VAN DE CAPPELLE JAN (1626 - 1679) 17th Cent. Dutch oil on canvas - with remains of the signature and with apocryphal name / attributed to Jan van de Cappelle VAN DE CAPPELLE JAN (1626 - 1679) olieverfschilderij op doek : "Marine met sloepen" - 30 x 40 met restanten van signatuur en met apocriefe naam / toegeschreven aan
Jan van de CAPPELLE Amsterdam, 1626 - 1679 Paysage d'hiver avec personnages soulevant un bloc de glace sur une rivière gelée Huile sur panneau, doublé Porte une signature 'J. Van Cappelle' reprise en bas à gauche (Restaurations) Winter landscape with figures lifting an ice block on an frozen river, oil on panel, inscribed, by J. van Cappelle h: 42 w: 56 cm Provenance : Collection de la famille Vischer, Bâle, au XIXe siècle ; Puis par descendance ; Collection particulière de l'Est de la France Commentaire : Personnage singulier, peintre tout aussi particulier, Jan van de Cappelle était le fils d'un riche teinturier d'Amsterdam dont il hérita de l'entreprise en 1674. Grand amateur d'art tout au long de sa vie, sa fortune familiale lui permit de s'adonner tout entier à sa passion pour la peinture. Collectionneur éclairé, il était présent à la vente des biens de Rembrandt en 1656 où il acheta plusieurs centaines de dessins. Des portraits de lui subsistent par ailleurs, réalisés par des noms aussi illustres que ceux de Frans Hals ou de Gerbrandt van den Eechkout, ce dernier étant aujourd'hui conservé par le musée d'Amsterdam. Cette passion que nourrit van de Cappelle pour la peinture fut sans doute ce qui le mena à son tour à la pratique. Sa formation, il la suivit seul, observant les maîtres qui l'avaient précédé et auxquels il vouait une grande admiration. Il regarda ainsi beaucoup les paysages d'Hendrick Avercamp et d'Aert van der Neer, influences qui se retrouvent dans son œuvre. Van den Eechkout dit de lui qu'il n'avait appris à peindre que selon ses propres désirs. Jamais van de Capelle ne se forma en atelier comme il était de coutume, ni n'appartint à la Guilde de Saint-Luc. Sa production elle, reflète un goût extrêmement prononcé pour les marines tout au long de sa vie, mais aussi pour des paysages d'hiver entre les années 1652 et 1654, période à laquelle nous rattachons notre tableau. Sur la surface d'une rivière gelée, il présente un groupe de petits personnages s'affairant à percer la glace. Immédiatement, la rudesse de l'hiver se perçoit dans la courbure des corps qui ponctuent la scène. A l'instar de ce qui peut être remarqué dans le reste de ses œuvres, van de Cappelle porte une grande attention au rendu de la lumière. Celle-ci perce l'atmosphère brumeuse dans laquelle elle se diffuse. A dessein, il travaille une palette en camaïeux de noirs, bruns et blancs exclusivement, couleurs traitées comme en éraflures dans la glace, tandis que les nuages sont brossés de manière plus vaporeuse. Il met en place un jeu de profondeurs menant le regard vers les villageois du premier plan jusqu'aux maisons du dernier plan avant qu'il ne se perde dans la brume enneigée de l'horizon. Seule la verticalité tortueuse des arbres vient rompre l'étagement horizontal de la composition. Van de Cappelle présente une touche d'une modernité incroyable, déstabilisante pour le regard qui s'accroche aux touches d'un brun sombre et épais. D'autres versions sur toile de paysages proches sont aujourd'hui conservées au Mauristhuis d'Amsterdam et à la Fondation Custodia à Paris. Toutefois, l'œuvre que nous présentons aujourd'hui est d'autant plus singulière qu'elle fut réalisée sur panneau. Elle se rapproche ainsi du paysage d'hiver qui se trouve aujourd'hui au musée Thyssen-Bornemisza à Madrid (fig. 1), et d'un panneau présenté en vente publique en 2009 1. Nous remercions Madame Ellis Dullaart, du RKD, de nous avoir aimablement confirmé l'authenticité de ce tableau d'après une photographie. 1. Vente anonyme ; New York, Christie's, 28 janvier 2009, n°72 Estimation 20 000 - 30 000 €
Manner of Jan van de Cappelle (Dutch, 1624-1679) Shore Scene with Sailing Vessels under Gray Skies. Unsigned, inscribed "Jan Van der Capelle [sic]/1630-" on a presentation plaque. Oil on canvas, 10 x 11 1/2 in., framed. Condition: Lined, retouch, scuffing, varnish inconsistencies, surface grime.
