Lot 30: WILLEM SCHELLINKS AMSTERDAM 1623 - 1678

signed lower left: W.Schellinks Ft

oil on canvas

83.2 by 113.7 cm.; 32 3/4 by 44 3/4 in.

Manchester, Art Treasures Exhibition, 1857, no. 1017;
London, Chaucer Fine Arts, Collecting in the 18th Century: Paintings and Drawings and Works of Art, 1981, no. 5;
Rome, Centro Culturale 'Galleria Cembalo Borghese', Paesaggi, Vedute e Costumi, 1989, no. 21;
Montreal, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Italian Recollections Dutch Painters of the Golden Age, 1990, no. 58.

P.T.A. Swillens, "Eeen schilderij van Willem Schellinks", in Medelingen van Het Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, vol. 4, 1949, pp. 19-21, reproduced;
A.Ch. Steland-Stief, "Jan Asselijn und Willem Schellinks", in Oud Holland, vol. 79, 1964, pp. 99-100;
A.Ch. Steland-Stief, Jan Asselijn, Amsterdam 1971, pp. 102-3, reproduced;
L. Salerno, Pittori di paesaggio del Seicento a Roma, vol. II, Rome 1977-8, p. 754;
A. van Suchtelen (ed.), Winters van weleer: Het Hollandse winterlandschap in de Gouden Eeuw, exh. cat., Mauritshuis, The Hague, 2001, p. 130, reproduced.

THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR

Sir William Tite, M.P., circa 1857;
Mrs Abbot, 1881;
Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 25 July 1947, lot 166, £78-15 to Smith;
Private collection, Amsterdam;
With Galerie Schlichte Bergen, Amsterdam;
With Chaucer Fine Arts, London, 1981;
Private collection, UK;
With Robert Noortman, from whom acquired by the present owner.

Winter landscapes by Dutch Italianate artists are extremely rare. Since one of the principal concerns of such artists was to convey a sense of atmosphere in their idealised views of the Roman campagna it is not surprising that when it came to painting a winter landscape Schellinks should have chosen to concentrate on evoking the mood of that season, rather than using it as a backdrop for busy activity and anecdotal detail, as did the majority of his non-Italianate contemporaries.

This painting was first published by Swillens in 1949, who dated it to the artist's full maturity, between 1665, when he returned to Amsterdam, and his death there in 1678. It has many parallels with the artist's City Wall in Winter, signed with monogram, oil on canvas, 74 by 105 cm., in Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. A 2112 (see A.Ch. Steland-Stief, Jan Asselijn, Amsterdam 1971, p. 179, plate LXXII), which also dates from this period. Both paintings are likely to have been inspired by a Winter Landscape by Jan Asselijn in the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts, Eliza S. Paine Fund in memory of William R. and Frances T. C. Paine, inv. 1969.24. Interestingly, Schellinks has depicted more recognisably Roman buildings than has Asselijn. The large, partially ruined bridge dominating the left of the composition is the Ponte Molle, which often appears in works by other Dutch Italianates. The round tower beyond is almost certainly intended to be the Tomb of Caecilia Metella. The use of such evident reminiscences of the once-mighty Roman empire seen under the bitter cold of winter serves only to heighten the sense of melancholic introspection of this hauntingly atmospheric picture.