Oil painting, 'Landscape with Ruins and Figures', after Adriaen van de Velde, 19th century

A mountainous Italianate landscape with ruined buildings and a country road along which a herder directs his cattle, sheep and goats, and a man travels beside a woman mounted on a mule

Bequeathed by John Jones

Bequeathed by John Jones, 1882
John Jones (1800-1882) was first in business as a tailor and army clothier in London 1825, and opened a branch in Dublin 1840. Often visited Ireland, travelled to Europe and particularly France. He retired in 1850, but retained an interest in his firm. Lived quietly at 95 Piccadilly from 1865 to his death in January 1882. After the Marquess of Hertford and his son Sir Richard Wallace, Jones was the principal collector in Britain of French 18th century fine and decorative arts. Jones bequeathed an important collection of French 18th century furniture and porcelain to the V&A, and among the British watercolours and oil paintings he bequeathed to the V&A are subjects which reflect his interest in France.

Ref : Parkinson, Ronald, Catalogue of British Oil Paintings 1820-1860. Victoria & Albert Museum, HMSO, London, 1990. p.xix-xx

See also South Kensington Museum Art Handbooks. The Jones Collection. With Portrait and Woodcuts. Published for the Committee of Council on Education by Chapman and Hall, Limited, 11, Henrietta Street. 1884.
Chapter I. Mr. John Jones. pp.1-7.
Chapter II. No.95, Piccadilly. pp.8-44. This gives a room-by-room guide to the contents of John Jones' house at No.95, Piccadilly.
Chapter VI. ..... Pictures,... and other things, p.138, "The pictures which are included in the Jones bequest are, with scarcely a single exception, valuable and good; and many of them excellent works of the artists. Mr. Jones was well pleased if he could collect enough pictures to ornament the walls of his rooms, and which would do no discredit to the extraordinary furniture and other things with which his house was filled."

Historical significance: Adriaen van de Velde (1636-1672) was a Dutch painter, draughtsman, etcher and son of the artist Willem van de Velde I. He is primarily known for his landscapes depicting meadows and Italianate views with herdsmen and their cattle, although—as far as is known—he never travelled to Italy. Pastures with cattle and herders predominate in his work of 1653–8. Due to his skill in painting figures and animals, van de Velde was frequently employed to add staffage to pictures by fellow landscape artists, including Jacob van Ruisdael, Meindert Hobbema, Jan Wijnants, Jan van der Heyden and Frederik de Moucheron. Marijke de Kinkelder has recently identified this work (written communication, March 2010) as a copy after a signed and dated painting by van de Velde of 1666 now in the Musée Fabre, Montpellier (RKD-Images record no. 11717).

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.

Described as by Adriaen van de Velde before 1894 due to a signature which was revealed as a later addition in 1894. Subsequently referred to as by an 'Unknown Dutch artist' by Long (1923) and Manner of Adriaen van de Velde by Kauffmann (1973). Marijke de Kinkelder has recently identified this work (written communication, March 2010) as a copy after a signed and dated painting by van de Velde of 1666 now in the Musée Fabre, Montpellier (RKD-Images record no. 11717).

A mountainous Italianate landscape with ruined buildings and a country road along which a herder directs his cattle, sheep and goats, and a man travels beside a woman mounted on a mule. Marijke de Kinkelder has recently identified this work (written communication, March 2010) as a copy after a signed and dated painting by Adriaen van de Velde of 1666 now in the Musée Fabre, Montpellier. van de Velde (1636-1672) was a Dutch painter, draughtsman, etcher and son of the artist Willem van de Velde I. He is primarily known for his landscapes depicting meadows and Italianate views with herdsmen and their cattle, although—as far as is known—he never travelled to Italy. Pastures with cattle and herders predominate in his work of 1653–8. Due to his skill in painting figures and animals, van de Velde was frequently employed to add staffage to pictures by fellow landscape artists, including Jacob van Ruisdael, Meindert Hobbema, Jan Wijnants, Jan van der Heyden and Frederik de Moucheron.

516-1882