Unsigned black & white chalk on blue paper scene shows three boats in the foreground, others in the distance with a figure on dry land beside. Housed in a modern silver edge frame with double mattes. Discovery Gallery Inc. Santa Fe, New Mexico label on reverse indicating From the Collection of Victor Koch, London. Also a Kulicke New York framing label. SIZE: Sight: 9-3/4" x 15-3/4". PROVENANCE: From a Bar Harbor, Maine home. CONDITION: Very good. 9-23357
Manner of Jan van de Cappelle (Dutch, 1624-1679) Shore Scene with Sailing Vessels under Gray Skies Unsigned, inscribed "Jan Van der Capelle [sic]/1630-" on a presentation plaque Oil on canvas, 10 x 11 1/2 in. (25.5 x 29.3 cm), framed. Condition: Lined, retouch, scuffing, varnish inconsistencies, surface grime.
AMSTERDAM 1625/26 - 1679 WINTER LANDSCAPE WITH A MAN FIXING A SLED AT THE EDGE OF A FROZEN RIVER signed with monogram on the end of the log lower centre: IVC oil on canvas 50 by 42.9 cm.; 19 5/8 by 16 7/8 in.
Jan van de Cappelle Amsterdam 1626-1679 Winter landscape with skaters and kolf players on a frozen waterway by a village signed and dated 'JV Cappelle. A 1653' (lower left) oil on panel 15 3/8 x 24 3/8 in. 39.2 x 61.9 cm.
A winter landscape with skaters and kolf players on a frozen waterway by a village signed and dated 'JV Cappelle. A. 1653' (lower left) oil on panel 15 3/8 x 241/2 in. (39.1 x 62.2 cm.) PROVENANCE Acquired by the uncle of the present owner in Rome in circa 1935, and by inheritance to the present owner. NOTES Jan van de Cappelle's fame as one of the outstanding Dutch painters of the seventeenth century is largely based on his seascapes. These greatly outnumber his winter scenes of which only a small group of around twenty pictures are thought to survive; indeed, Margarita Russell ( Jan van de Cappelle, London, 1975, p. 30) notes that fewer than fifty winter landscapes were ever known, but stresses that few of those listed by Hofstede de Groot (his nos. 143-180) can still be accounted for. Peter Sutton gives the number at fewer than two dozen, of which only about six bear dates, restricted to either 1652 or 1653 (P. Sutton, in the catalogue of the exhibition, Masters of 17th Century Dutch Landscape Painting, Amsterdam, Boston and Philadelphia, 2 October 1987-31 July 1988, p. 287). This would indicate a short but intensive period of activity in this area. Hofstede de Groot recorded a 'very good' winter scene dated 1644 but he had not seen it and it remains untraced. Given the scarcity of winter scenes by the artist, the re-emergence of this hitherto unknown panel of 1653 can be regarded as a significant discovery. It is one of only a handful to be painted on panel and, of those, the only one to be dated. Virtually all of his key winter landscapes, including the three other known pictures of 1653 (in the Mauritshuis, The Hague, the Frits Lugt collection at the Institut N‚erlandais, Paris, and the picture formerly in the Heinemann collection, sold after the sale at Christie's, London, 4 July 1997, lot 16) are on canvas. The choice of support goes some way to explaining the apparent disparity between the silvery-blue tonality of the canvas pictures and the more monochrome brownish tones of the present work, expressed through a restrained palette composed almost entirely of black, brown and white. In structure and overall character, however, the present composition corresponds closely not only with the other views of 1653, but with virtually all of the known winter landscapes. The closest comparable is probably the undated panel in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid; both pictures share the same brown monochromatic tonality and feature an identical drawbridge in the central background. Margarita Russell notes that the Thyssen picture 'unlike the other winter scenes with their predominantly grey and silver hues, has a distinctly brown-yellow tonality'. For all Van de Cappelle's fame today, it is a remarkable aspect of his career that he was not a professional artist. Self-trained - a fact affirmed by his friend Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, who described him in 1654 in the Album Amicorum Jacobus Heyblocq (now in the Royal Library in the Hague) as 'bij hem selfs uijt eygen lust geleert' ['who taught himself to paint out of his own desire'] - and the son of an affluent Amsterdam businessman, he married the wealthy Anna Grotingh, lived on the Keizersgracht and had his portrait painted by Rembrandt and Frans Hals (both untraced). His last will shows that, in addition to an immense fortune, Van de Cappelle owned extensive properties and an art collection that was one of the most important of his day. The inventory of the collection dated 1680, lists 200 paintings, including seven Rembrandts and three works by Rubens, as well as more than 7,000 drawings including 900 by Avercamp, 400 by Van Goyen, 1300 by de Vlieger and 500 by Rembrandt, most of which were acquired at the artist's insolvency sale in 1658, including nearly 300 (almost all) of Rembrandt's landscape sketches. Van de