Johannes Lingelbach Frankfurt-am-Main 1622 - 1674 Amsterdam

E.H. Lawrence, London;
Moriz Freiherr von Königswärter, Vienna,
His sale, Berlin, Schwarz/Schulte, 20 November 1906, lot 54;
Dr. W. Baare, Godesberg,
By whom sold, Braunschweig, Hühnerberg, 5 March 1958, lot 17;
With P. de Boer, Amsterdam, 1958;
Mr. J. van Duijvendijk, Scheveningen, by 1958;
Bought by the parents of the present owner in the early 1960s.

The Frankfurt-born Johannes Lingelbach is mostly known today as a painter of Mediterranean harbours and cities, with rich staffages. In the canon of Dutch 17^th Century painting, he is therefore classified as among the painters of the second generation of Bamboccianti, such as Nicolaes Berchem, Jan Asselijn, Karel Dujardin and others, who travelled to Italy during the 1640s and who translated their Italian impressions into paintings upon their return.

Lingelbach’s contribution to Dutch 17^th Century painting, however, consists of  a much wider variety of subject matter. As explained by Burger–Wegener (see Literature below, p. 121), Lingelbach not only engaged himself in the depiction of Italianate subjects, but also took interest in the actual developments of Dutch painting after his return to the North, and thus started to paint native landscapes side by side with his Mediterranean inspired views. Joachim von Sandrart highly praised Lingelbach for this variety of subject matter. He thought this a great quality for a painter. The present picture belongs to a group of native Dutch landscapes with peasants, which Lingelbach painted after his return from Italy when he was living in Haarlem and which Burger–Wegener (see Literature) dates towards the second half of the 1650s, before his move to Amsterdam in 1659. The group includes pictures such as the Rebellious horse in the Musée Magnin, Dyon (op.cit., no. 101 ); the Country Road with sportsman and peasants in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (op.cit., no. 140 ); a signed pair of paintings showing Travellers resting and feeding their horses in landscapes, in the Wellington Collection at Apsley House, London (inv. nos. 1488 & 1489; op.cit., nos. 138 and 139 ) and a Dune landscape, dated 1658, sold Vienna, Dorotheum in 1941 (op.cit., no. 132).

In all these landscapes the influence of Philips Wouwerman, and through him of Pieter van Laer is apparent, especially in the use of a shallow pictorial space and the silhouetting of horse and figures against the sky. In the present picture the pictorial space has been reduced to the minimum without any depth. Thus within the boundaries of the small cabinet size, the figures are given the maximum of space by placing them against the sky. The lively colour scheme gives the picture a special fresh appeal, by which Lingelbach makes his contribution to the genre.