Lot 15
  • 15

Claes Pietersz. Berchem Haarlem 1620 - 1683 Amsterdam

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Description

  • Nicolaes Berchem the elder
  • A landscape with horsemen attacking travellers near the margin of a wood
  • signed lower right: Berghem f.
  • oil on canvas

Provenance

With Robert Noortman, London, from whom bought by the present owner.

Literature

Possibly J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné..., vol. V, London 1834, p. 107, no. 339;
Possibly C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und Kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke ..., vol. IX, Esslingen/Paris 1926, pp. 85 or 86, nos. 125 or 126a.

Catalogue Note

While the figures in it are dressed in similar costumes to those in his Italianate landscapes, this picture is unusual in that the landscape: with oak woods and sandy soil;  and the meteorology: a leaden overcast sky (though with strong shadows suggesting sunlight from the left);  are decidedly Northern.  Berchem's earliest landscapes are not Italianate, but this is probably a later work, perhaps from the 1670s.