Lot 1538 Dα

This early landscape by Jan van Goyen from 1629 shows an unusual motif of lime kilns by a river. It must have appealed to the artist, who revolutionised Dutch landscape painting in the 1620s with his modern conception of nature, to contrast the painterly qualities of his landscape with the functional geometric forms of the lime kilns. While the left half of the picture corresponds entirely to the ideals of a classical Dutch landscape, the right half, with the conical forms of the lime kilns, forms an interesting contrast to this. Van Goyen also seems to have deliberately contrasted the form of the billowing smoke that rises into the sky with that of the deciduous trees on the left.

Alongside global trade, highly developed handicraft production was the second pillar of Dutch prosperity. The representation of artisan production sites was thus an expression of patriotic pride in the efficiency of one's own economy. Lime was fundamental for the production of mortar, and thus of vital economic importance. In the southern Netherlands, David Teniers the Younger painted this subject several times (e.g. "A Lime Kiln with Figures”, Wellington Museum, Apsley House, London), but conceived his images more as genre scenes than as landscapes. Artists like Pieter van Laere have also used lime kilns in the Italian backdrops of their bamboccianti scenes. Van Goyen himself also utilised the motif in another work, a river landscape (cf. Beck, op. cit., no. 599). Here he also renders a classical composition in which the water flows diagonally into the distance. Like the present work, the central motif of lime kilns forms an interesting contrast to the picturesque surroundings.