Jan Both

(Utrecht circa 1618–1652)
An Italianate landscape with travellers,
signed lower right: Both,
oil on canvas, 75 x 108 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection of Prince Wenzel Alois von Kaunitz, Vienna (1774–1848);
his sale, Artaria & Cie., Vienna, 13 March 1820, lot 13;
V. A. von Adamovics, Vienna, cat. 1856, no. 29, gallery number 121;
sold to Wertheimer for 500 Florins;
Collection of Count Samuel von Festetics de Tolna (1806–1862), Vienna;
his sale, Artaria & Altmann, Vienna, 11 April 1859, lot 54:
Private collection, France

Literature:
C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Holländischen Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts,
vol. IX, 1926, p. 511, no. 342

The present composition is a good example of the work of the leading Dutch Italianate painter Jan Both, datable to the second half of the 1640’s – perhaps the most important period of this artist’s short career. Both was one of the most gifted and innovative of the Dutch Italianate landscape painters and was to exert a profound influence over many of the most important landscape painters of the seventeenth century, including Adam Pijnacker, Nicolaes Berchem, Jan Asselyn and Aelbert Cuyp. Works by the Dutch Italianate painters, and especially those of Both and Berchem, were voraciously sought after by collectors during the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries and were, as Seymour Slive pointed out: ‘once more sought after than works by Rembrandt, Frans Hals or Vermeer’.

We are grateful to Frits Duparc for confirming the attribution of the present painting to Jan Both.