Lot 50: SIMON JACOBSZ. DE VLIEGER (Rotterdam c.1601-1653 Weesp)

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.