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#0053
This scholar’s intuitive research should be emphasised here, sińce he detected
in this painting the stylistic features of both regions of the divided Netherlands:
the picturesąue and decorativeness of the group of trees on the left of Flemish
provenance, and the typically Dutch ąuality of the fiat broad landscape of the
fields on the right, as well as a colour palette tending toward monochromaticism.
The painting depicts a country road which leads to modest farm buildings
among rather thick groves on the left side and gentle waves of cultivated fields
on the opposite side. In the bottom right corner a fragment of a pond is yisible;
above it a trunk sticks out, broken perhaps by lightning, with young stems
protruding from its misshapen stump. On the road is a group of individuals
as grey as the reality surroundmg them, rendered in proportions which
nevertheless give absolute priority to the natural environment, particularly to
the towering trees. Two riders, probably soldiers seeking food for their
division, are speaking with a few of the rural people; farther along the road
by some buildmgs are other peasants who are an integral part of this world.
The difference between uit den geest landscapes and those painted from the
appearance of naturę, naer het leven, can best be understood by examining the
staffage figures in the two Warsaw paintings discussed here. The elegant couple
in van der Wyhen’s painting plays a part in the formation of naturę around
them; the fine allee was planted by their forebears, the castle in the picturesąue
place was certainly built at their commission, and they themselves, having
taken possession of the natural environment which surrounds them, now
control it. The individuals portrayed on the country road of the second
landscape do not dominate their world, but are simply in it, and form with it
a unity dependent, like all the other elements of naturę, on the same eternal
law in the cycle of changing seasons and weather.
The landscape is actually constructed according to a well known traditional
pattern: a lateral group of trees in the foreground juxtaposed to a distant view.
But this view is no longer a broad panorama onto a fairy-tale reality of
mmutely formed, distant picture planes, nor it is a picturesąue sunlit vista
under a canopy of trees, but the Iow valley of hard human drudgery. From this
painting it is only a short step toward the “real” Dutch landscapes of dunes
under enormous skies. The illusion of depth is created with modern methods
based on the use of diagonal lmes. Nevertheless the influence of the old master
Coninxloo is also clearly yisible here, in both the techniąue of painting the
foliage, with bright spots on the dark background forming a characteristic
palmetto design, as well as in the previously mentioned method of fixing trees
on a spreadmg base of roots which create typical little mounds. The dramatic
leitmotif of the broken tree, which might bear the symbolic meaning of
transitormess, is present here as well.
The striking stylistic sinnlarity with the works of Willem van den Bundel
called my attention to this painter, born in Brussels in 1574, but by 1600 active
in Amsterdam. There he was influenced by Coninxloo, and possibly was even
working in his workshop at the same time as Jacąues van der Wyhen. In
1623-39 he was active in Delft, and in 1642 in The Hague. In addition to
painting he was involved in the sale of canyases and the gilding of frames. He
47
in this painting the stylistic features of both regions of the divided Netherlands:
the picturesąue and decorativeness of the group of trees on the left of Flemish
provenance, and the typically Dutch ąuality of the fiat broad landscape of the
fields on the right, as well as a colour palette tending toward monochromaticism.
The painting depicts a country road which leads to modest farm buildings
among rather thick groves on the left side and gentle waves of cultivated fields
on the opposite side. In the bottom right corner a fragment of a pond is yisible;
above it a trunk sticks out, broken perhaps by lightning, with young stems
protruding from its misshapen stump. On the road is a group of individuals
as grey as the reality surroundmg them, rendered in proportions which
nevertheless give absolute priority to the natural environment, particularly to
the towering trees. Two riders, probably soldiers seeking food for their
division, are speaking with a few of the rural people; farther along the road
by some buildmgs are other peasants who are an integral part of this world.
The difference between uit den geest landscapes and those painted from the
appearance of naturę, naer het leven, can best be understood by examining the
staffage figures in the two Warsaw paintings discussed here. The elegant couple
in van der Wyhen’s painting plays a part in the formation of naturę around
them; the fine allee was planted by their forebears, the castle in the picturesąue
place was certainly built at their commission, and they themselves, having
taken possession of the natural environment which surrounds them, now
control it. The individuals portrayed on the country road of the second
landscape do not dominate their world, but are simply in it, and form with it
a unity dependent, like all the other elements of naturę, on the same eternal
law in the cycle of changing seasons and weather.
The landscape is actually constructed according to a well known traditional
pattern: a lateral group of trees in the foreground juxtaposed to a distant view.
But this view is no longer a broad panorama onto a fairy-tale reality of
mmutely formed, distant picture planes, nor it is a picturesąue sunlit vista
under a canopy of trees, but the Iow valley of hard human drudgery. From this
painting it is only a short step toward the “real” Dutch landscapes of dunes
under enormous skies. The illusion of depth is created with modern methods
based on the use of diagonal lmes. Nevertheless the influence of the old master
Coninxloo is also clearly yisible here, in both the techniąue of painting the
foliage, with bright spots on the dark background forming a characteristic
palmetto design, as well as in the previously mentioned method of fixing trees
on a spreadmg base of roots which create typical little mounds. The dramatic
leitmotif of the broken tree, which might bear the symbolic meaning of
transitormess, is present here as well.
The striking stylistic sinnlarity with the works of Willem van den Bundel
called my attention to this painter, born in Brussels in 1574, but by 1600 active
in Amsterdam. There he was influenced by Coninxloo, and possibly was even
working in his workshop at the same time as Jacąues van der Wyhen. In
1623-39 he was active in Delft, and in 1642 in The Hague. In addition to
painting he was involved in the sale of canyases and the gilding of frames. He
47