Lot 177: JAN JOSEFSZ. VAN GOYEN

PROPERTY FROM A EUROPEAN PRIVATE COLLECTION LEIDEN 1596 - 1656 THE HAGUE AN ESTUARY SCENE WITH SMALL DUTCH VESSELS AND A CHURCH AND A CASTLE, POSSIBLY LOEVESTEIN ON THE FAR SHORE indistincltly signed in monogram on the rowing boat lower right: VG oil on oak panel 25 by 41.6 cm.; 9 7/8 by 16 3/8 in.

Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Tentoonstelling van Oude Kunst, 1929, no. 50

Beeld. Kunst, 1930, vol. XVII, no. 19, reproduced; H-U. Beck, Jan van Goyen 1596-1656, vol. II, Katalog der Gemälde, Amsterdam 1973, p. 371, no. 828, reproduced; H-U. Beck, Jan van Goyen 1596-1656, vol. III, Ergänzungen..., Doornspijk 1987, p. 240, no. 828.

Acquired from Ireland; With D. A. Hoogendijk, Amsterdam c. 1929 In the Clemens collection, Cologne (according to an old Witt Library mount); Dr. J. Moll van Charante, Voorschoten, (from 1929, according to the 1981 sale catalogue); Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 30 November 1981, lot 33; Anonymous sale, New York, Christie's, 18 January 1984, lot 152; With Robert Noortman, Maastricht, from whom acquired by the parents of the present owners.

This is an intensely tonal picture painted, with the exception of the blue sky upper right and tiny touches of colour in the clothing of the fishermen and sailors, in tones of brown and grey enlivened with cream. Painted, like all his works, with great rapidity, Van Goyen captures the shallow brackish brown estuarine water, thrown up into a short chop by the brisk breeze blowing a squall in from the left. Relying on the grey-brown ground to underly the overall tone, Van Goyen uses translucent thinned brown paint applied broadly almost as a wash overlayed with brushwork in a darker brown and creamy white to delineate the constantly moving jumbled sea, while in the sky he uses thicker grey and creamy paint to express the seemingly greater solidity of the clouds. the handling of the sea speaks for a dating in the 1640s, while the more vigorous brushwork in the clouds points to a date in the latter part of that decade. Beck (see Literature) suggests that the castle on the horizon in the centre is Slot Loevestein. If this is correct, the scene depicted - or more accurately revived in the memory of the artist - is near the confluence of the Maas and the Waal, branches of the Rhine, both of which were much wider than today; the church to the right may be the Sint Maartenskerk at Zaltbommel, whose spire was truncated by a fire in 1538; and the kaag in the foreground is running upstream before a prevailing westerly breeze with the broadening estuary of the combined rivers opening up to the left.