A river landscape at dusk, with a horseman and other figures waiting for a ferry on a riverbank

Described by his biographer Arnold Houbraken as a child prodigy, Adriaen van de Velde was the son of the marine painter Willem van de Velde the Elder and brother of Willem the Younger. Adriaen started painting ‘from an early age, through an inherited inclination, he was driven to the art of drawing and painting, and, still a schoolboy, sneakily managed to get hold of his brother Willem’s drawing pens, brushes and paints, drawing and painting on everything he could find’ (A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, III, Amsterdam, 1721, p. 90). Unlike his father and elder brother, however, Adriaen did not focus his output on maritime painting, instead looking to the landscapes of the vernacular Dutch countryside. Initially trained by Jan Wijnants, the artist’s early works were significantly influenced by Haarlem masters like Paulus Potter. By 1657, however, van de Velde had relocated to Amsterdam, where he set up a workshop and remained until his death. He established himself as one of the foremost landscapists in the Netherlands, producing an extensive and varied body of paintings, drawings and prints, comprising Italianate views with herdsmen and cattle, beaches, dunes, forests, winter scenes, portraits in landscapes and historical pictures.

The present painting perfectly captures the atmosphere of a late afternoon, the figures in the foreground bathed in a warm light as the sun sets at the left of the composition. Van de Velde achieves masterly atmospheric effects of light through the beautifully rendered sky, which occupies over two-thirds of the composition, filled with gently billowing clouds. These, in combination with the stillness of the water and the calm figures who work and relax along the banks of the canal, combine to make the present work a ‘superbly sensitive picture’ and one which ‘clearly brought out the best in [van de Velde]’ (Cornelis, op. cit., p. 20). Painted during the artist’s maturity, the canvas betrays the influence of Dutch Italianate painters like Karel du Jardin and Nicolaes Berchem. Although he never travelled to Italy, Adriaen was quick to assimilate these influences into his work, creating masterly depictions of soft sunlight and warm hues, amply demonstrated in the lambent sky of the present picture. These subtle effects of light, and the suffusion of a sense of tranquil calm, also recall the work of van de Velde’s older contemporary Aelbert Cuyp. Though on a much larger scale, works like Cuyp’s River Landscape with a horseman and peasants of circa 1655-60 (fig. 1) anticipates much of the glowing effects of light and subtle illuminations of small highlights, as dusk filters across the scene.

This painting is first documented in the collection of Mary, Countess of Holderness, from which it was sold after her death in 1801. The Holderness collection, consisting almost entirely of Dutch and Flemish paintings was widely renowned. The countess, herself of Dutch ancestry, had married her husband, Robert D’Arcy, 4th Earl of Holderness in 1742. The Earl had served in the mid-1740s as ambassador to Venice and from 1749 to 1751 in the same capacity at The Hague. He was later appointed Secretary of State for the Southern Department (later the Home Office), transferring to the Northern Department in 1754. He remained in office until March 1761, when he was dismissed by George III in favor of Lord Bute.

The Holderness collection contained numerous highly important pictures, including two wings depicting a male and female donor by Jan Gossaert (Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels), Jan Steen’s Pancake Girl (Nivaagaards Malerisamling, Nivå) and Rembrandt’s circa 1657 Self-Portrait (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, on long term loan from the Duke of Sutherland). The collection also contained numerous other works by van de Velde, two of which, Cattle and sheep resting under trees with a sleeping shepherdess and Figures on the coast at Scheveningen, were acquired at the 1801 sale by General George Stainforth, bidding on behalf of his brother-in-law, the renowned collector Sir Francis Baring (1740-1810). On 6 May 1814, 86 Dutch and Flemish paintings from Baring’s collection were acquired en bloc by the Prince Regent, the future George IV, for the Royal Collection. After its sale, the present picture later entered the collection of Edward Coxe and then that of the renowned dealer Philip Hill, whose collection sale described the painting as a ‘precious gem’.