Lot 41: Philips Koninck (Amsterdam 1619-1688)

The bleaching fields near Haarlem with sportsmen in the foreground, a view of St. Bavo's beyond signed and indistinctly dated 'P konin.../167.' (lower right) oil on canvas 281/2 x 42 in. (72.5 x 106.5 cm.) PROVENANCE with W. E. Duits, Amsterdam. with Galerie Sankt Lucas, Vienna. Dr. A. Singer, Vienna, 1935. with E. Gans, Neuchƒtel, 1949. LITERATURE H. Gerson, Philips Koninck, Berlin, 1980, pp. 110-1, no. 59. NOTES During his own lifetime Koninck was chiefly known as a painter of genre scenes and portraits, rather than the landscapes for which he is most celebrated today. Around seventy of his landscapes have survived, all of which are indebted in some way to the panoramic views of Hercules Seghers and Rembrandt's landscapes of the late 1630s. Remarkably, Koninck confined himself to just one type of landscape: the idealized panorama. This is a characteristic late work by the artist. The raised viewpoint and the use of a strong diagonal in the foreground against a straight horizon are all typical compositional devices employed by Koninck. It compares closely in these respects with the only other known dated work from the 1670s, the panorama of 1676 in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. no. A 206). Unusual for the artist, however, is the specific nature of the view, in which Haarlem is viewed from the south with St. Bavo's breaking the skyline in the distance and the bleaching fields seen in the middle ground. Almost all of his other panoramas are thought to be imaginary. We are grateful to Marijke de Kinkelder of the RKD for confirming the attribution on the basis of a transparency. She reads the date as 1677 rather than 1670 or 1678 as proposed by Gerson ( loc.cit.).