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Lot Essay
Frederik Marinus Kruseman was born into an important family of artists whose members include both the history painter Cornelis Kruseman and the portrait painter Jan Adam Jansz. Kruseman, and this cultural heritage was the driving force behind his artistic career. Kruseman began his artistic training as an apprentice to the respected still-life painter Jan Reekers. Kruseman's parents entrusted Reekers with their son because Reekers had had a guiding hand in the tutelage of Kruseman's cousin Jan Adam, who at that time had been appointed Director of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam. After a period of time with Reekers, Kruseman was apprenticed with Andreas Schelfhout's son-in-law, Nicolaas Roosenboom. Kruseman’s focus on winter scenes can be credited to the influence of his second tutor and the natural world and its depiction through landscape painting played a central role in the development of Kruseman’s mature style.
Attracted to the rural landscape in the vicinity of Hilversum, the artist moved there for a year in 1835. After his stay in Hilversum, Kruseman returned to Haarlem, only to leave shortly afterwards on a journey to Cleves, where the famous Dutch landscape painter Barend Cornelis Koekkoek had settled in 1834. When interviewed by the art historian J. Immerzeel, Jr., who was compiling his work on Dutch and Flemish masters, Kruseman listed Koekkoek as one of his masters, despite the fact that officially Koekkoek was not accepting any pupils at that time. Along with Koekkoek, Kruseman mentioned Reekers and Roosenboom. It would only have been possible to be an official apprentice of Koekkoek's after 1841, the year in which his Academy of Painting was founded. However, the fact that B.C. Koekkoek is mentioned in Kruseman's list of teachers demonstrates the unmistakable influence the older artist had on Kruseman's work. His consistently fine treatment of the subject at hand and his seemingly effortless technique can only have been the result of close proximity to the ‘prince of Dutch romantic landscape painting’.
The present painting is a fine example of a winter landscape. The landscape is dominated by the monumental architecture of the church, squarely placed in the center of the composition. Every small group of figures tells a story of its own. The lone figure of the woman trudging up the steep steps to the church, the figure seated on the ice, and the group of figures with their firewood all serve to make this composition appealing in its narration and harmonious in its rendition.
We are grateful to Dr. Jan de Meere for confirming the authenticity of the present lot.
Attracted to the rural landscape in the vicinity of Hilversum, the artist moved there for a year in 1835. After his stay in Hilversum, Kruseman returned to Haarlem, only to leave shortly afterwards on a journey to Cleves, where the famous Dutch landscape painter Barend Cornelis Koekkoek had settled in 1834. When interviewed by the art historian J. Immerzeel, Jr., who was compiling his work on Dutch and Flemish masters, Kruseman listed Koekkoek as one of his masters, despite the fact that officially Koekkoek was not accepting any pupils at that time. Along with Koekkoek, Kruseman mentioned Reekers and Roosenboom. It would only have been possible to be an official apprentice of Koekkoek's after 1841, the year in which his Academy of Painting was founded. However, the fact that B.C. Koekkoek is mentioned in Kruseman's list of teachers demonstrates the unmistakable influence the older artist had on Kruseman's work. His consistently fine treatment of the subject at hand and his seemingly effortless technique can only have been the result of close proximity to the ‘prince of Dutch romantic landscape painting’.
The present painting is a fine example of a winter landscape. The landscape is dominated by the monumental architecture of the church, squarely placed in the center of the composition. Every small group of figures tells a story of its own. The lone figure of the woman trudging up the steep steps to the church, the figure seated on the ice, and the group of figures with their firewood all serve to make this composition appealing in its narration and harmonious in its rendition.
We are grateful to Dr. Jan de Meere for confirming the authenticity of the present lot.