Pastoral Landscape with Ruins

Description

With its warm southern sunlight and leisurely interactions between herders, this painting of the Italian countryside would have affirmed urban Dutch perceptions of rural areas as places of innocence and peace. The son of a painter, Adriaen van de Velde was also inspired by the cattle pieces of Paulus Potter and the Italianate pastoral scenes of Nicolaes Pietersz. Berchem. He achieved a harmonious balance of elements by studying the landscape from life as well as by sketching the cattle in the pasture and the human figures in the studio.

Provenance

Gerrit Braamcamp (died 1771), Amsterdam, by 1766 [see Bastide 1766 and Bille 1961]; his estate sale Van der Schley, etc., Amsterdam, July 31, 1771, no. 235 for 2,420 florins to Jan Gildemeester Jansz. along with no. 234, which was considered to be its pendant and fetched 2400 florins [prices and buyer according to an annotated copy of the sale catalogue in the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague]; Jan Gildemeester Jansz. (died 1799), Amsterdam; his sale, Van der Schley, etc., Amsterdam, June 11, 1800, no. 239 for 4,825 florins to Jan Yver as agent for Pieter van Winter [price and buyer according to an annotated copy of the sale catalogue in the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague; see Priem 1997 for the connection between Yver and van Winter; no. 238 in this sale, considered to be its pendant, was sold separately and is now in the Royal Collection, Windsor]; Pieter van Winter (died 1807), Amsterdam; his heirs until the division of his property in 1818, when it was assigned to the portion of his daughter Anna Louisa Agatha and her husband Willem van Loon (died 1877 and 1847 respectively) [see de Groot 1905 and Priem 1997]. Presumably Prince Anatole Demidoff, Villa San Donato, near Florence (died 1870); by descent to his nephew Prince Paul Demidoff (died 1885) and included in the sale of the contents of Villa San Donato, Pillet, Mannheim, and Le Roy, Florence March 15, 1880, lot 1105, bought in; remained in the Demidoff collection, passing into the possession of Paul Demidoff’s widow, Helena Troubetskoi, Pratolino, near Florence; included in the group of 13 paintings from the Demidoff collection sold to trustees of the Art Institute through Durand-Ruel, Paris in 1890; purchase price reimbursed by Sidney A. Kent, 1894.

Pastoral Landscape with Ruins

Adriaen van de Velde

1664

Accession Number

863

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

67 × 78.4 cm (26 3/8 × 30 7/8 in.); Framed: 81.3 × 92.4 × 6.4 cm (32 × 36 3/8 × 2 1/2 in.)

Classification

oil on canvas

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Sidney A. Kent Fund