Lot 36: * LAURENT DE LA HYRE PARIS 1605 - 1656

signed and dated on a fragment of stone, lower left L. de la Hyre in & F. 1656

LANDSCAPE WITH SHEPHERDS WATERING THEIR FLOCKS

26 1/4 by 38 1/2 in.; 66.6 by 97.7 cm.

oil on canvas

Possibly Chevalier Lambert, Paris;
Possibly his sale, Paris, March 27, 1787, lot 167: "Deux beaux paysages ornés de montagnes et de rivières. on voit sur le devant des pâtres avec leurs bestiaux, l'un de ces tableaux, éclairé au soliel couchant, tient du ton vaporeux et de la chaleur des beaux ouvrages de Claude Lorrain. Hauteur 26 pouces, largeur 34 pouces. T." (70 x 99.9 cm.).

The rediscovery of this important landscape is a major addition to our understanding of the oeuvre of Laurent de La Hyre. It has the distinction of being the artist's last extant landscape, painted in 1656, the year of his death. It seems probable that it is, indeed, one of the two "beaux paysages, ornés de montagnes et de rivières" which were sold in 1787 at the Lambert sale (see Provenance below). While it is not know for whom it was originally painted, it is perhaps the last of a distinguished group of pictures produced by one of France's most original and gifted landscape painters. During the last few years of his life, La Hyre's attention turned increasingly to landscape painting and he worked with undiminished vigor, despite his deteriorating health, until his premature death. Indeed, a Vue de Meudon was among the paintings left unfinished in the artist's studio at his death.

His first venture in the landscape genre had been with the engravings he published, the first in 1625 and then a beautiful suite of six in 1640. His interest in landscape painting may have been given impetus by the arrival of Herman Swanevelt in Paris in 1642, whose refined landscape style, with bright palette, minutely wrought architectural detail and delicately nuanced atmospheric effects, found a ready audience in France.

La Hyre's painted landscapes all appear to have been executed in the last decade of his career. Their intimate scale (rarely are they over a metre in width) suggest that there was a demand for them from private collectors which continued throughout what remained of his life. From 1647 onwards, he painted a succession of exquisite landscapes among which are the (unusually) large Laban Searching for His Idols (Musée du Louvre, Paris), Landscape with a Shepherd Playing His Flute (dated 1647, Musée Fabre, Montpellier), Landscape with a Swineherd (dated 1648, Musée des Beaux Arts, Montreal), and Landscape with Two Women at a Fountain (dated 1653, Sale: "Property from the Estate of Paul Henried," New York, Sotheby's, May 20, 1993, lot 7). In all these landscapes a mood of gentle melancholy is established. Classical ruins and fragments are usually grouped to one side, a solitary tree defines the foreground on the other, a path or running water leads the eye into the distance which opens up onto a gentle wooded vista.

Charles Sterling wrote of this "poetic and refined," artist; "his landscapes, above all, betray his instincts," and indeed it is perhaps as a landscape painter that Laurent de La Hyre is most admired today. He went on to write, "He was a subtle painter, with a light brush stroke, a sense of deliberate atmospheric values, and skill in combining bright, unusual colors. La Hyre heralds the French eighteenth century, foreshadowing both Boucher's grace and the affected Neoclassical sobriety of the pupils of David," (see Laurent de La Hyre, 1606-1656: L'Homme et l'oeuvre, exhibition catalogue by P. Rosenberg and J. Thuillier, Grenoble 1989, p. 110).