HERMAN SAFTLEVEN
Rotterdam 1609 – 1685 Utrecht
A Panoramic River Valley Landscape
Oil on Panel
14 x 21 ¾ ins. (36.5 x 54 cm.)
Signed in monogram, lower right
Provenance
Samuel Day (1757 – 1806), Hinton House, Hinton Charterhouse, Somerset;
Mary Day, his widow (d.1846), by whom bequeathed to;
Thomas Jones (1788 – 1848), heir to Hinton House;
By descent to Edward Talbot Day Jones (1837 – 1911);
Br descent to Mr & Mrs Robertson-Glasgow of Hinton House (c.1948);
Thence by descent in the Robertson-Glasgow family.
Literature
Wolfgang Schultz, ‘Herman Saftleven’, Catalogue Raisonné, Berlin 1982, p.192, Kat. 243, (where dated c.1642).
Inventory of all the Household…including Paintings at Hinton Charterhouse, the Property of the Late Thomas Jones, made August 1848 by English & Sons, Bath.
This beautifully preserved painting, which hung at Hinton House for some 200 years, is a poetic and serene example of the meticulously painted Rhinish landscapes for which Herman Saftleven is most well known.
A delicately articulated oak tree silhouetted at the right of the scene frames a panoramic view of a river valley beneath a beautiful blue summer’s sky. Beneath the great oak, a shepherd sits resting, gazing down at the valley below as he tends his sheep. In a steep descent, the eye is led to a wooded outcrop standing in a deep shadow below, dotted with houses. At the centre, a shimmering river stretches through the scene, surmounted at each side by steep rocky hills which glow in the warm light of the evening sun.
Herman Saftleven was famous during his lifetime for his landscapes, and our picture, with its elevated viewpoint combined with an abundance of detail is a beautiful and very early example of the Rhineland views for which he was so admired. The present painting, like his other panoramic river views, is a fantasy view; a composite of observed topography and motifs, embodying an ideal which transcends reality. With its clear yet restrained palette, its softly handled sky, and its exquisitely wrought foliage, it compares with Saftleven’s masterly Hunter Sleeping on a Hillside (Boston, Collection of Maida and George Abrams), also dated to 1642, in which the figure was executed by his brother Cornelis(i). Both paintings reflect the influence of Cornelis van Poelenburgh (who was active in Utrecht during the 1640’s(ii)) notably in the palette and softness of handling, and the treatment of aerial perspective. The influence of Alexander Kierincx also appears evident, in the meticulous handling of the foliage.
Saftleven’s work is represented in many museums around the world including the Rijksmuseum, the National Gallery (London), the Dulwich Picture Gallery, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the Hermitage, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston).
BIOGRAPHY OF HERMAN SAFTLEVEN
Herman Saftleven was born in Rotterdam in 1609 to an artistic family, whose father and grandfather had been painters of the same name. His brothers Cornelis and Abraham were also artists. Herman was registered as a pupil in the Rotterdam Guild of Saint Luke by 1627, and in 1632 he settled in Utrecht. He married Anna van Vliet, by whom he had four children, in the following year. Between 1655 and 1667 he held offices in the Utrecht painters’ guild.
Saftleven’s paintings prior to 1650 reflect a wide variety of styles, including a brief period around 1634-37, when he executed barn interiors with still lifes in the manner of his brother Cornelis. His early landscapes of the 1630s recall the art of Bloemaert, van Goyen, and de Molijn. He began painting the Rhine valley at least by 1641, and apparently travelled out from Utrecht in the 1640’s and 1650’s to draw. These pictures reflect the influence not only of mountain views by Roelandt Savery (who died in Utrecht in 1641) but also in design and the treatment of foliage, paintings by Flemish artists such Alexander Kierincx. Though not documented in Utrecht, Keirincx, then active in Amsterdam, is known to have collaborated with Cornelis van Poelenburgh, as did Saftleven in these years.
During the 1640s his works become smaller in scale, and he came under the influence of Cornelis Van Poelenburgh, and later of Jan Both, both of whom were active in Utrecht during that time. From 1650 he began to specialize almost exclusively in meticulously detailed panoramic and Rhineland river landscapes, which he continued to paint for the rest of his life. The poet Joost van den Vondel praised the artists’s works, and his patrons included Lady Althea Talbot, widow of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel.
(i) Illustrated in Masters of 17th Century Dutch Landscape Painting, Sutton et al, 1987, Cat. 96, plate 76. The two painings are almost identical in size (the Abrahms painting, also on panel, measures 14 ¼ x 20 ½).
(ii) Poelenburgh, who was the leading artist of the first generation of Dutch Italianate painters, returned to Utrecht from Italy in 1627, where he remained (apart from a sojourn in England from 1638 – 41) until his death in 1667.