Old Master Paintings

/

Lot 25
  • 25

Esaias van de Velde Amsterdam 1587 - 1630 The Hague

bidding is closed

Description

  • Esaias van de Velde
  • A Winter Landscape with Figures Skating and Playing Kolf on a Frozen River, before a Large Dovecote and a Cottage
  • signed and dated lower left: E.V. VELDE. / 1625.
  • oil on oak panel, circular, in a fine carved and gilt wood frame 

Provenance

Mr. Rutley, his sale, London, Christie's, 8 June 1923, lot 56;
Possibly Arnold van Buuren, Amsterdam (according to Keyes);
Possibly his sale, Amsterdam, Mak van Waay, 26 June 1925, lot 135 for 510 Guilders;
Acquired by the mother of the present owner during the 1920s;
Thence by direct descent.

Literature

'Des chefs - d'oeuvre pour décor quotidien' in Connaissance des Arts, January 1963, pp. 50-59, illustrated, as hanging in a private collection of an anonymous 'Madame X' in an appartment in Avenue Foch, Paris;
G.S. Keyes, Esaias van der Velde, Doornspijk 1984, p. 147, no. 100, reproduced plate 208 (as present whereabouts unknown).

Catalogue Note

Dated 1625, this monocular snap-shot of the Dutch landscape by Esaias van de Velde was painted following the artist’s move to The Hague from the city of Haarlem in 1618. The free handling and spirited brushwork are akin to the large body of drawings produced by Van de Velde (over 200 are known) which record the artist’s surroundings with a matter-of-factness and sense of realism previously uncaptured by painters of the Dutch landscape. Whilst the present work may be topographically accurate, it seems more likely that it was inspired by the artist's drawings and sketches, almost certainly made from life, such as that of A Farm by a River, today in the Rijkprentenkabinet, Amsterdam, which depicts a similar farmhouse on a river bend spanned by a bridge in the distance.1

As pointed out by George Keyes in his 1984 monograph on the artist, this painting may have been conceived as a pendant to a work, of almost identical dimensions (signed by Van de Velde but not dated), representing A Sailboat about to moor before a Bastion, today in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (no. 730A).2

1 See Keyes, under Literature, p. 242, no. D90, reproduced plate 412.
2 Keyes, op. cit., p. 149, no. 108, reproduced plate 217.