Description
THE PROPERTY OF A LADY
A PANORAMIC RIVER LANDSCAPE
measurements note
33 by 47 1/2 in.; 86 by 121 cm.
Indistinctly signed lower right: Koninck
oil on canvas
PROVENANCE
Bought by Henry, 2nd Viscount Palmerston in May 1788, for £38;
Henry, 3rd and last Viscount Palmerston, K.G. who married Emily Mary, Countess Cowper;
Her second son by her first marriage, William Francis, 1st and last Lord Mount Temple (of the 1st creation);
His nephew, the Hon. Evelyn Ashley;
His son Wilfred William, 1st and last Lord Mount Temple (of the 2nd creation);
His elder daughter Edwina Ashley, Countess Mountbatten of Burma;
Sold by the Trustees of the Estate of The Rt. Hon. the Earl Mountbatten of Burma, KG, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO, PC, London, Sotheby's, December 9, 1992, lot 20 (£990,000);
With Heide Hübner, Würzburg, 1993;
Private collection.
EXHIBITED
London, British Institution, 1843, no. 103;
London, Royal Academy, Exhibition of the Works by the Old Masters..., Winter 1876, no. 165;
London, Royal Academy, Exhibition of 17th Century Art in Europe, 1938, no. 162;
London, Hampshire Red Cross Exhibition, 1957;
Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Fondation Corboud, on long-term loan until 2005 (inv. no. Dep. 0823);
Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie, Die Entdeckung der Landschaft, October 2005 - January 2006, no. 48.
LITERATURE
H. Gerson, Philips Koninck, 1935 (reprinted 1980), p. 104, no. 14;
H. Gerson, in Maendblad voor Beeldenden Kunsten, no. 15, 1938, p. 108;
E. Plietszch, Holländische und Flämische Maler des XVII. Jahrhundert, Leipzig 1960, p. 225, reproduced plate 4;
R. Russell, "A Connoisseur's Taste, Paintings at Broadlands-1", in Country Life, January 28, 1982, pp. 224-5, reproduced fig. 4;
W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schuler, Landau/Pfalz 1983 and subsequently, vol VI (1994), p. 3723, no. 2340, reproduced p. 3946;
Sotheby's, Art at Auction, The Art Market Review 1992-3, London 1993, p. 63 reproduced;
E. Wiemann, Die Entdeckung der Landshaft, exhibition catalogue, Stuttgart 2005, pp. 135-6, 268, no. 48, reproduced in colour p. 134.
NOTE
According to Houbraken, Philips Koninck was a pupil of Rembrandt in Amsterdam. There is no other documentary evidence to support this, but nonetheless, his landscapes, in particular early ones such as the present work, have their origins in Rembrandt's work, particularly in the thick brushwork and broad handling, and are unimaginable without his influence. As a specialist in panoramas, both real and imaginary, Koninck developed and expanded many of the ideas that Rembrandt explored in his few landscape paintings. The mysterious landscape paintings and prints of Hercules Seghers must also have had an impact on Koninck, particularly in the handling of distances (for example the rows of trees and hedges on the low hills to the right in the present work).
As with the landscapes of Rembrandt and Seghers, Koninck's work is at a remove from the mainstream of Dutch landscape painting, and harks back to an earlier, Flemish tradition. In their seemingly limitless extension of space rendered with subtle and repeated gradations of tone, his panoramas may be seen as interpretations of the imaginary landscapes of Joos de Momper and his contemporaries. They are composed, however, of elements that are entirely Dutch; the hills to the right in the present painting may appear at first glance not to belong to the flat Dutch countryside, but on closer examination they reveal themselves to be enlarged sand dunes with which Koninck, who is not believed to have travelled outside the Netherlands, would naturally have been familiar. The topography is also reminiscent of the landscape in Gelderland near Arnhem and Cleve, where the table-land of the Hoge Veluwe gives way to the broad flood-plains of the branches of the Rhine. This area was certainly a source of inspiration in Koninck's later works, and also seems so here, though it is not clear whether he had journeyed there by this time, or depended on the depictions of others. The mass of buildings in the centre of the picture would appear to be a capriccio of the Zwanenburg at Cleve seen from the Galgenberg.
