Master Works on Paper from Five Centuries
Master Works on Paper from Five Centuries
Winter landscape with a farm by a river
Auction Closed
February 5, 05:23 PM GMT
Estimate
8,000 - 12,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Jacob van Strij
(Dordrecht 1756 - 1815)
Winter landscape with a farm by a river
Pen and brown ink and watercolor over pencil, heightened with gouache;
signed in brown ink, lower left: J: van Strij.
241 by 374 mm; 9 ½ by 14 ¾ in.
Probably Alexander Emil Posonyi (1839-1899), Vienna (L.159 partly cut);
bears unidentified collector's mark, lower left (L.2508);
sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 14 November 1983, lot 100,
where acquired by the late owner,
thence by descent
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, On Country Roads and Fields, the depiction of the 18th- and 19th-century landscape, 1997-98, (catalogue by Robert-Jan te Rijdt et al), no. 21
Along with his elder brother, Abraham (1753-1826), Jacob van Strij was a key figure in the flourishing Dordrecht art world of the late 18th and early 19th century. In many cases, the paintings of the Van Strijs strongly reflect the influence of their illustrious fellow Dordrecht artist, Aelbert Cuyp (1620-1691), but in the field of drawings, Jacob van Strij’s landscapes, and in particular his occasional splendid winter scenes, are more indebted to other masters of the 17th century.
As the late Robert-Jan te Rijdt so eloquently described in his 1997 Rijksmuseum catalogue entry for this exceptional watercolor (see Exhibited), by the time Van Strij made his drawing, around 1790-1800, the prevailing taste for landscape drawings had changed rather radically from the time of Cuyp, a century and a half earlier, as had the function that these drawings usually served. Whereas most of Cuyp’s surviving landscape drawings are spontaneous on-the-spot sketches, often later used as the basis for motifs in paintings, Van Strij usually made far more complete and finished drawings like this one, worked up in watercolor and fully signed, works that were presumably made for sale as independent compositions, rarely if ever connected with paintings by the artist.
Although Cuyp frequently did incorporate a limited amount of delicate watercolor within his more elaborate landscape drawings, the very pictorial use of color that we see in the present drawing is rare in the work of Van Strij’s 17th-century precursors. Only in the drawings of Allart van Everdingen and Anthonie van Borssom do we find significant numbers of finished, signed watercolor landscapes, and indeed there are strong stylistic parallels between Van Strij’s watercolors and those of Van Borssom in particular.
The present watercolor also harks back to 17th-century Dutch art in terms of its subject: by the late 18th century, depictions of winter scenes had become relatively rare, and those artists who did paint or draw these scenes usually did so in the context of pairs or sets of contrasting drawings depicting Summer and Winter, the Four Seasons, or the Twelve Months. In that context, though, artists usually stressed the hibernal subject-matter by incorporating sports and activities associated with the season, which we do not see here. Like another, rare winter landscape by the artist, in Weimar, this outstanding watercolor is fundamentally an exercise in delicate lighting and serene atmosphere.1
1Weimar, Kunstsammlungen zu Weimer, inv.nr. KK 5468; see In helder licht. Abraham en Jacob van Strij, exh. cat., Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum, and Enschede, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, 2000, p. 186, fig. 271