JAN JOSEPHSZ. VAN GOYEN (LEIDEN 1596-1656 THE HAGUE)

This painting of a stone building surmounted by a cupola was executed at the height of van Goyen’s career in the 1640s. Van Goyen was astonishingly productive in this decade, with more than 450 dated works known. As is typical of his paintings from the period, this painting features a low horizon line with more than four-fifths of the composition devoted to the cloud-filled sky which, in turn, enlivens the landscape and figures with carefully modulated hues of yellow, orange and brown. The painting’s luminous effects are furthered by van Goyen’s use of a highly efficient method of painting that skillfully employs the reddish-brown ground layer to full effect.

In the updated third volume of his catalogue raisonné, Hans-Ulrich Beck perceptively noted that the composition may, in fact, represent a topographically accurate view (loc. cit.). The same structure viewed from a nearly identical perspective recurs in a painting by Wouter Knijff which was formerly on the European art market (see H.-U. Beck, op. cit., IV, p. 245, under no. 665).