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Lot Essay
Born in Haarlem, Jan Wijnants settled in Amsterdam in 1660. Along with his contemporary, Jacob van Ruisdael, Wijnants charted a new course in depicting the local landscape, eschewing the more restricted palette of artists like Pieter de Molijn and Jan van Goyen in favor of one that was suffused with light and local color. The juxtaposition of the blasted tree at left and foliated trees at right divided by a dirt path, a frequently encountered compositional device in Wijnants' works, likely alludes to the transience of life.
Wijnants' landscapes were extremely popular in the eighteenth century and served as a primary influence on later artists like Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Thomas Gainsborough. Klaus Eisele tentatively attributed the staffage in this painting to Wijnants' pupil and frequent collaborator, Adriaen van de Velde (loc. cit.).
Unlike panels produced in Antwerp, those fashioned in the Northern Netherlands seldom bear a panel maker’s mark. The unidentified panel maker's mark on the reverse of this painting is known to appear on a number of other machine-sawn panels emanating from the Northern Netherlands. Though little is known about the marking of panels in the Northern Netherlands, Jørgen Wadum has suggested the practice may have spread across the border by the many Flemish immigrants who brought this Antwerp tradition north with them. Owing to the import of its linen bleaching industry, Haarlem, where Wijnants worked for much of his career, had an especially large number of Flemish immigrants, suggesting the panel maker whose initials appear on the reverse of this panel may well have been active there.
Wijnants' landscapes were extremely popular in the eighteenth century and served as a primary influence on later artists like Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Thomas Gainsborough. Klaus Eisele tentatively attributed the staffage in this painting to Wijnants' pupil and frequent collaborator, Adriaen van de Velde (loc. cit.).
Unlike panels produced in Antwerp, those fashioned in the Northern Netherlands seldom bear a panel maker’s mark. The unidentified panel maker's mark on the reverse of this painting is known to appear on a number of other machine-sawn panels emanating from the Northern Netherlands. Though little is known about the marking of panels in the Northern Netherlands, Jørgen Wadum has suggested the practice may have spread across the border by the many Flemish immigrants who brought this Antwerp tradition north with them. Owing to the import of its linen bleaching industry, Haarlem, where Wijnants worked for much of his career, had an especially large number of Flemish immigrants, suggesting the panel maker whose initials appear on the reverse of this panel may well have been active there.