Barent Avercamp

His sale, Berlin, Lepke, 9–10 May 1899, lot 43;

With P. de Boer, Amsterdam;

Private Collection, Germany, December 1923 (according to Welcker 1979 below);

Anonymous sale, Munich, Weinmüller, 29–30 September and 1 October 1965, lot 1294;

With Alfred Brod, London (in his catalogue of February–March 1966, no. 9);

The J.M. Rampton Discretionary Trust;

By whom sold, London, Christie's, 10 July 1987, lot 22, for £75,000;

Where acquired for the Grasset Collection.

C.J. Welcker, Hendrick Avercamp 1585-1634 en Barent Avercamp 1612–1679 'Schilders tot Campen', Doornspijk 1979, p. 332, no. S12.3.;

F.G. Meijer in Brueghel to Canaletto, European Masterpieces from the Grasset Collection, exh. cat. San Diego, 2016, p. 19, no. 14, reproduced in colour;

S. Thomas, in A Feast for the Eyes, European Masterpieces from the Grasset Collection, exh. cat. Saint Petersburg, Florida, 2019, pp. 24, 94, no. 6, reproduced in colour.

This is one of the finest of a closely related group of summer landscapes that Avercamp painted depicting fishermen at work on the banks of a river. They are typically composed as here around a low horizon line, with teams of fishermen hauling in their nets on a riverbank in the immediate foreground, watched by one or more wealthier burghers and other countryfolk. With their weaving diagonal recession and play of light and shadow across the water and fields beyond they display a real sensitivity for the Dutch landscape.

The paintings most closely comparable to the present work are the two signed panels sold Paris, Christie’s, 21 June 2011, lot 14, and 18 May 2022, lot 211, where in both cases trees replace the figures on a knoll shown here in the left foreground.¹ The first of these is similar to a drawing of fishermen by Avercamp’s uncle Hendrick, today preserved in the Fondation Custodia Frits Lugt in Paris, which Barent may perhaps have known.² Another similar panel, now in the Manchester City Art Gallery, which is signed and dated 1650, adopts an ever lower viewpoint upon the shoreline itself.³

The riverbank depicted here may perhaps be a stretch of the river Ijsel near Avercamp’s home town of Kampen, but any possible landmarks are absent. Seemingly the only such view with an identifiable topography is the much wider unpublished panel in the Stedelijk Museum in Kampen, which shows fishermen on the banks of the river Ijsel with a view of Kampen beyond, and which is also dated to 1650.⁴ Meijer (see Literature) suggests a date of around 1660 for the present panel on grounds of style and costume.

The provenance for the present panel was confused by Müllenmeister with that of a smaller picture formerly with Goudstikker in 1919 and later in the H.E. ten Kate collection.⁵ However this, together with another smaller panel of 1654 formerly in the Wetzlar collection in Amsterdam,⁶ is composed in the reverse direction.

¹ Welcker 1979, p. 329, nos B.A S 5.5 and 5.4 respectively.

² Exhibited New York, Pierpont Morgan Library and Paris, Institut Néerlandais, Rembrandt and his century. Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century from the Collection of the Frits Lugt Institut Néerlandais, Paris, 1977–78, no. 2, reproduced pl. 14.

³ Inv. No. 3. Panel, 33 x 52 cm. Welcker 1979, p. 328, no. B.A. S.0.1, reproduced pl. XXXIV A.

⁴ Panel, 32.5 x 89.3 cm.

⁵ Panel, 35 x 61 cm. Welcker 1979, pp. 329–30, nos B.A. S.5 and S.8.1. Reproduced in The Burlington Magazine, CXIV, no. 831, June 1972, advertisement pl. xxvii.

⁶ M.J. Friedländer, Collection Dr. H. Wetzlar, Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1952, p. 8, no. 4, reproduced fig. 4.