Herman van Swanevelt Woerden (?) circa 1600 - 1655 Paris

A native of Holland, Swanevelt was already in Paris by 1623, and of which he left behind two signed and dated views (now in the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Brunswick). He is most likely to have arrived in Rome as early as 1624 and is generally believed in 1627 to have been living in the same house as his fellow landscape painter Claude Gellée. This friendship between the two artists remained throughout his stay in Rome, and indeed he is recorded in 1640 working alongside Claude and Jan Both on a series of large canvasses for Philip IV to hang in the Buen Retiro Palace, Madrid.

With their distinctive golden hues, and gentle classicism, the landscapes of Swanevelt provide a calm alternative to the studied fine painting of the first generation of Dutch Italianates, and to the busy street scenes of the second generation who were to come so strongly attracted to the style of Pieter van Laer, and indeed he received important patronage while in Rome, including a series of views of the Vatican loggias and commissions for twenty nine paintings for Cardinal Antonio Barberini.

Swanevelt returned to Paris in 1641, where in 1644 he was appointed Peintre ordinaire du Roy, and where he was to spend the rest of his days, with only intermittent visits to his hometown of Woerden. The importance of Swanvelt as an artist is still today much under estimated; he exerted a strong influence over Jan Both, although perhaps his influence was strongest on the French landscape tradition.

The present composition can be compared to a signed and dated work, London, Sotheby’s, 24 March 1976, lot 71.