Oil painting entitled 'Seaport and Triumphal Arch' by Jacob van Ulft. Dutch School, late 17th century.

A busy seaport at sunset populated by a multitude of figures, dogs and horses, a sculpture in the left foreground, a triumphal arch at right with a circular temple beyond

Bequeathed by Rev., Chauncey Hare Townshend

Bequeathed by Rev. Chauncy Hare Townshend, 1868

Historical significance: Jacob van der Ulft was born in Gorinchem in 1621 and died in 1689. He initally trained with his father as a glass painter but soon specialized in painting Italianate city views and harbours. Although he painted many city views of Amsterdam, the majority of his surviving works are depictions of imaginary views of Roman ruins in antique settings, or imaginary Mediterranean ports. Most of his works are dated to the early 1670s. In his imaginary compositions of Italianate views, van der Ulft characteristically used various classical elements in different combinations, often placed in a receding diagonal, starting in the foreground with a building at the left or right, and ending with a city or a harbour in the distance. He always included groups of figures, mostly ordinary citizens, such as market traders and harbour workers, in his city views. In addition to imaginary cities, he also sketched and painted actual cities, drawings in his sketchbook, for example, have inscriptions such as Napoli, Tivoli or Castel Gandolfo. A sketch of an Italianate harbour quite similar to 1366-1869 is visible for example in the Courtauld Collection (D.1952.RW.1919). There is however now evidence that van der Ulft had ever travelled to Italy and he may therefore have executed these from engravings or drawings by other artists who found inspiration in the Italian landscape and the southern golden sunlight. A Mediterranean atmosphere is evoked by the strong sunlight, the bright colours, and the blue sky. A similar composition An Italianate Capriccio in a Mediterranean Harbour on the art market in 2010 (Gallery: Salomon Lilian BV) while a similar pair of paintings is in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. nos. 419 and 420).

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.

Jacob van der Ulft was born in Gorinchem in 1621 and died in 1689. He initally trained with his father as a glass painter but soon specialized in painting Italianate city views and harbours. Although he painted many city views of Amsterdam, the majority of his surviving works are depictions of imaginary views of Roman ruins in antique settings, or imaginary Mediterranean ports. Most of his works are dated to the early 1670s. In his imaginary compositions of Italianate views, van der Ulft characteristically used various classical elements in different combinations, often placed in a receding diagonal, starting in the foreground with a building at the left or right, and ending with a city or a harbour in the distance. He always included groups of figures, mostly ordinary citizens, such as market traders and harbour workers, in his city views. In addition to imaginary cities, he also sketched and painted actual cities, drawings in his sketchbook, for example, have inscriptions such as Napoli, Tivoli or Castel Gandolfo. A sketch of an Italianate harbour quite similar to 1366-1869 is visible for example in the Courtauld Collection (D.1952.RW.1919). There is however now evidence that van der Ulft ever travelled to Italy and he may therefore have derived details in his paintings from engravings or drawings by other artists who found inspiration in the Italian landscape and the southern golden sunlight. A Mediterranean atmosphere is evoked in 1366-1869 by the strong sunlight, bright colours, and azure sky. A similar composition An Italianate Capriccio in a Mediterranean Harbour was on the art market in 2010 (Gallery: Salomon Lilian BV) and a similar pair of paintings are now in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. nos. 419 and 420).

1366-1869