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拍品專文
Jacob van Ruisdael’s reputation as the most talented and versatile landscape artist of the Golden Age has endured since the seventeenth century. Early in his career, in the 1650s, he travelled to the borderlands between the Netherlands and Germany, in Gelderland, Overijssel and Westphalia, where he encountered the particular types of watermills he would go on to incorporate in his landscapes. His depictions of these mills constitute a relatively small but important group in his oeuvre, which Slive assigns to the 1650s; on only one such work is the date fully legible, Two Watermills and an open sluice, dated 1653 (J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, inv. no. 82.PA.18).
It is often unclear whether Ruisdael’s mills were faithful representations of known sites, or more liberally invented ideas set within an idyllic countryside, but he was undeniably fixated by one particular timbered, tile-roofed overshot watermill, of a type found in the eastern province of Gelderland. He made four drawings of the mill from varying viewpoints, all of which served as preparatory studies for finished paintings. The eloquent worked-up study for the present work in black chalk and grey wash is at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (fig. 1; inv. no. RP-T-1887-A-1392).
A faithful painted copy of the present work given to Ruisdael’s pupil Meindert Hobbema is dated by Slive to the late 1650s, thereby providing a reasonably reliable terminus ante quem for the present painting (present location unknown; Slive, 2001, op. cit., p. 142, fig. 124a). Hobbema went on to make several of his own paintings and drawings of the same mill and the motif became a speciality of his, but it was his teacher who pioneered the subject.
A note on the provenance
After passing through several French collections in the early nineteenth century, the painting was acquired by avid collector Charles Scarisbrick (1801-1860), a patron of the painter John Martin. His collection of Old Masters paintings, prints and drawings was dispersed in a series of sales in these Rooms in 1861. The sale included Jan Gossaert’s masterful Man holding a glove, now at London’s National Gallery (inv. no. NG946).
Ruisdael’s Watermill then passed into the collection of John Tayleur, who bought several lots at the Scarisbrick sales, including another Ruisdael and works by Jan Asselijn and Melchior d’Hondecoeter, and later acquired paintings from the famed Munro of Novar sales. According to The Times report of his own posthumous sale, Tayleur had started to collect Dutch and Flemish pictures around 1861, making the present painting one of his earliest acquisitions.
It is often unclear whether Ruisdael’s mills were faithful representations of known sites, or more liberally invented ideas set within an idyllic countryside, but he was undeniably fixated by one particular timbered, tile-roofed overshot watermill, of a type found in the eastern province of Gelderland. He made four drawings of the mill from varying viewpoints, all of which served as preparatory studies for finished paintings. The eloquent worked-up study for the present work in black chalk and grey wash is at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (fig. 1; inv. no. RP-T-1887-A-1392).
A faithful painted copy of the present work given to Ruisdael’s pupil Meindert Hobbema is dated by Slive to the late 1650s, thereby providing a reasonably reliable terminus ante quem for the present painting (present location unknown; Slive, 2001, op. cit., p. 142, fig. 124a). Hobbema went on to make several of his own paintings and drawings of the same mill and the motif became a speciality of his, but it was his teacher who pioneered the subject.
A note on the provenance
After passing through several French collections in the early nineteenth century, the painting was acquired by avid collector Charles Scarisbrick (1801-1860), a patron of the painter John Martin. His collection of Old Masters paintings, prints and drawings was dispersed in a series of sales in these Rooms in 1861. The sale included Jan Gossaert’s masterful Man holding a glove, now at London’s National Gallery (inv. no. NG946).
Ruisdael’s Watermill then passed into the collection of John Tayleur, who bought several lots at the Scarisbrick sales, including another Ruisdael and works by Jan Asselijn and Melchior d’Hondecoeter, and later acquired paintings from the famed Munro of Novar sales. According to The Times report of his own posthumous sale, Tayleur had started to collect Dutch and Flemish pictures around 1861, making the present painting one of his earliest acquisitions.