Lot 10: Robert Griffier (London 1688-1750)

Summer: An extensive Rhenish landscape with boats at a quayside and peasants by an inn; and Winter: A frozen winter landscape with peasants
the first signed 'R. GRIFFIER F·' (lower left) and the second signed 'R GRIFFIER FECIT' (lower right)
oil on panel
20 x 24 3/8 in. (50.8 x 61.9 cm.)
a pair (2)

Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 25 October 1958, lot 146, as Robert Griffier (1200 gns. to L. Koetser).
with Leonard Koetser.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 4 July 1990, lot 30, as Jan Griffier I (sold for £170,500).
with Richard Green, where acquired by a collector, and by descent to the present owner.

THE PROPERTY OF A LADY (LOT 10)

Robert Griffier was the son of Jan Griffier, whom Arnold Houbraken called 'a burgher of the world (see A. Houbraken, De groote Schouburgh der Nederlandtsche konstschilders en schilderessen, III, Amsterdam, 1721, p. 360; see also K. Gibson, 'Griffier, Jan, senor (c. 1645-1718), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, VIII, Oxford, 2004, pp. 667-8). Jan came to England around 1632 and became so successful as a painter of Italianate and Rhenish scenes that he was able to spend 3000 guilders on a yacht, on which he lived on the Thames. It would appear that Robert was born after Jan's third marriage and soon after it seems that the family sailed back to the Low Countries, but were shipwrecked off Rotterdam and were left with only a few coins that one of the girls had stored away in her belt. By 1704 the Griffier family seems to have returned to London. Both Robert and his brother Jan Griffier II would have been trained by their father. Indeed, the present pair of pictures were for a long time mistaken as prime examples of Jan Griffier the Elder's oeuvre, in which a verdant, zig-zagging summer landscape with warm skies is contrasted with the cold blue and white hues of winter, each picture set against fantastical turreted castles nestled in mountainous landscapes and peopled with tiny bustling figures going about their daily lives. What little is known of Robert includes an interesting anecdote taken from the archives held in the Public Record Office, which note that in 1753 Robert was sued by his own mother, Mary Griffier, who stated that in 1731 she had lent her son, Robert the painter, the considerable sum of £100 to set up as a victualler. She had never been repaid, and now, aged eighty-five and impoverished, she wanted her money back. Robert Griffier's masterpiece is the amibitious Regatta on the Thames, signed and dated 'R.Griffier/1748', in the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch.

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