Philips Koninck

Anonymous sale, Paris, Drouot, (Tajan) 27 June 1989, lot 34.

"The following condition report has been provided by Henry Gentle, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. The oak panel has two horizontal joins, both reinforced and both unstable; there is old filler and restoration along both. Under ultra-violet light old restoration can be detected, particularly in the sky to the right hand side of the image, between the joins and to the right of the trees, where some paint loss has occurred. A small damage in the foliage of the central tree has been repaired and minor thinness in the foreground has been reduced. There is unnecessary reinforcing of the group of three figures and a standing figure in the foreground to the right of the signature has been touched out. Almost all the restoration is discoloured. There are the remains of an older varnish in the foliage of the trees and in the foreground, removal of this would enhance the overall tonality. Many areas of the painting are in good original condition with much of the paint texture, especially the impasto, and colour well preserved. Offered in a gilt wood frame with some damage."
"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."

This picture is unusual for the combination of its oak panel support and its late dating.  By the 1670s good quality oak panels were scarce in The Netherlands, but in any event Koninck rarely used them for landscape painting after his earliest works.  The composition, with rising ground in the foreground acting almost as a repoussoir would by the 1670s have been rather old-fashioned in Dutch landscape painting, but Koninck's purest panoramas, with no foreground, are relatively early works, and by the 1660s his landscapes are more conventional, with foreground details and trees and figures placed close to the viewer, often to one side of the composition.  Few of his works are dated, but the picture of 1668 in Leerdam, Hofje van Aerden exemplifies this more conservative late style, and the undated landscapes in Frankfurt, Städel, and New York, Metropolitan Museum, which have been dated to the mid-1660s and mid-1670s respectively, exemplify Koninck's use in his later works of foreground trees on rising ground as repoussoir devices.¹

The same characteristics can be found more abundantly in Koninck's late drawings, several of which are composed in a similar way, with an extensive panorama on one side, and rising, sometimes wooded ground in the foreground on the other.  Good examples include the sheets in Chantilly, Musée Condé, London, British Museum (two), and Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, all of which are now generally dated to the 1670s.²

1.  See W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt Schuler, Landau/Pfalz 1983, vol. III, pp. 1549, 1551, nos. 1066, 1065, 1073, reproduced pp.  1661, 1615, 1623.
2.  See W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, New York 1982, vol. 6, pp. 3358-3364, nos. 1517^x to 1519a^x , reproduced.   The Chantilly drawing, which is particularly close to the present lot, is reproduced in colour and discussed in greater detail in D. Mandrella, Arcadie du Nord. Dessins hollandais du Musée Condé à Chantilly,  exhibition catalogue, Chantilly,  2001, p. 52, no. 22, reproduced.