Jan VAN DE VELDE

(Delft or Rotterdam 1593 - Enkhuizen 1641)

River Landscape with a Tower and Bridge

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Oil on copper. Oval.
9 x 12.5 cm. (3 1/2 x 4 7/8 in.)
Jan van de Velde the Younger is much better known today for his landscape and portrait etchings and engravings than for his paintings, which are very few in number. The composition of this little copper is derived from the artist’s etching Landscape with Ruins from a series of eighteen etchings published in 1615 as 'Amoenissimae aliquot Regiunculae, et antiquorum monumentorum ruinae' (‘Some very pleasant places and ruins of antique monuments’). This youthful etching by the artist is, however, much more horizontal in format than this oval composition, and measures 120 x 317 mm.



A comparable oval Winter Landscape on panel attributed to Jan van de Velde II, of identical dimensions to the present copper, is in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Another landscape on copper by the artist, depicting the young Tobias, is in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in Braunschweig, while a now-lost pair of landscapes on copper, from the collection of the Conte Rasponi in Ravenna, were sold at auction in Amsterdam in 1883.







Jan van de Velde was a painter, printmaker and draughtsman, specializing in landscapes. Known as van de Velde the Younger to differentiate him from his father, the calligrapher Jan van de Velde the Elder, he was a pupil of the engraver Jacob Matham in Haarlem. His cousin was the landscape painter Esias van de Velde, and the two may have collaborated at some point. The young Jan joined the artist’s guild in Haarlem in 1614, and soon afterwards is thought to have travelled to Italy. By 1617, he had produced over a hundred landscape etchings. While much of his early work as a printmaker consisted of original compositions, from around 1618 onwards he seems to have preferred to reproduce, in print form, the work of such artists as Esias van de Velde, Pieter Molijn and Frans Hals.



Apart from the landscape subjects that make up the bulk of his output as a printmaker, Jan van de Velde also produced more than fifty portrait engravings, as well as genre scenes and book illustrations. He was also a gifted landscape draughtsman, and around a hundred drawings by the artist are known. Late in his career, van de Velde etched a series of thirty-five landscapes that were published after his death by Claes Jansz. Visscher as Playsante Lantschappen ende vermakelycke Gesichten, na t’ leven geteykent, en in t’koper gemaeckt door Ian van den Velde (‘Delightful landscapes and amusing views drawn from life and reproduced on copper by Jan van de Velde’). Van de Velde’s landscape prints had a profound influence on several Dutch artists of the succeeding generation, including Rembrandt. His son and pupil, Jan Jansz. van de Velde III, was a still life painter.



Provenance

Private collection, South Germany.

Jan VAN DE VELDE

River Landscape with a Tower and Bridge