JAN WIJNANTS
Haarlem 1631/32 - 1684 Amsterdam
A Dune Landscape with Travelers Resting on a Path
Oil on Canvas
17 x 13 ¾ in (43 x 35 cm)
Provenance
Amsterdam, 13th September 1797, lot 164 (fl 140 to Coclers);
Baron Fagel, The Hague, by 1835;
His sale, Paris, 4th May 1870, lot 24;
Graf von Limburg-Stirum: Lepertz, May 1953, lot 128;
Private Collection, Austria
Literature
Jan Wijnants (Catalogue Raisonné) by Klaus Eisele, 2000. Kat Nr 298.
We are grateful to Klaus Eisele for confirming the attribution to Jan Wijnants, and for further confirming that the present painting is synonymous with Kat 298 of his Catalogue Raisonné (i) .
A winding track leads the eye from the foliage and gnarled tree stumps in the foreground to the rustic figures resting in the late afternoon sun. To the left, a dune bathed in raking golden sunlight frames the composition. Beyond lies a wood, and a village amidst hills in the distance. Above, fine cumulous clouds in a brilliant blue sky crown the scene.
Haarlem is often thought of as the birthplace of the Dutch rustic landscape(ii). Many of the century's most prominent landscape painters spent time in and around Haarlem, and it was here in the early 1630's that Salomon van Ruysdael and Jan van Goyen famously experimented with monochrome painting.
Jan Wijnants, together with Jacob van Ruisdael and Philips Wouwermans, belonged to the younger generation of Haarlem painters, and for Wijnants the dune landscape became a lifelong source of inspiration. His are scenes that take place outside the city's walls, along the country roads and winding tracks that traverse the dunes and fields, providing a picturesque setting for the rural activities of hunters, farmers, and shepherds.
Like many contemporary landscapists, Wijnants often employed other artists to paint the figures in his compositions. Both Johannes Lingelbach and Adriaen van de Velde, who painted the figures in the present painting, provided staffage for his landscapes(iii).
The present painting, which dates to the mid 1660's, can be compared with A Hilly Landscape with a Hawking Party in the Royal Collection, which dates from the same period. The 1660s marked the highpoint of quality and finish in Wijnants' oeuvre, which later declined into a broader and more formulaic manner through the course of the 1670's.
Wijnants was long considered one of the greatest landscape artists of the Dutch Golden Age, reaching the apogee of his posthumous fame in the 18th century when he was voraciously collected, particularly by the English aristocracy. As a result, his work was to have a profound influence on the course of British landscape painting, and his style and compositions are reflected in generations of artists in Britain in both the 18th and 19th centuries, most notably in the work of Thomas Gainsborough, whose early landscapes are largely beautiful pastiches of Wijnants and Ruisdael.
Examples of Wijnants's work are preserved in many of the world's great museums, including the National Gallery (London), the Rijksmuseum, the Hermitage, the Kuntshistorisches Museum, the Wallace Collection, the Dulwich Picture Gallery, and the collection of Her Majesty the Queen.
BIOGRAPHY JAN WIJNANTS
Haarlem 1631/32 - 1684 Amsterdam
The date of Wijnants' birth is not known, but in a document of December 1660 the artist gave his age as twenty-eight, suggesting a birth date sometime in late 1631 or early 1632.(iv) His father, Jan the Elder, was an art dealer in Haarlem and listed Rotterdam as the residence of his son in his will of August 1653. No known documents relating to Jan the Younger's training have survived but he most likely studied in Haarlem sometime between 1646-50. He seems to have returned to Haarlem at some point before 1657, as a notarised document of January 1658 states his paternity of the recently born son of a Haarlem woman, Guertgen Claesdr. Wijnants made an agreement with the family of the woman, who died shortly after, that he would adopt the child and be responsible for his education.
Wijnants had moved to Amsterdam by the spring of 1660 and, early in 1661, married nineteen-year old Catharina van der Veer. All documents (several related to unpaid debts) indicate that Wijnants continued to live in Amsterdam until his death in 1684. He defaulted, for example, on a debt of 40 guilders, lent to him by fellow painter Nicolaes van het Stockade (1619-1669). He seems to have kept van het Stockade at bay for some time "met een soopie brandewijn" (with a little brandy) but the debt had not yet been paid upon van het Stockade's death in 1669. The "brandewijn" may refer to the inn that the painter also ran-he is mentioned as a painter and a publican in a document of April 1672. The couple lived on the Looiersgracht around this time and his difficult financial circumstances seem to have required Catharina to work, as she was recorded cleaning paintings in 1680.
(i) The illustration of the present painting in Eisele's Catalogue Raisonné shows the painting prior to its recent conservation, at which time old in-painting was removed from the sky to reveal Wijnants's characteristic cumulus flecked sky.
(ii) See Walter Gibson's discussion of Haarlem in Pleasant Places: The Rustic Landscape from Bruegel to Ruisdael (2000), p. 110ff.
(iii) Relatively little is known about this collaborative practice, and the only document which relates to this aspect of Wijnants' production is a painting (current whereabouts unknown) for which Lingelbach provided the figures. (A Hilly Landscape with Figures, sale London, Christie's, 5 April 1963, no. 6). It was signed and dated by both artists, which is itself unusual, and a gap of three years separated the signatures (signed 1661 by Wijnants and 1664 by Lingelbach), demonstrating that a considerable amount of time could pass between the completion of the landscape and the addition of the figures.
(iv) For a full biography of the artist see C.J. de Bruyn Kops in P. Sutton, ed. Masters of 17th-Century Dutch Landscape Painting (1984), p. 523.