JAN VAN DER HEYDEN | A PALATIAL GARDEN WITH FIGURES EMERGING FROM A PALACE, THE ROOF OF THE HUIS TEN BOSCH VISIBLE IN THE DISTANCE

Alexandre-Louis Hersant Destouches, Paris;

His deceased sale, Paris, 21 March 1794, lot 131, for 7,200 francs;

There purchased by Michael Vauthier on behalf of Peter Rainier;

His deceased sale, London, Christie's, 24 May 1845, for £504 to Nieuwenhuys;

Baron de Varange;

His deceased sale, Paris, 26 May 1852, lot 23, for 22,100 francs;

There purchased by Baron James de Rothschild;

Thence by descent to Baron Edmond de Rothschild, Paris, by 1927;

Thence by inheritance to Baronne Alexandrine de Rothschild, Paris;

Confiscated from the above by the ERR (Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg) after the German occupation of Paris; 

Private collector;

Thence by descent in the family to her nephew;

By whom anonymously sold, London, Sotheby's, 3 December 2014, lot 7 (sold pursuant to a settlement agreement between the owner and the heirs of Alexandrine de Rothschild);

There acquired.

J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné..., vol. V, London 1854, pp. 386–87, 392, nos 56 and 73;

P. Lacroix, Annuaire des Artistes et des Amateurs, Paris 1860, pp. 166-67;

E. Michel, Great Masters of Landscape Painting, London 1910, pp. 199 and 200;

C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné..., vol. VIII, London 1927, pp. 397–98, no. 230;

S. Avery-Quash, 'The Travel Notebooks of Sir Charles Eastlake', The Walpole Society, London 2011, vol. II, pp. 524-26.

An elegantly dressed and clearly important young woman passes through the doorway of a massive triumphal arch, shielded from the sun by a parasol held by one of several attendants dressed in red. A young man prepares to offer a cloak, watched by other similarly dressed young men. The scene is bathed in slanting sunlight from the right.

Although this is a capriccio, the distant cupola is based on Huis ten Bosch palace near The Hague, and its two matching Garden Pavilions. Van der Heyden depicted the Huis ten Bosch in its formal garden setting in several paintings, most notably in pendants in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, dating from the late 1660s, one of which shows both pavilions, the northernmost in the foreground.¹ Van der Heyden painted capricci of formal gardens framed by very grand monumental classical architecture of his own devising in a number of pictures, of which another good example is the architectural fantasy in Washington's National Gallery of Art of around 1670.²  The present picture is also likely to date from around 1670. As in a number of works by Van der Heyden, the figures are likely to have been painted by Adriaen van de Velde.

An accurate watercolor drawing after this painting by Aert Schouman (1710 - 1792) is preserved in the Graphische Sammlung in Frankfurt (fig. 1). It must have been copied by Schouman when the painting was in the collection of Alexandre Destouches in Paris, because Schouman died in 1792 and the Destouches Collection was dispersed two years later.

When this painting was last at auction in 2014, it was sold pursuant to a settlement agreement between the present owner and the heirs of Alexandrine de Rothschild.

1 See P.C. Sutton in Jan van der Heyden, exh. cat., New Haven and London 2007, pp. 158–63, nos 22 and 23, both reproduced.

2 New Haven and London 2007, pp. 164–67, no. 24, reproduced.