Notes
This view of the Haarlemmermeer was created in the best period of Jan van Goyen, who was the most prolific landscape painter of the seventeenth century. In the 1640s he reached the top of his skills by changing from landscape and fairly simple River views to more mature and majestic marines and panoramic views on cities along the major Dutch rivers, such as Dordrecht, Arnhem, Nijmegen, Rhenen.
Especially strong in the present painting is the manner in which atmospheric effects are rendered by Van Goyen; a threatening mass of cloud is coming in from the left, and there is a sense that the winds are rising. The viewer senses the atmosphere, as if he were present.
The right side of the view is still partly sunlit, the last beams are lighting up the choppy waters. The sober use of colour adds to the overall impression of a typical autumn day.
Provenance
Rev. Thomas Kerrich, England, 1801 (in this year an engraving was made after the painting by Jane C. Hayles);
collection T. Humphry Ward, London, before 1898;
in 1898 to Charles Sedelmeyer, art dealer in Paris, catalogue 1899, no. 17, with ill;
Collection Max Steinthal, Berlin;
Art dealers P. de Boer, Amsterdam;
Collection A.C. Fraser, Rotterdam by 1940;
with David Koetser, Zürich, 1999;
from whom acquired at TEFAF by the present owner in 1999.
Exhibitions
Berlin 1906 ‘Ausstellung von Werken alter Kunst …’, 27 Jan. – 6 March 1906, no. 38, with ill;
idem 1914, no. 47, with ill. (on loan from Max Steinthal);
Rotterdam 1940, no. 34, with ill., on loan from A.C. Fraser, Rotterdam.
Literature
Hofstede de Groot, ‘Catalogue raisonné’, 1927, pp. 251-2, no. 1017;
W. von Bode & Posse, ‘Rembrandt und seine Zeitgenossen’, 1934, with ill.;
W. von Bode, ‘Die meister der Holländischen und Flämischen Malerschulen’, 1951,
no. 0.217 with ill.;
E. Filla, ‘Jan van Goyen’, 1959, with ill.;
H.U. Beck, ‘Jan van Goyen’, Vol.II, p. 378, no. 845, with ill on p. 377.
Russian 
English 
Dutch 
French