River Landscape with a Village Church
1642
Jan van Goyen (Dutch, 1596-1656)
On View

Although Jan van Goyen traveled extensively and spent a year in France, he confined himself to painting the landscapes of his native Holland. Along with Salomon van Ruysdael, he developed a solution to the problem of painting the Dutch landscape with its dominating sky and flat countryside. By imposing one consistent tonality over the entire painting, the artists could visually unite these two quite different elements of air and land.

This river landscape, signed and dated on the edge of the ferryboat in the foreground, is a superb example of the artist’s “tonal” period of the early 1640s, in which the short, green-brown-gray brushstrokes unite all the elements of the scene.

Details

  • Artist Name: Jan van Goyen (Dutch, 1596-1656)
  • Title: River Landscape with a Village Church
  • Date: 1642
  • Medium: Oil on panel
  • Dimensions: 12-1/2 x 15-1/2 in. (31.8 x 39.4 cm)
  • Credit Line: The Norton Simon Foundation
  • Accession Number: F.1969.49.P
  • Copyright: © The Norton Simon Foundation

Object Information

Paul Randon de Boisset (Paris, Pierre Remy, 3 February 1777, no. 41, for 906 Ff to);
Duc de Choiseul.
Robert de Saint-Victor, Rouen (Paris, Roux, 26 November 1822, no. 429, for 130 Ff).
Gustave Rothan, Paris by 1873; (Georges Petit, Paris, 29 May 1890, no. 47 as Le Bac, for 4,900 Ff to);
Goldschmidt.
Anonymous, (Sotheby's, London, 26 March 1969, lot 25, for to);
[Edward Speelman, Ltd., London, sold 1969 to];
The Norton Simon Foundation.

Exposition universelle

  • Paris, Exposition universelle, 1878 to 1878
  • Mantz, P., Gazette des Beaux-Arts, p. 288
  • Sutton, Peter C., A Guide to Dutch Art in America, p. 218
  • Masterpieces from the Norton Simon Museum,1989, p. 68
  • Morse, John D., Old Master Paintings in North America,1979, p. 150
  • Norton Simon Museum, Selected Paintings at the Norton Simon Museum,1980, p. 65
  • Hofstede de Groot, C., A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century,no. 677, 631a pp. 151, 171
  • Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best,2010, cat. 710 p. 330
  • McLaren, N., The Dutch School, p. 136
  • Beck, Hans Ulrich, Jan van Goyen 1596-1656,no. 313; no. 481 p. 111; p. 228
  • Art at Auction: The Year at Sotheby's and Parke-Bernet 1968-69. The Two Hundred and Twenty-fifth Season, p. 105
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