DOI article:
Benesz, Hanna: Gillis van Coninxloo and his Disciples: three recently attributed landscapes from the National Museum in Warsaw
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18947#0050
7. Jacques van
der Wyhen, Forest
Landscape with
a Castle and Family
Portrait, oil on canvas,
133,5 x 255,5 cm,
private collection
(Phot. RKD Archives,
The Hague)
Comparative materiał brings forth significant similarities to the Warsaw
painting. The left side of a mountain landscape sold at auction at Christie’s in
London in 1976is analogous: a mountain mass with the fantastic form of
a cliff growing up in a rather surprising way from the side, bands of vegetation
placed on a slope in gentle, alternating waves; buildings on the summit and
the type of houses at the foot of the mountain, as well as the characteristic
bunch of branches in the upper corner and a broken trunk at the bottom,
repeat with only slightly different proportions a fragment of the view
contained in the work in the National Museum in Warsaw. An even closer
affinity can be seen in the rather stiff composition published by Briels, Forest
Landscape with a Castle and Family Portrait (ill. 7) from 1631 from a private
collection.1’ Here the scenery is similar, while the castle, with only slight
differences, is virtually the same. The wooded allee is widened in order to
contain a greater ąuantity of frontally depicted figures, and the effects of the
illumination are moved as well onto the tree-tops on the external side of the
allee. The castle and the dignified company, conscious of their own status,
confirm the concept of bourgeois aspiration. The castle here is an obligatory
status symbol, and although the father of the family is pointing to it with his
hand, it is not a reflection of the real State of his possessions, but a projection
of his ambition.
An interesting synthesis of motifs from this and the Warsaw paintings can
be observed in the Forest Landscape with Riders from Gemaldegalerie in
Berlin,12 13 14 which - although displayed as a work by anonymous Flemish painter
12 Briels, op. cit. ill. 393.
13 Briels, op. cit., ill. 456. The Warsaw painting (in which the last digit of the datę is illegible),
was certainly painted not much earlier, as the first. Its composition is very harmonious and free;
it must have served as a model for repetition, which here acąuires schematic and excessively
elaborate features.
14 Inv. no. 707, displayed in a study gallery as "Flemish ca 1600”, in a catalogue of the collection
44
der Wyhen, Forest
Landscape with
a Castle and Family
Portrait, oil on canvas,
133,5 x 255,5 cm,
private collection
(Phot. RKD Archives,
The Hague)
Comparative materiał brings forth significant similarities to the Warsaw
painting. The left side of a mountain landscape sold at auction at Christie’s in
London in 1976is analogous: a mountain mass with the fantastic form of
a cliff growing up in a rather surprising way from the side, bands of vegetation
placed on a slope in gentle, alternating waves; buildings on the summit and
the type of houses at the foot of the mountain, as well as the characteristic
bunch of branches in the upper corner and a broken trunk at the bottom,
repeat with only slightly different proportions a fragment of the view
contained in the work in the National Museum in Warsaw. An even closer
affinity can be seen in the rather stiff composition published by Briels, Forest
Landscape with a Castle and Family Portrait (ill. 7) from 1631 from a private
collection.1’ Here the scenery is similar, while the castle, with only slight
differences, is virtually the same. The wooded allee is widened in order to
contain a greater ąuantity of frontally depicted figures, and the effects of the
illumination are moved as well onto the tree-tops on the external side of the
allee. The castle and the dignified company, conscious of their own status,
confirm the concept of bourgeois aspiration. The castle here is an obligatory
status symbol, and although the father of the family is pointing to it with his
hand, it is not a reflection of the real State of his possessions, but a projection
of his ambition.
An interesting synthesis of motifs from this and the Warsaw paintings can
be observed in the Forest Landscape with Riders from Gemaldegalerie in
Berlin,12 13 14 which - although displayed as a work by anonymous Flemish painter
12 Briels, op. cit. ill. 393.
13 Briels, op. cit., ill. 456. The Warsaw painting (in which the last digit of the datę is illegible),
was certainly painted not much earlier, as the first. Its composition is very harmonious and free;
it must have served as a model for repetition, which here acąuires schematic and excessively
elaborate features.
14 Inv. no. 707, displayed in a study gallery as "Flemish ca 1600”, in a catalogue of the collection
44