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Lot Essay
This striking painting, which has been in the possession of the same family for more than half a century, is among the finest works by Herman Saftleven to come to market in recent years. Saftleven, who was born in Rotterdam but moved to Utrecht in his early twenties, began his career by producing works in the manner of Jan van Goyen, Abraham Bloemaert and Jan Both. In the early 1650s he embarked on the first of several trips through the Rhineland. The region’s hilly landscape cut by river valleys must have left an indelible impression on Saftleven, as he repeatedly returned to it in small-scale, exquisitely rendered landscapes like this painting, works on which his artistic reputation largely rests today.
Meticulously rendered rays of light emanate from the partially veiled afternoon sun, giving rise to the luminous atmospheric effects created by light reflecting off the billowing clouds and drenching the rugged landscape populated by a broad cast of characters going about their daily activities: fishermen with their nets, bargemen unloading their freight and townsfolk gathering around the day’s catch. The explicit inclusion of such a light source is rarely encountered within 17th-century Dutch landscape painting (see F.J. Duparc, Golden: Dutch and Flemish Masterworks from the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection, exhibition catalogue, Salem, 2011, p. 259, under no. 51). Saftleven, perhaps more than any other artist in the period, exploited its possibilities to great effect, most notably in his late paintings executed from around 1670 on.
According to a letter of expertise dated 18 June 1953 from J. Buéso of Brussels, while in the Foot collection this painting was the pendant to the Rhenish landscape that was subsequently sold Christie’s, London, 7 July 2000, lot 6.
Meticulously rendered rays of light emanate from the partially veiled afternoon sun, giving rise to the luminous atmospheric effects created by light reflecting off the billowing clouds and drenching the rugged landscape populated by a broad cast of characters going about their daily activities: fishermen with their nets, bargemen unloading their freight and townsfolk gathering around the day’s catch. The explicit inclusion of such a light source is rarely encountered within 17th-century Dutch landscape painting (see F.J. Duparc, Golden: Dutch and Flemish Masterworks from the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection, exhibition catalogue, Salem, 2011, p. 259, under no. 51). Saftleven, perhaps more than any other artist in the period, exploited its possibilities to great effect, most notably in his late paintings executed from around 1670 on.
According to a letter of expertise dated 18 June 1953 from J. Buéso of Brussels, while in the Foot collection this painting was the pendant to the Rhenish landscape that was subsequently sold Christie’s, London, 7 July 2000, lot 6.