Winter Landscape – Dutch School, c. 1700, follower of Nicolaes Berchem

Oil on canvas. Dutch School, c. 1700, follower of Nicolaes Berchem.

From the late 13th century to the mid-19th century, Europe experienced a Little Ice Age marked by exceptionally low temperatures, unseen since the last great Ice Age 10,000 years earlier. In 1564, an Antwerp chronicler recorded that ten consecutive weeks of frost allowed the townspeople to cross the frozen Scheldt on foot and even to set up a fair on the ice, with food and drink stalls. While winter provided many amusements and comic anecdotes that nourished Dutch genre painting, it also offered atmospheric and luminous effects such as those represented in our work.

Favouring the realistic vision of landscape that was in vogue in the second half of the 17th century, our painter adopts a naturalistic manner characterised by a low horizon line along which figures are distributed. Engaged in their daily tasks, some characters are captured in the midst of labour, while others are chatting on their return from fishing or pausing to smoke their pipes. The scene is enveloped by a cloudy sky pierced by the rays of a low winter sun, which casts shadows and suffuses the composition with colour.

This manner is related to the school of Italianate landscape, represented by artists who, inspired by the arcadian art of Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain, assimilated the full variety of light effects on objects. Yet most of them rarely painted winter scenes. Among those Italianates who were occasionally inspired by this season, we can cite Nicolaes Berchem, who painted a work (formerly in the collection of Lionel Nathan de Rothschild) with a composition analogous to ours: framed by an ochre-brown building, a bridge crosses a frozen river animated by groups of figures. However, the style of our painter and the clothing of the figures suggest a date closer to 1700, among the followers of Berchem.

We present this animated landscape in a Roman frame of the 17th century, moulded wood, gilt and partially reworked in yellow, of the Carlo Maratta type.
Dimensions: 48 × 60.5 cm (59 × 71 cm with frame).

Biography: Nicolaes Berchem (Haarlem, 1 October 1620 – Amsterdam, 18 February 1683)
Berchem began his apprenticeship with his father, a still-life painter. According to Houbraken, he continued under Jan van Goyen and Claes Moeyaert before being admitted master to the Guild of Saint Luke in Haarlem in 1642. Though it is uncertain whether he actually travelled to Italy, Berchem developed a strongly Italianate manner by the 1650s, becoming the leader of the second generation of Dutch Italianate painters. Producing around 850 paintings, he achieved significant success, reflected in the high prices his works commanded compared to his contemporaries. For example, while the average price for a Jacob van Ruysdael landscape in the last third of the 17th century was 28 florins, a Berchem landscape fetched 91 florins. To meet demand, he employed many apprentices, among whom Karel Dujardin was the most talented epigone.

Bibliography:

HARWOOD, Laurie B., BROWN, Christopher, Inspired by Italy: Dutch Landscape Painting 1600–1700, London, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2002.

SUCHTELEN (van), Ariane (ed.), Holland Frozen in Time: The Dutch Winter Landscape in the Golden Age, Zwolle, Waanders, 2001.

SUTTON, Peter C., Masters of 17th Century Dutch Landscape Painting, (exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1987), Boston, Museum of Fine Arts Publishing, 1987.