1650s Landscape Paintings

Splendid Italian painting from the first half of the 17th century. Oil on panel artwork of remarkable pictorial quality depicting Christ carrying the cross. The subject found particu...

This museum-sized painting takes us over an estate on the outskirts of the Sonian Forest near Brussels, temptingly identified as the Ter Coigne estate in Watermael (of which only some heavily modified buildings remain today). This gigantic "bird's eye view" is certainly a workshop painting, executed around 1650 by several artists under the supervision of Lucas van Uden...

No Dutch draughtsman ever captured the atmosphere of the rural countryside of Holland with the same atmospheric and engaging simplicity that Van Goyen achieved in drawings such as this. Indeed, his landscapes were seminal in the development of the genre. The present sketch conveys a striking sense of movement within the natural landscape, conveyed by the deftly applied strokes of chalk, from which the artist’s hand can be sensed. The composition is characteristic of his work, with the low horizon affording significance to the broad sky and the soaring birds within. This feeling of windswept motion powerfully evokes the expansive Dutch farmland with which he was evidently preoccupied. 1. Jan van Goyen...

This fantastic Flemish 17th century Old Master oil painting is by Thomas Van Apshoven. It was painted circa 1650 and depicts a village with figures outside a tavern, eating, drinking and dancing. Beyond are more dwellings, villagers and animals, all under a blue summer's sky. The detail, brushwork and vibrant colouring are superb. This is an excellent example of Apshoven's work and a typical subject he loved to paint. Provenance. Leominster estate. Wax stamp verso. Condition. Oil on panel, 22 inches by 17 inches and in good condition. Frame. Housed In beautiful gilt frame, 30 inches by 25 inches and in good condition. Thomas van Apshoven (1622– 1664) was a Flemish painter known for his landscapes with peasant scenes and genre scenes in interiors. His genre scenes depict village festivals, the interiors of taverns, village scenes or landscapes with peasants engaged in various activities, singeries, guardroom scenes and laboratories of alchemists. Some still lifes have also been attributed to him. His themes and style are close to that of David Teniers the Younger. He was born on 30 November 1622 in Antwerp as the eldest son of Ferdinand van Apshoven the Elder and Leonora Wijns. His father was a painter who had studied with Adam van Noort and had become a master of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1596. No paintings by his father are known. His younger brother Ferdinand van Apshoven the Younger became also a successful painter. Thomas studied under his father. Some sources state that he became a pupil of the prominent genre painter David Teniers the Younger. It is more likely, however, that he was an imitator of Teniers. He was registered as a 'wijnmeester' [son of a master] in the Guild of St. Luke of Antwerp in the guild year 1645–1646. He married Barbara Janssens on 22 March 1645. The couple had four children. The godfathers of the children included the painters Victor Wolfvoet...

Here Gaspard Dughet offers us an idyllic vision of the Roman countryside. The stages follow one another in a perfectly structured composition, revealing here a lake, there travellers walking along, gradually leading our eye to the blue horizon. But behind its classical composition, this landscape is particularly interesting because of three anthropomorphic details that the artist has hidden, opening the way to a radically different interpretation... 1. Gaspard Dughet, a landscape artist in the light of Poussin Gaspard Dughet was born on June 4th, 1615 in Rome where his father, of French origin, was a pastry cook. He was probably named Gaspard in honour of his godfather Baron Gaspard de Morant, who was, or may have been, his father's employer. His older sister Jeanne married the painter Nicolas Poussin (1594 - 1655) on September 1st, 1630. The young Gaspard was apprenticed with his brother-in-law at the beginning of 1631, which led his entourage to name him Gaspard Poussin. The first preserved works of the painter date from the years 1633-1634 and were painted in Poussin’s studio. Around 1635, Gaspard Dughet became emancipated and began to frequent the Bamboccianti circle. In 1636, he became friends with the painter Jean Miel (1599 - 1656), but also with Pier Francesco Mola (1612 - 1666) and Pietro da Cortona (1596 - 1669). This was also the time of his first trips throughout Italy. The painter, although of French origin, appears never to have visited France. In 1646 he settled permanently in Rome. A recognized painter with a solid book of orders, he remained faithful to landscape painting throughout his life, alternating between cabinet paintings and large decorative commissions, using both oil and fresco. Nailed to his bed by rheumatic fever at the age of 58, he died on May 25, 1675. 2. Discovering an idealized landscape Beyond a relatively dark foreground that takes us into the landscape, we discover a vast bluish horizon: a plateau surrounded by deep ravines advances to the right, overhanging an expanse of water that sparkles below. A road winds through a mountainous mass as if leading us to the fortress that crowns it; another town appears in the distance at the foot of three conical mountains. The composition is rigorous, mineral, and structured by geometric volumes. The various stages in the landscape lead one to the next attracting the eye towards the horizon located in the middle of the canvas. The general impression is that of a welcoming and serene nature. In many places the paint layer has shrunk, or become transparent, revealing the dark red preparation with which the canvas was covered and accentuating the contrasts. Human presence is limited to three jack players, leaning against a mound in the foreground. Their long garments, which may evoke Roman togas, contribute to the timelessness of the scene. Close examination of the canvas reveals two other travellers on the path winding between the rocks. Made tiny by the distance, their introduction in the middle register, typical of Dughet's art, lengthens the perspective. While it is difficult to date the work of a painter who devoted his entire life to the representation of landscapes, it is certain that this painting is a work from his later years. The trees that occupied the foreground of his youthful compositions have been relegated to the sides, a stretch of water separates us from the arid mountains counterbalanced by two trees represented on the opposite bank. The introduction of this stretch of water in the middle of the landscape betrays the influence of the Bolognese and in particular of the Dominiquin (1581 - 1641) A number of similarities with a drawing in the British Museum might suggest a date around 1656-1657, since, according to Marie-Nicole Boisclair , it has been compared with the Prado's Landscape with the Repentant Magdalene, painted at that period. 3. Three amazing anthropomorphic details While some late Renaissance landscapes offer a radical double reading, allowing one to see both a face or a human body behind the representation of a landscape, it seems interesting to us to hypothesize that Gaspard Dughet had fun here by slipping in a few details that, taken in isolation, evoke human or animal figures. We will give three examples, looking closely at a cloud, the trunk of a broken tree and the top of a cliff. The main cloud could thus evoke a Christ-like face or that of an antique god...

This is a masterfully rendered and brilliantly designed scene from the Arabian Nights. page 33 from Random House. We are not sure if this is by Gustaf Tenggren. ( Gustaf Tenggren At...