Alexander Keirincx

(Antwerp 1600–1652 Amsterdam)
An Arcadian landscape with couples of shepherds,
oil on panel, 73.5 x 105.5 cm, framed
We are grateful to Ursula Härting for confirming the attribution upon inspection of the original. Her written analysis, dated June 2023, accompanies the present lot.

The painting represents an idyllic interpretation of the Flemish landscape genre, of which Alexander Keirincx is one of the most important exponents. A favourite subject of bucolic poetry of the ancient world, the depiction of pastoral life was revived in the Italian Renaissance around 1500 as an ideal of rural simplicity and tranquility. Also seen as symbolising a way of life more directly connected to nature, it gained popularity as a subject in the Northern schools of painting and by the seventeenth century was established as a topic of the art of the Dutch and Flemish Golden Age.

Keirincx chooses a clearing in the forest as the setting for his romantic depiction, framed by groups of heavy trees. In the distance a river meanders. In addition to the large flock of sheep and the herding dogs, the scenery is enlivened by various birds, rendered in great detail: tomtits, a goldfinch and a kingfisher sit in the trees, herons and storks are depicted near the riverbank. All details of the foliage such as tree trunks, leaves, grasses and ferns are particularly finely executed and very well preserved.

Alexander Keirincx was a specialist landscape painter who is hailed as a master of wooded landscapes. Born in Antwerp in 1600, Keirincx is known to have apprenticed with Abraham Govaerts. In 1618/19 he was admitted to the local Guild of Saint Luke. His earliest known works date from this period. Documentary evidence suggests that he accepted apprentices by 1623-24 at the latest, suggesting a successful practice. In 1622 he married Clara Matheusen in Antwerp. Soon after 1626 he moved to the Northern Netherlands, probably directly to Amsterdam. The first of at least fifteen paintings in which Utrecht based Cornelis van Poelenburch, a frequent collaborator in these years executed the staffage dates from 1629. On June 28, 1632, Keirincx and his wife are listed as members of the Reformed Church in Utrecht. A key event in Keirincx’s career was his sojourn to England where he had received the commission from King Charles I to paint ten views of the king’s castles and houses in Northern England and Scotland. Executed between May 1639 and mid-1640, these topographical depictions include the famous view of Pontefract Castle (Wakefield, Pontefract Museum, inv. no. A1.931). In 1641 Keirincx returned to Amsterdam, where he acquired citizenship shortly before his death.

An artist raised in the Antwerp tradition of artistic teamwork, Keirincx frequently collaborated with figure painters for the staffage of his works. Cornelis van Poelenburch appears to have been a much-used figure painter during his Northern activity, but in his earlier Antwerp period he had employed artists such as Hans Jordaens, Peter Snayers and Adriaen van Stalbemt. As Härting observes, the figures of the two couples of shepherds in the foreground are brilliant examples from the hand of Adriaen van Stalbemt (see U. Härting. ‘Adriaen van Stalbemt als Figurenmaler’, in: Oud Holland, Vol. 95, 1981, pp. 3–15), whereas the joyfully, playful figures in the middle distance might have been executed by the so-called Meester met de Hemden, a painter from Stalbemt’s studio or his immediate orbit.