Lot 27: CORNELIS HENDRICKSZ. VROOM HAARLEM CIRCA 1591 - 1661

signed and dated lower right: CV (in ligature) ROOM. 1646

oil on canvas

109.5 by 147 cm.; 43 1/8 by 57 7/8 in.

THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN

The Reverend Aston Legh Whitlock, by circa 1900;
Thence by inheritance.

This is an important addition to Cornelis Vroom's painted oeuvre of less than fifty surviving pictures, and is one of only six dated paintings known by him, and is his only securely attributable topographical view.

The view is along the Spaarne river from the east bank looking north towards the cathedral of St. Bavo. The track running along the river is the Schalckwyckerwech. Vroom may have based this painting on a drawing that he made of the same view in the British Museum (inv. 1836.8.11.563; see G.S. Keyes, Cornelis Vroom: Marine and Landscape Artist, Alphen 1975, vol. 1, p. 91, vol. 2, pp. 223-4, no. D 21, reproduced fig. 55; here reproduced Fig. 1), although it is more likely that the finished drawing and the present painting were both made in the studio from lost sketches. In Vroom's drawing the Amsterdamsepoort is clearly to be seen on the far bank of the Spaarne, but in the present painting he reduced its prominence so that it is barely discernible. The discovery of the present painting suggests that the London drawing is a probably a little later than the years 1635-42 to which Keyes assigns it.

Vroom is recorded to have painted a "lantschap" for the City of Haarlem which one might reasonably assume to have been a topographical view, but this is recorded in a document of 1639, and thus cannot be the present work (see Keyes, op. cit, p. 203, no. IP 3).