Philips Wouwerman - DEPART FOR A FALCONERY - image-1

Lot 1263 Dα

Philips Wouwerman - DEPART FOR A FALCONERY

Auction 995 - overview Cologne
12.05.2012, 00:00 - Old Masters and 19th Centuries Paintings
Estimate: 220.000 € - 260.000 €
Result: 341.600 € (incl. premium)

Philips Wouwerman

DEPART FOR A FALCONERY

Oil on panel. 47 x 63 cm.
PHL. W (PHL ligiert).

The landscape shows a hunting party that is about to depart for a falconry. The huntsmen, servants, horses, and dogs have gathered in front of a castle, and Wouwerman depicts them in a rhythmical figural composition, leading the beholder from right to left, from the horseman depicted en face to the elegant pair that steps down the staircase of the castle. The warm light, the picturesque castle with its Neptune fountain or the lady with the parasol give the landscape a southern atmosphere characteristic for Wouwerman´s landscapes.
This painting has been dated to around 1665/1668 by Birgit Schumacher who assumes that it was once the pendant of a landscape depicting the return from the hunt (Schumacher 2006, no. A225). Wouwerman´s landscapes with hunting parties often did not show the hunt itself, but the departure, the rest during or the return from the hunt, allowing the artist to depict elegant hunters with their precious horses. There was a constant high demand for landscapes with such elegant and refined figural staffage and warm, brilliant colours. The Dutch society, becoming wealthy and powerful, adopted an aristocratic taste in the middle of the 17th century that Wouwerman perfectly fulfilled with such landscapes. To satisfy the high demand, Wouwerman had his workshop make copies of his landscapes. Of this painting, a few have survived, one being in the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich.

Certificate

Walther Bernt, Munich, 6.7.1975.

Provenance

Coll. Count E. de Pourtalès, Paris. - Theodore Emmerson and John Smith, London. - Sale, London, 19.5.1826, lot 117 (verso handwritten label). - Coll. Peter Norton, London. - Coll. Dixon, London, 1828. - Knoedler & Company, London, vor 1948. - Coll. Gerwase Elwes, London, 1975. - Sotheby´s, London, 19.3.1975, lot 14. - David Koetser Gallery, Zurich. - Private collection, Germany.

Literature

John Smith: A Catalogue Raisonne of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French Painters. 9 vols. London 1829, vol. 1, p. 338, no. 468. - Cornelis Hofstede de Groot: Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 9 vols. Esslingen and Paris 1908, vol. 2, p. 464, no. 686. - Birgit Schumacher: Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668). The Horse Painter of the Golden Age. 2 vols. Doornspijk 2006, vol. 1, p. 219, no. A125; vol. 2, ill. no. 119.