NARRATOR:
In River Landscape with a Village Church, the Dutch artist Jan van Goyen used subtle striations of pale greens, blues, grays and browns to suggest the cool, moisture-laden atmosphere of his native countryside. The strong diagonals of the river bank, and the subtle gradations of color in land and water, pull our gaze into the distance, past trees, fishing huts, an array of sailboats, and a small village church silhouetted against the cloudy sky. The windmill on the low horizon is a tiny cipher, barely visible in the milky haze.
Van Goyen typically began a painting by preparing an oak panel with a thin layer of salmon-colored ground. He sketched his composition directly on it, then filled it in with thin layers of oil paint. In the sky, light washes of grays and blues allow the pink underpainting to shimmer through, adding to the effect of a rich, enveloping atmosphere. The paint is so thinly applied that, if you look carefully at the sky, you can actually see the horizontal grain of the wood.
Views like this were extremely popular with Dutch burghers, who prized them as expressions of the political and economic prosperity of the country. Van Goyen himself was proud of his pictures. Here, he prominently signed his initials on the ferryboat in the foreground a bold display of his desire for recognition.
To hear more about van Goyen’s technique, press 1611.
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.
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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