Cappelle's personal fortune afforded him considerable artistic freedom. He was under no pressure to establish an artistic reputation and never had to rely on painting for a living. The fact that his father ran the family business until his death in 1674, only five years before his own, allowed Van de Cappelle plenty of time to pursue his hobby of painting. It is hard to assess what effect this had on his output. Certainly, his winter scenes do not suggest any particular effort to appeal to a potential market. Rather than expound the pleasures of the northern winter in the traditional way, the bleak tone evoked in Van de Cappelle's scenes often present winter as something to be endured rather than enjoyed. In this work, the peasants that occupy the landscape appear sombre, hunched up by the cold with hands in pockets while their boats, which would have provided the lifeblood for a village such as this, are icebound. The popular winter game of kolf is played disconsolately by a solitary figure in the central foreground. As in his marine painting, Van de Cappelle's principal concern is the rendition of light and atmosphere. The stillness and calm for which his seascapes are so admired is reflected by the wintry quiet that he manages to convey in the present work. He captures the very essence of a chilled winter morning - the silvery sky, the ice-encrusted trees, the reflected surface of the ice, as well as the bitterly cold figures who inhabit the landscape. Van de Cappelle's winter landscapes share many affinites with those of Aert van der Neer, his elder by some twenty years. Although he seems never to have owned any of his paintings, he was probably influenced by him and, as Russell has observed, the elder artist's late works were in turn no doubt influenced by the younger's pictures of 1652 and 1653. What is undeniable is that Van de Cappelle's output in those two years all but eclipsed Van der Neer's. As Stechow has argued 'the latter's contributions to this realm all but overshadow the older master's work...., not so much in effects of luminosity as in subtlety and harmoniousness of composition and colour combination, and most conspicuously in his capacity for reticence and poetical understatement' ( Dutch Landscape Painting of the Seventeenth Century, London, 1996, p. 95). We are grateful to Dr. Margarita Russell for confirming the attribution after examining the picture in the original.
A coastal landscape with fishermen and other figures on the shore, shipping beyond oil on panel 181/4 x 26 in. (46.3 x 66 cm.) PROVENANCE Davidson collection, London. with P. and D. Colnaghi, London. Marcus Kappel; his sale, Cassirer and Helbing, Berlin, 25 November 1930, lot 24. Louis and Mildred Kaplan, New York, by 1950. Dr. C. H. Muntz, Wassenaar, by 1975. with K. and V. Waterman Galleries, Amsterdam. with Bob P Haboldt & Co, New York, by whom sold to the present owners. LITERATURE W. von Bode, Die Gem„ldsammlung Marcus Kappel en Berlin, Berlin 1914, p. 24, no. 35. W. von Bode, Die Meister der Holl„ndischen und vl„mischen Malerschulen, Leipzig, 1917, no. 252. Dr. W. Valentiner and Dr. P. Wescher, A Catalogue of Paintings in the Collection of Louis and Mildred Kaplan, 1950, fig. 22. L.J. Bol, Die Holl„ndische Marinemalerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Braunschweig, 1973, p. 184, fig. 186. NOTES Simon de Vlieger's fame rests on his significant contribution to seascape painting. Building on the tonal atmosphere of Jan Porcellis, de Vlieger broadened his range of subject matter and refined further the elder artist's palette. The present painting comes from his finest period, after he had abandoned the more tempestuous, dramatic scenes with their silvery tonality which he painted from 1624, and turned instead to tranquil beaches beneath a more tempered sky. Jan Kelch dates the present painting to circa 1643-5 and groups it with the Beach view, signed and dated 1643, in the Mauritshuis, The Hague and the extrardinarily beautiful Beach Scene in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne. These recall van Goyen's works of that period in the subtle relationship between the grey water and yellow-brown of the dunes, the grey-brown of the land in front, and the grey-white and lightest blue of the sky. However, they also presage the general trend of development in de Vlieger's works in the 1650s, with their stronger emphasis of color in the figures, such as red-brown and golden green, and the new luminosity that appears to foretell Jan van de Cappelle. The present painting is a masterly exercise in the serenity of a late afternoon on the Dutch coast and reveals why de Vlieger is often considered the most important marine painter of the first half of 17th century. The present painting was previously in the collection of Marcus Kappel who amassed an extraordinary group of Dutch and Flemish pictures including Rubens' Portrait of Isabella Brandt, now in the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Rembrandt's Self-portrait, signed and dated 1669, in the Mauritshuis, The Hague.
