Thomas Wijck

Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby Parke Bernet, 19 September 1974, lot 16;
With J. Hoogsteder, The Hague, by 1977;
Mahmoud S. Rabbani;
Offered, his sale, London, Sotheby's, 11 April 1990, lot 105;
Thence by inheritance.
 

M.S. Rabbani, Oude Meesters in de verzameling M.S. Rabbani, Wassenaar 1981, cat. no. 15;
M.S. Rabbani, Old Masters from the Collection of Mahmoud S. Rabbani, Wassenaar 1983, pp. 108-12.

The actual painting is slightly more green in tone than the catalogue illustration suggests. The canvas has an effective relining. No damages are apparent and the paint surface is secure and under a slightly dirty layer of varnish. Tiny discoloured retouchings can be observed throughout in the sky. Inspection under UV light reveals additional strengthening in the ship and bridge in the foreground. Offered in a decorative gilt wood frame in fair condition. (MW)
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Thomas Wijck's journey to Italy has not been documented conclusively, but it is from works like these, and from his many scenes of Roman popular life¹ that one can deduce that he travelled to Italy. The biographer Arnold Houbraken wrote of Wijck that he painted a number of views of harbours and markets populated with figures 'and behind the same showed large building and palaces drawn by himself from life in Italy.'²
The classical building in the present painting is the Temple of Vesta, in reality located in the Piazza della Bocca della Verità in Rome, but here incorporated in a capriccio view of a rather Neapolitan coast. The temple was a popular motif with vedute-painters, both in topographically correct views and in capriccios. This painting with its subtle combination of the painter's recollection of things observed from life, and the imaginary view that fully captures the atmosphere of the port of Naples, shows how Wijck enriched the repertory of Italianizing painters.

1. See for example the Scene with the Roman Populace, in the Johnson Collection, Philadelphia, in G. Briganti, L. Trezzani and L. Laureati, The Bamboccianti. The Painters of Everyday Life in Seventeenth Century Rome, Rome 1983, p. 229, fig. 7.9.
2. A. Houbraken, De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlandsche Konstschilders, The Hague 1753, vol. II, pp. 16-17.