Lot 208: LOUWRENS HANEDOES DUTCH, 1822-1905

signed l.r.

oil on canvas

Louwrens Hanedoes was of wealthy patrician descent and spent most of his life at Kraaieveld, the family's country estate near Woudrichem. He was a student of the Hague Academy from 1839 onwards, and was apprenticed to the history painter Cornelis Kruseman. In 1843 he went to Cleves to receive instructions from Barend Cornelis Koekkoek. Koekkoek strongly influenced Hanedoes' work in composition, colouring and mood in these early years. Later on, Hanedoes developed his own Romantic style, in which the forces of nature played an important part.

In the late 40's Hanedoes was among the first Dutch artists who visited the countryside around Barbizon and Fontainebleau. In 1851 he sent landscapes painted near Fontainebleau to the Exhibition of Living Masters, staffaged by his former Academy classmate Charles Rochussen. These landscapes are still painted in the Romantic style, but slightly more realistic in outlook, like the present lot. A comparable painting is in the Instituut Collectie Nederland

In the present lot the protagonist is a lonely tree in a deserted landscape, probably in Normandy, with the heath landscape fading into the sea. The strong presence of the tree is a typical Romantic motif. Trees were considered to be a God-given mystery. Often, in 19th century landscape painting, we feel so intense an empathy of the artist with the life of an individual tree, that this inanimate landscape component can suddenly become an almost human presence.
If we compare the present lot to the painting Der einsame Baum by Caspar David Friedrich, we see a strong similarity in composition.
A single tree is centralized to receive the maximum of our attention. In Hanedoes' painting the upright strength of the central tree is all the more contrasted by the more broken, barren tree to the left. The use of the so called ' double ciel' ; the reflection of the sky in the water to the left, is an element often used by Northern Romantic painters.

The Romantic extremes of empathy with nature, where branches almost appear to be exposed nerves of a suffering creature, did not expire with the presumed death of the late 19th century Romantic Movement. In fact, one only need look at an early drawing by Van Gogh, dated 1892, to realise that this tradition had consequences that survived long past the deaths of the great Romantic landscape painters .

In Van Gogh's own words: 'I have tried to give the landscape the same feeling as the figure'. These words will be no less appropriate to the early tree studies of Mondriaan, who, like many other Northern artists of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, perpetuated and revitalized Romantic experiences.

141 by 200 cm.

FROM THE RADEMAKERS COLLECTION

Private collection, Bloemendaal

Executed circa 1851