.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Throughout his career, Van Goyen journeyed around the landscape of his native Holland making drawings that formed the basis of many of the details in his paintings. In 1648, he left Haarlem on the first of three more ambitious trips that took him, on the first journey, via the mouth of the River Scheldt to Antwerp and Brussels; the second two were in 1650 to Cleve and Arnhem and, in 1651, to Haarlem and Amsterdam, where he drew the devastation resulting from the collapse of the St Anthonis Dike. The drawings from those trips are mostly preserved in two sketchbooks of which that documenting the 1648 trip is in the Kupferstichkabinett der Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen in Dresden.
The buildings in the present picture are taken from a drawing of Antwerp - showing the crane by the harbour, the church of St. Walburga (for the High Altar of which Rubens painted the celebrated altarpiece of The Raising of the Cross in 1610) and the Viskoperstor - made on the 1648 trip and now in the Dresden sketchbook (see H.-U. Beck, Jan van Goyen, I, Amsterdam, 1972, p. 277, no. 846/66). The way in which Van Goyen has employed his topographical sketch is typical of the artist's development of his drawings, combining different real motifs into imaginary landscape compositions. He was not attempting to depict accurate views but rather landscapes in which topographical elements happened to feature, rather in the manner of the Italian capriccio.
Stylistically, the present picture is fully representative of Van Goyen's style of the early 1650s. During that period, the artist moved away from the yellow-brown monochrome palette of the previous decade towards the present, more earthen tone, whilst retaining the disguised diagonal structure so favoured throughout his career. Van Goyen's move away from his tonal pictures is, however, anticipated in the blue in the sky, perhaps also reflecting the artist's increasing interest in light and atmosphere later in his career.
The buildings in the present picture are taken from a drawing of Antwerp - showing the crane by the harbour, the church of St. Walburga (for the High Altar of which Rubens painted the celebrated altarpiece of The Raising of the Cross in 1610) and the Viskoperstor - made on the 1648 trip and now in the Dresden sketchbook (see H.-U. Beck, Jan van Goyen, I, Amsterdam, 1972, p. 277, no. 846/66). The way in which Van Goyen has employed his topographical sketch is typical of the artist's development of his drawings, combining different real motifs into imaginary landscape compositions. He was not attempting to depict accurate views but rather landscapes in which topographical elements happened to feature, rather in the manner of the Italian capriccio.
Stylistically, the present picture is fully representative of Van Goyen's style of the early 1650s. During that period, the artist moved away from the yellow-brown monochrome palette of the previous decade towards the present, more earthen tone, whilst retaining the disguised diagonal structure so favoured throughout his career. Van Goyen's move away from his tonal pictures is, however, anticipated in the blue in the sky, perhaps also reflecting the artist's increasing interest in light and atmosphere later in his career.