to relate, not to Adriaen, but to his brother. Isaac’s career was cut short due to his premature death in 1649. Aged around 19 when Ruysdael fled his suit, it is probable that Isaac would have been working as a journeyman in his studio (a painter who had completed his apprenticeship but had not yet, usually for financial reasons, become an independent master). If we assume, therefore, that he began his career in circa 1640, he can only have worked professionally for around nine years, nevertheless producing an outstanding body of work.
Although this picture is signed and dated, it is not possible to decipher the last digit of the date. Stylistically, however, the delicate lighting, warm tonality and emphasis on finely painted detail, point to a date around the mid-1640s, a period when Ostade’s painting underwent a marked transformation. Inspired by the Dutch Italianate painter Pieter van Laer, Isaac gave up painting interiors in favour of outdoor scenes, combining landscape and genre elements. At the same time, he abandoned the dark colouring and loose brushwork which characterised his early oeuvre, adopting a more delicate, detailed technique and lighter overall tonality.
One of a number of smaller, upright compositions, this work shows two horsemen conversing with a figure outside a rural inn. The elder of the two, riding a dappled grey steed, is dressed as a soldier, with a buff coat, plumed hat and with a sword in a hilt at his side, typical dress for cavalrymen in the seventeenth century. The other rider, on a bay, who likewise wears this uniform, the slashed blue sleeves of his coat revealing his white shirt beneath, is shown pointing outwards across the landscape towards a bridge in the distance over which a shepherd drives his flock. Trees, horsemen and the shepherd appear silhouetted against the pink sky, conferring upon the scene both a poetic mood and a monumental quality that belies the scale of the panel.
Although this picture is signed and dated, it is not possible to decipher the last digit of the date. Stylistically, however, the delicate lighting, warm tonality and emphasis on finely painted detail, point to a date around the mid-1640s, a period when Ostade’s painting underwent a marked transformation. Inspired by the Dutch Italianate painter Pieter van Laer, Isaac gave up painting interiors in favour of outdoor scenes, combining landscape and genre elements. At the same time, he abandoned the dark colouring and loose brushwork which characterised his early oeuvre, adopting a more delicate, detailed technique and lighter overall tonality.
One of a number of smaller, upright compositions, this work shows two horsemen conversing with a figure outside a rural inn. The elder of the two, riding a dappled grey steed, is dressed as a soldier, with a buff coat, plumed hat and with a sword in a hilt at his side, typical dress for cavalrymen in the seventeenth century. The other rider, on a bay, who likewise wears this uniform, the slashed blue sleeves of his coat revealing his white shirt beneath, is shown pointing outwards across the landscape towards a bridge in the distance over which a shepherd drives his flock. Trees, horsemen and the shepherd appear silhouetted against the pink sky, conferring upon the scene both a poetic mood and a monumental quality that belies the scale of the panel.