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拍品专文
Gerrit Berckheyde, along with Jan van der Heyden, pioneered the townscape as a genre in its own right during the latter half of the seventeenth century. In addition to his native Haarlem, Berckheyde painted cities across the Netherlands including Amsterdam and The Hague, and turned his brush further afield while in the employ of Karl Ludwig Elector Palatine, depicting Heidelberg, Bonn and Cologne. His earliest compositions of Amsterdam date to the 1660s and feature Dam square with the Nieuwe Kerck and Town Hall. It is no surprise Berckheyde was drawn to Amsterdam, as it provided new subjects and new markets for his art, fueled by the city’s growing trade activity.
The present painting is listed among six autograph versions of this particular view in Cynthia Lawrence’s 1991 monograph on the artist: one is in the collections of the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco (inv. no. 1952.77) and another in the Staatliche Galerie, Dessau, the other three have not resurfaced on the art market since one of them last appeared in London in 1959 (loc. cit.). The Singel canal would have been particularly familiar to Berckheyde as the lock was the main point of entry for barges making the nineteen-mile journey from Haarlem to Amsterdam. The Round Lutheran Church, with its soaring copper dome depicted at left, provides a terminus post quem for the painting as its construction was not completed until 1671. At the far end of the canal the Jan Roodenpoortstoren is visible, its prominent clock face recognizable even at a distance. First erected as a medieval defensive tower along the city walls, the Jan Roodenpoortstoren was revitalized in 1616 when the clock and chimes were added at the instance of Mayor Reynier Pauw, who oversaw the Third Expansion of Amsterdam that began in 1610. It is likely that Berckheyde sketched these buildings on one of his trips to the city, only to work up his final compositions from drawings in his studio in Haarlem. While no drawings of the present view appear to survive, this working method is evidenced by other drawings of Amsterdam such as one now in the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap, Amsterdam, which relates to finished paintings in the Amsterdam Museum (inv.nr. SA 7455 ) and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid (inv. no.42 1959.3).
The present painting is listed among six autograph versions of this particular view in Cynthia Lawrence’s 1991 monograph on the artist: one is in the collections of the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco (inv. no. 1952.77) and another in the Staatliche Galerie, Dessau, the other three have not resurfaced on the art market since one of them last appeared in London in 1959 (loc. cit.). The Singel canal would have been particularly familiar to Berckheyde as the lock was the main point of entry for barges making the nineteen-mile journey from Haarlem to Amsterdam. The Round Lutheran Church, with its soaring copper dome depicted at left, provides a terminus post quem for the painting as its construction was not completed until 1671. At the far end of the canal the Jan Roodenpoortstoren is visible, its prominent clock face recognizable even at a distance. First erected as a medieval defensive tower along the city walls, the Jan Roodenpoortstoren was revitalized in 1616 when the clock and chimes were added at the instance of Mayor Reynier Pauw, who oversaw the Third Expansion of Amsterdam that began in 1610. It is likely that Berckheyde sketched these buildings on one of his trips to the city, only to work up his final compositions from drawings in his studio in Haarlem. While no drawings of the present view appear to survive, this working method is evidenced by other drawings of Amsterdam such as one now in the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap, Amsterdam, which relates to finished paintings in the Amsterdam Museum (inv.nr. SA 7455 ) and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid (inv. no.42 1959.3).