DOI Artikel:
Benesz, Hanna: Gillis van Coninxloo and his Disciples: three recently attributed landscapes from the National Museum in Warsaw
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18947#0046
Warsaw. Nor does any but the Warsaw painting contain such a charming,
shining bright spot as the little bridge at the vanishing point, tempting with
the promise of further attractive perspectives. The work was certainly painted
in the first years of the new century.7
Some motifs and stylistic features will reappear in numerous later works of
Coninxloo’s students. These are mainly the picturesque twisted branches and
the roots of the oaks, which seem to split the ground and create characteristic
knotty mounds at the base of the trunks; the manner of painting the foliage
with a precise brush in infinite variety is also very typical.
In the earlier Frankental type of landscape, mountains depicted in the
distance with fantastic cliff formations played an important role. Around 1604,
Coninxloo’s work underwent still another modification influenced by Hans
Boi and Jacob Savery. These artists introduced an important innovation in the
form of the motif of a high tree, situated in the mid ground, morę or less at
the vertical axis of the painting, which acts as a repoussoir separating the first
piane from the recesses of the distant planes. In Coninxloo’s work, as for
example in the painting once in the collections of the Robert Finek Gallery in
Brussels (ill. 3), the tree as repoussoir grows out into a larger group of trees
and joins the traditional lateral group of trees, creating an allee with a sunlit
vista into the distant planes. The second half of the composition presents
a normal mountain view, but it is no longer as archaic and fantastic as the
earlier ones. The river valley with rural buildings seen from a closer distance
3. Gillis van Coninxloo,
Landscape with Forest
and Mountains, once in
Robert Finek Gallery,
Brussels
(Phot. RKD Archives,
The Hague)
My intuition, or rather deep conviction of Coninxloo’s authorship in this instance has been
reinforced by Jan de Maere, co-author with J. Wabbes of the Belgian lexicon Illustrated Dictionary
of Seventeenth Century Flemish Paintings, Brussels 1994, as well as by Ursula Harting, a German
expert on Flemish painting.
40
shining bright spot as the little bridge at the vanishing point, tempting with
the promise of further attractive perspectives. The work was certainly painted
in the first years of the new century.7
Some motifs and stylistic features will reappear in numerous later works of
Coninxloo’s students. These are mainly the picturesque twisted branches and
the roots of the oaks, which seem to split the ground and create characteristic
knotty mounds at the base of the trunks; the manner of painting the foliage
with a precise brush in infinite variety is also very typical.
In the earlier Frankental type of landscape, mountains depicted in the
distance with fantastic cliff formations played an important role. Around 1604,
Coninxloo’s work underwent still another modification influenced by Hans
Boi and Jacob Savery. These artists introduced an important innovation in the
form of the motif of a high tree, situated in the mid ground, morę or less at
the vertical axis of the painting, which acts as a repoussoir separating the first
piane from the recesses of the distant planes. In Coninxloo’s work, as for
example in the painting once in the collections of the Robert Finek Gallery in
Brussels (ill. 3), the tree as repoussoir grows out into a larger group of trees
and joins the traditional lateral group of trees, creating an allee with a sunlit
vista into the distant planes. The second half of the composition presents
a normal mountain view, but it is no longer as archaic and fantastic as the
earlier ones. The river valley with rural buildings seen from a closer distance
3. Gillis van Coninxloo,
Landscape with Forest
and Mountains, once in
Robert Finek Gallery,
Brussels
(Phot. RKD Archives,
The Hague)
My intuition, or rather deep conviction of Coninxloo’s authorship in this instance has been
reinforced by Jan de Maere, co-author with J. Wabbes of the Belgian lexicon Illustrated Dictionary
of Seventeenth Century Flemish Paintings, Brussels 1994, as well as by Ursula Harting, a German
expert on Flemish painting.
40