Willem Schellinks Amsterdam 1623 - 1678

Anonymous sale ("The Property of a Gentleman"), London, Sotheby's, 8 July 1981, lot 79, for £12,500;
Mark Gilbey Esq.;
With Richard Green, London, from whom acquired by the present owner.

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is on a strong bevelled oak panel in one piece and perfectly flat. There have been a few little lost flakes in the past but there is no sign of loose or raised paint today. Two small flakes in the sleeve of the central figure, in red on foot holding hawks and/or other birds, have been retouched, with another cluster of little retouched flakes near the head of the second horse and in the shoulder of the second horseman, and also a few in the lower right corner and in the central fruit tree. The central foliage is quite thin, as is the sky, although it was intentionally fairly lightly painted, and this has a certain number of minor surface retouchings with some older retouching in the top corners and along the upper edges. The distant landscape is also slightly thin with occasional superficial touches, however the middle distance is well preserved and unworn, as is the exotic tree and other vegetation on the right and in the foreground, with the beautiful group of horsemen on the right which is delicate but finely intact. This report was not done under laboratory conditions."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Willem Schellinks was a keen diarist and it is thanks to this that we have a clear chronology of his career. In 1646, for example, he travelled through France and it was there that he appears to have adopted the habit of painting 'italianate' subjects. He did not actually visit Italy until the early 1660s when he accompanied, as tutor, the 13-year-old son of the Amsterdam merchant Jacob Thierry on a four-year journey through England, France, Italy and Germany. Schellinks was much affected by the landscapes of his countrymen Jan Asselijn and Johannes Lingelbach, whose work he would have seen both in Rome and back in the Low Countries where they sent home a vast array of landscapes bathed in mediterranean light. Schellinks died a rich man, leaving an estate of some 20,000 guilders. After his death, two fellow 'Dutch italianates' (as the group of Dutch artists resident in Rome in the second half of the 17th century became known), Nicolaes Berchem and Frederick de Moucheron, completed many of his unfinished canvases.

A sense of the exotic permeates this hunting scene. In the background an elephant and a rhinoceros, beasts that had always aroused wonder and symbolised faraway lands, are locked in battle. The portrayal of the exotic also extends to the huntsmen. Though Schellinks is not thought to have left Europe, he would have been familiar with the dress of the East. Contact with the Ottoman Empire meant that Turkish costumes were well-known, while a vague picture of Indian life was presented through Moghul miniatures which are known to have been readily found in seventeenth-century Holland.  The horsemen could well derive from these miniatures, in the same way that several Rembrandt drawings, for example the ones found in London in the British Museum, are based on Moghul originals.¹

1.  M. Royalton-Kisch, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Circle in the British Museum, London 1992, p. 151, cat. no. 67, reproduced p. 152.