Landscape with sportsmen shooting thumbnail 1
Landscape with sportsmen shooting thumbnail 2
Image of Gallery in South Kensington
On display at V&A South Kensington
Europe 1600-1815, Room 5, The Friends of the V&A Gallery

Landscape with sportsmen shooting

Oil Painting
ca. 1660-1700 (painted)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

An Italianate Landscape with two sportsmen in the foreground, each with a gun and accompanied by a dog. The standing figure carries his weapon over his shoulder and turns towards his companion seated on the ground. A third sportsman stalks his prey on the grassy bank above them to the right


Object details

Categories
Object type
TitleLandscape with sportsmen shooting (generic title)
Materials and techniques
Oil on oak panel
Brief description
Oil painting on oak panel, 'Landscape with Sportsmen Shooting', style of Frederick de Moucheron and Adriaen van de Velde, 17th century.
Physical description
An Italianate Landscape with two sportsmen in the foreground, each with a gun and accompanied by a dog. The standing figure carries his weapon over his shoulder and turns towards his companion seated on the ground. A third sportsman stalks his prey on the grassy bank above them to the right
Dimensions
  • Estimate height: 34cm (Note: Taken from Catalogue of Foreign Paintings, I. Before 1800, C.M. Kauffmann, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1973)
  • Estimate width: 25.4cm (Note: Taken from Catalogue of Foreign Paintings, I. Before 1800, C.M. Kauffmann, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1973)
  • Height: 480mm (framed) (Note: Measured for Europe 1600-1800)
  • Width: 410mm (framed) (Note: Measured for Europe 1600-1800)
Credit line
Bequeathed by Rev. Chauncy Hare Townshend
Object history
Bequeathed by Rev. Chauncy Hare Townshend, 1868

Historical significance: Marijke de Kinkelder has recently suggested (written communication, March 2010) based on photographs only that this work may be a contemporary copy after a co-operation between Frederik de Moucheron (landscape) and Adriaen van de Velde (figures). de Moucheron (1633-1686) trained with Jan Asselijn in Amsterdam. He worked in France for several years, but returned to Amsterdam after a brief period in Antwerp. Frederik was strongly influenced by the work of the second generation of Dutch italianates, particularly Asselijn and Jan Both. Several different artists, including Adriaen van de Velde (1636-1672) provided staffage (figures) for his paintings. De Moucheron’s work is appreciated primarily for its picturesque, decorative qualities, the atmospheric quality of his paintings conveyed through use of silvery touches -such as the way the light strikes the tree on the left of 1378-1869. Further, feather-like trees such as this, shown blowing in the wind with the light coming from the right are all signatures of Moucheron's work. The weak execution of the work suggests that it is not by the master's hand but it is very likely a contemporary work in his style.
Historical context
Dutch Italianate landscapes such as this were particularly popular in the 17th through to the early 19th centuries. The term conventionally refers to the school of Dutch painters and draughtsmen who were active in Rome for more than a hundred years. These artists produced mainly pastoral subjects bathed in warm southern light, set in an Italian, or specifically Roman, landscape. The term is also often applied, to artists who never left the northern Netherlands but who worked primarily in an Italianate style. Eighteenth-century collectors, especially French ones, preferred a view by Nicolaes Berchem or Jan Both to a scene of the Dutch country side by Jacob van Ruisdael for instance. The taste for the Italianates continued undiminished into the 19th century. An early voice denouncing these artists was that of John Constable in 1836 and at the end of the century Italianates had lost favour partly because of the rise of Impressionism and the appreciation of the Dutch national school of landscape expounded by such eminent critics as Wilhem von Bode, E.W. Moes and Cornelis Hofstede de Groot.
Production
This painting was attributed to Adriaen van de Velde by the art historian Gustav Friedrich Waagen (1794-1868) when he saw it in the Rev. Chauncy Hare Townshend's drawing room in 1854 or 1856. Kauffman (1973) suggested it was by a follower of Adriaen van de Velde painting in the second half of the seventeenth century. More recently, Marijke de Kinkelder has suggested (written communication, March 2010) based on photographs only that this work may be a contemporary copy after a co-operation between Frederik de Moucheron (landscape) and Adriaen van de Velde (figures).
Subjects depicted
Summary
An Italianate Landscape with two sportsmen in the foreground, each with a gun and accompanied by a dog. The standing figure carries his weapon over his shoulder and turns towards his companion seated on the ground. A third sportsman stalks his prey on the grassy bank above them to the right
Associated object
4837-1857 (Frame)
Bibliographic references
  • Kauffmann, C.M. Catalogue of Foreign Paintings, I. Before 1800. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1973, pp. 288-289, cat. no. 357.
  • Gustav Friedrich Waagen, Galleries and cabinets of art in Great Britain : being an account of more than forty collections of paintings, drawings, sculptures, mss., &c. &c. visited in 1854 and 1856, and now for the first time described : forming a supplemental volume to the Treasures of art in Great Britain. London : William Clowes and Sons, 1857. p, 180.
Collection
Accession number
1378-1869

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Record createdMarch 14, 2006
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