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Lot Essay
Jan Both was among the most influential figures who made up the second generation of Dutch Italianate landscape painters. After training in Utrecht with Abraham Bloemaert and Gerrit van Honthorst, Both travelled to Italy in 1638 and, settling in Rome with his brother Andries, joined a thriving community of Dutch and Flemish painters working in the city. He befriended both Herman van Swanevelt and Claude Lorrain, collaborating with the latter on two series of large landscapes for the Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid). Following Andries’ death in Venice in 1642, Jan returned to Utrecht and established himself as a leading painter in the city, becoming the head of the city’s painters guild in 1649.
Like Claude and Swanevelt, Both composed his landscapes along receding diagonal lines to create a greater sense of depth. Both unified his compositions by bathing them in a golden Italianate light. Despite their striking sense of naturalism, none of the paintings Both produced following his return to the Netherlands can be associated with identifiable places, though they nevertheless derive from drawings made in Italy. The broad sweep of landscape at left and shepherd tending his herd in the central clearing lend this painting a complex structure which is characteristic of the artist’s works in the final years of his career. A similar approach can be seen in paintings like the Italianate landscape with a view of a port (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), which is traditionally dated to circa 1645-50.
This painting has at times been associated with one of a similar subject and scale which descended in the collection of William Harcourt (1743-1830), 3rd Earl Harcourt, and was exhibited at the British Institution (1823 and 1852) and Royal Academy (1880) (see C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke des hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, IX, Esslingen and Paris, 1926, p. 434, no. 45). That the two cannot be one and the same is confirmed by the fact that the Harcourt painting remained in the family’s possession at the time of Hofstede de Groot’s publication, while the present painting was acquired by the English bookseller and newsagent William Henry Smith, whose heirs lent it to the Guildhall Art Gallery in 1892.
Like Claude and Swanevelt, Both composed his landscapes along receding diagonal lines to create a greater sense of depth. Both unified his compositions by bathing them in a golden Italianate light. Despite their striking sense of naturalism, none of the paintings Both produced following his return to the Netherlands can be associated with identifiable places, though they nevertheless derive from drawings made in Italy. The broad sweep of landscape at left and shepherd tending his herd in the central clearing lend this painting a complex structure which is characteristic of the artist’s works in the final years of his career. A similar approach can be seen in paintings like the Italianate landscape with a view of a port (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), which is traditionally dated to circa 1645-50.
This painting has at times been associated with one of a similar subject and scale which descended in the collection of William Harcourt (1743-1830), 3rd Earl Harcourt, and was exhibited at the British Institution (1823 and 1852) and Royal Academy (1880) (see C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke des hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, IX, Esslingen and Paris, 1926, p. 434, no. 45). That the two cannot be one and the same is confirmed by the fact that the Harcourt painting remained in the family’s possession at the time of Hofstede de Groot’s publication, while the present painting was acquired by the English bookseller and newsagent William Henry Smith, whose heirs lent it to the Guildhall Art Gallery in 1892.