Adriaen van de Velde

M. Paillet, 1799 (1350 francs. 54l.);
J. Smith Esq., 1828 (105 gs.);
Richard Simmons Esq., by 1834;
John Rogers Esq., his sale, London, Christie’s, 30 April 1847, for £173 5s to Goldsmid;
Samuel Wheeler Esq., by 1854;
His sale, London, Christie’s, 29 July 1871, for £225 15s. to Colnaghi;
Albert Levy Esq., his sale, London, 6 April 1876, lot 376, for 900 gns. to Lane; 
Lord Dudley;
Mr. and Mrs. Hugh F. Packenham Borthwick Norton;
Thence by descent to Mrs. Eva Sardinia Borthwick Norton (d. 1988) of Southwick House, Purbrook, Hampshire, before 1952;
By whom offered London, Christie's, 15 May 1953, lot 89, apparently sold for £750 to Elmfield but probably bought in;
Bequeathed by her Executors to The Royal Scottish Academy in 1990.

London, British Institution, 1854, no. 64 (lent by Samuel Wheeler);
London, British Institution, 1867, no. 39 (lent by Samuel Wheeler);
London, Royal Academy of Arts, Winter Exhibition, 1952-3, no. 506 (lent by Mrs. E.S. Borthwick-Norton).

J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French Painters, vol. V, London 1834, p. 195, no. 75;
Exhibition of the Works of Ancient Masters, exhibition catalogue, London, British Institution, 1854, p. 9, no. 64;
C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century, vol. IV, London 1912, pp. 541, 543, and 559, nos. 295, 303b, and 343a (see footnote above);
A. Graves, A Century of Loan Exhibitions, 1813-1912, London 1914, vol. IV, pp. 1487 and 1488;
Catalogue. Dutch Pictures 1450-1750, exhibition catalogue, London, Royal Academy of Arts, 1952, p. 95, no. 506;
Q. Buvelot, ed., A choice collection: seventeenth-century Dutch paintings from the Frits Lugt Collection, Zwolle 2002, p. 171, reproduced p. 170, fig. 32c.

There is a preparatory drawing for the present painting in Amsterdam, Amsterdams Historisch Museum, inv. no. A 10347 (fig. 1; see also Buvelot, under Literature, p. 171, reproduced p. 170, fig. 32b).  In his painted version Van de Velde has compressed the horizontal design into a near square, thus achieving greater monumentality for the landscape. The striking motif of a whiteish-grey horse resting its head over the back of its brown counterpart is one regularly employed by Van de Velde in the late 1650s and '60s, as seen in his Landscape with horses, cattle and a sleeping herdsman of 1657 in the Royal Collection (see C. White, The Dutch Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Cambridge 1982, p. 129, cat. no. 201, reproduced plate 174).

The provenance of the present work was only established in the middle of the last century when it was offered at auction by Mrs. Eva Sardinia Borthwick-Norton on 15 May 1953 (see Provenance).  The cataloguing for the sale drew on three catalogue entries from Hofstede de Groot (under Literature), effectively identifying them as one and the same.

We are grateful to Dr. Bart Cornelis for endorsing the attribution to Adriaen van de Velde on the basis of a colour transparency.