Oil painting, 'A View in the Island of Walcheren, with the Castle of Westhoven', Johannes Goedaert, ca. 1660

A highly detailed landscape of the Island of Wacheren with a hunter and his dog in the foreground and Westhoven Castle and Middleburg Church in the background.

Bequeathed by John Jones

Bequeathed by John Jones, 1882
Ref : Parkinson, Ronald, Catalogue of British Oil Paintings 1820-1860. Victoria & Albert Museum, HMSO, London, 1990. p.xix-xx

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.

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: Among 17th-century great landscapists, Johannes Goedaert appears like a dilettante painter. His technique is actually very different from the one achieved by his contemporaries who developed a freer brushwork and tent to use an almost monochromatic palette. In this picture, one can notice that it was not the pictorial effects that interested the artist but the exact depiction of a panoramic view. This view identified as the castle of Westhoven in the island of Walcheren, near Middelburg witnesses Goedaert's activity as a naturalist who was famous for his firsthand observation, and this highly detailed picture could be construed as a descriptive study of the natural environment and as such, part of his scientific activity.

Landscape paintings were extremely popular during the 17th century and increasingly encompassed a variety of forms and genres. Dutch painters had a new attention for nature and their familiar surroundings as well as more exotic locales that Dutch travellers encountered, among which the most praised was Italy. In the early 1600s, innovative contributions to landscape paintings were made, especially by the marine painters who concentrate on the effects of light due to atmospheric condition and the sense of depth and had a great resonance on landscape painting. Panoramic views became popular in the 17th-century Netherlands and views of the Dutch countryside developed quickly, especially under the influence of Jan van Goyen (1596-1656) who developed a broken brushwork technique and used a restrained monochromatic palette of earthy colours. The end of the 17th century is remarkable for a shift in taste that came to favour more academic and classical landscapes under the influence of Italianate landscape paintings. Landscapes were then often employed as settings for mythological or historical subjects.

Johannes Goedaert (1617-1668) was one of the earliest authors on entomology in the Netherlands and is also recorded as a painter. Although little is known about his life, he seems to have resided in Middleburg until his death. In his only work, Metamorphosis naturalis, he describes his observations of and experiments with insects made between 1635 and 1658. He had one daughter and one son, Johannes, who became a surgeon.

This painting is a good example of Johannes Goedaert's little known artistic production that mostly includes watercolours and whose subjects were mainly birds and insects. Although this picture was painted in oil, it looks like a watercolour with its very pale and bright tonality and the extremely accurate brushwork that seems to fulfil a pre-existent drawing rather than properly create the landscape. Goedaert may have depicted his surroundings from nature, a firsthand observation habit for which he was well known and that he applied to his scientific work.

577-1882