As a relatively early work, the present picture retains a greater variety of colour than Koninck's panoramas of the 1650s, in which greens and browns predominate. The stronger hues found here, for example the blue in the sky are in his later works supplanted by more muted tones applied with a more thickly loaded brush. The date of this picture, traditionally read as 1648, is no longer legible, but there is no reason to doubt it, since it is entirely consistent with his landscapes of this time (Horst Gerson (see Literature) was unable to inspect this picture in the original, and was unaware of the signature and date). It comes just before his panoramic landscape dated 1649 in New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Elsbeth Wiemann, writing in the catalogue of the current Stuttgart landscape exhibition in which this picture is included, points out that no other landscape by Koninck is so Flemish in its character. Dr. Wiemann partly ascribes this to the influence of Hercules Seghers already noted above - perhaps through direct knowledge of his River Valley of circa 1615-20 in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam - but also perhaps to the presence in Amsterdam in 1648-50 of Joos de Momper's son Frans. The monumentality of the present picture - in both overall size and in conception - has scant precedent in Dutch 17th Century landscape painting, including Seghers, but has clear antecedents in the numerous large panoramas of De Momper.
However, as Dr. Wiemann also acknowledges, in other respects the present work is far removed from the Flemish tradtion. Koninck uses atmospheric conditions to unify the compostiion, which is held together by a pattern of strong sunlight and shade created over the landscape by the jostling clouds. To the right a grey rain-bearing cloud lowers over the ground beneath, so that the patch of sunlight in the foreground where the figures appear on the road is all the stronger by contrast, while further away, and to the left, a gentler weather pattern predominates, with larger parts of the plain bathed in warm sunlight. The use of light and colour clearly demonstrates the influence of Rembrandt, whose artistic authority seems to have been unquestioningly accepted by Koninck during his early phase of self-discovery. Nevertheless, the present picture among others already demonstrates a personal style: the sharp ochre and brown tones contrast with the blue-grey of the sky and pools; the direction of the light and the contrast between light and dark. Rembrandt's handling of light and content was specific to the particular chosen landscape, and therefore became part of the story the picture told. Koninck, however, subordinated the distribution of light and shade into a schematic, horizontally aligned organising principle. The harmonious layering of space, which is visible in the sequence of city line-silhouettes, underscores Koninck's structural concepts.
The works of the best Dutch landscape painters always reveal a deeply personal response to the landscape of Holland. Koninck's panoramas convey a unique vision of his native land, one that stresses its airy distances, in which towns, villages, rivers and all signs of human activity are encompassed in a broad sweep. In the landscapes of de Momper and his contemporaries, man is set against landscape, but in the panoramas of Koninck, he is placed firmly within it.
Provenance
Throughout his life, Henry Temple, 2nd Viscount Palmerston (1739-1802), was a gregarious and cultivated man, who enjoyed the company of others distinguished in the arts and sciences, and whose friends included Gibbon, Johnson, Voltaire, Garrick and Reynolds. He began to collect seriously on his Grand Tour of 1763-4, during which he made his first purchases. He remained a keen traveller, returning often to the continent, and making extensive purchases on each occasion. As well as patronizing Angelica Kauffmann, Richard Wilson, Gavin Hamilton, Reynolds and Wright of Derby, and collecting antiquities, sculpture, prints and watercolours, Palmerston put together a highly distinguished collection of Old Masters which included works by Cuyp, Vermeer and Claude. The present picture is one of two works by Koninck that he owned. He bought it in May 1788 at Christie's, the auctioneer describing it with a rare lack of hyperbole as "equal to his master Rembrandt". As Russell (see Literature) observed, "With its gathering storm clouds and the brilliant effect of light on the meandering river in the distance, this is among the most moving and perfectly preserved of all the painter's small landscapes.
