Nicolaes Berchem

Haarlem 1620 - Amsterdam 1683


A Winter Landscape with Peasants gathering Firewood

Oil on Panel, 27.6 x 39.1 cm
Signed and dated lower right: 1658

ENQUIRIES

Provenance

Private Collection Lord Viscount Middleton, 1755;

Private Collection D.P. Sellar, London;

His sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 6 June 1889, no. 1;

Sold to Colnaghi for 1000 francs;

Private Collection, Amsterdam, The Netherlands ca. 19th and early 20th centuries;

 By descent to the present owner;

 Private Collection, Dallas, USA.

Literature

J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters, London, 1834, no. 201;

H. Mireur, Dictionnaire des Ventes d’Art faites en France et à l’étranger pendant les XVIIIème & XIXème siècles, Paris, 1911, p.199 (“Les Bûcherons”);

C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke, 1976, no. 815.




Additionnal Information

Nicolaes Berchem was a highly esteemed and prolific golden age painter of pastoral landscapes, populated with mythological or biblical figures painted under the influence of Pieter van Laer, Jan Both, Asselijn and Weenix.

Only a few paintings depicting the Winter season are known. A similar work by the artist in size and subject, Winter Landscape with lime kiln, is in the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe fig.1. (inv./cat. No. 297).

As stated in The New York Herald from the 15th October 1897, Mr D. P. Sellar was a well-known City merchant who “has a collection of pictures, about 200, which he was desirous of presenting to the City of London. The pictures were by old Dutch, Italian and English Masters”. This was 8 years after the sale organised in Paris for part of his collection, proving how important was this collector.

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