Jan van Goyen - On the Beach at Scheveningen - image-1

Lot 1161 Dα

Jan van Goyen - On the Beach at Scheveningen

Auction 1029 - overview Cologne
17.05.2014, 12:00 - Old Master Paintings and Drawings, Sculptures
Estimate: 650.000 € - 750.000 €
Result: 767.000 € (incl. premium)

Jan van Goyen

On the Beach at Scheveningen

Oil on canvas. 129 x 191 cm.
Signed and dated lower center: IVGoyen 1642.

The first quarter of the 17th century was the starting point for many profound innovations in landscape painting in the Netherlands. The fanciful panoramas of the 16th century, painted as if from above and often combined with religious or historic imagery, were superseded by realistically rendered Dutch landscapes containing scenes of the everyday life of fishers and peasants. The viewpoint is a lower one, the sky begins to take up more space and the observer appears more directly confronted by the depicted scenes.
Alongside Salomon van Ruysdael, Jan van Goyen was the other main protagonist in this development, and one of the first important representatives of independant Dutch landscape painting of the 17th century. His oeuvre encompasses almost every subject of this genre, but his views of beaches are of particular significance. The artist depicted these in his typical colour palette of subdued ochre, grey and green hues with subtle shading.
The present work is one of van Goyen's finest and largest paintings, and presents the beach at Scheveningen - one of the artist's preferred motifs - in an impressive monumental format. The characteristic church of this seaside town allows for the topographical identification, and beside it we see a plethora of masterfully painted figural staffage, ranging from fishers, their young helpers and dogs in the left foreground to a horse-drawn carriage in the background.

Provenance

Auctioned by Sotheby's London, 3.2.1954, lot 60. - D. Cevat art dealers, London. - Private collection, Holland.

Literature

Hans-Ulrich. Beck: Jan van Goyen 1596-1656. Ein Oeuvreverzeichnis in zwei Bänden, Amsterdam 1973, vol. II, p. 422, no. 944.