JAN VAN DE CAPELLE (Amsterdam 1625/6 – 1679)
Winter Landscape with a Man Fixing a Sledge at the Bank of a Frozen River
oil on canvas
18 ¾ inches x 17 inches (46,6x 43 cm.)
signed with monogram IVC on the end of a log lower centre
PROVENANCE
Collection Muilman
His sale 12-13 april 1813, Van der Schley and de Vries, Amsterdam
Collection Arthur Kay, Glasgow
Frederik Muller, exhibition Amsterdam 1907
Bought in 1907 in the Amsterdam art trade by Fürst Johannes II von und zu Liechtenstein
Collection of the Fürsten von und zu Liechtenstein, inv.no. GE 883
LITERATURE
C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und Kritisches Verzeichnis der hervorragendsten Holländischen Maler…, 10 vol Esslingen 1907-1928, Vol. VII, no. 147 (identical with nrs. 163A and 178)
Dr. A. Kronfeld, Führer durch die Fürstlich Liechtensteinsche Gemäldegalerie in Wien, 1931, nr. 883.
Meisterwerke aus den Sammlungen des Fürsten von Liechtenstein, exh. cat. Kunstmuseum Luzern, 1948, nr. 183
Hollander des 17. Jahrhundert, exh. cat. Kunsthaus Zürich, 1953, no. 22
Wolfgang Stechow, Dutch Landscape Painting of the Seventeenth Century, London, 1966, p. 204, note 48
Margareta Russell, Jan van de Capelle, Leigh-on-Sea, 1975, p. 83, no 147, fig. 93
Meisterwerke der Sammlungen des Fursten von Liechtenstein, Zurich and Munchen 1980,
Nr. 92, p. 222, illustrated
Distant Prospects, Landscape painting from the collection of the Prince von und zu Liechtenstein, the Liechtenstein Museum Vienna, 2008, fig. 47, p. 50
EXHIBITED
Hollander des 17. Jahrhunderts, Zurich 1953
Jan van de Capelle was a Dutch Golden Age painter of seascapes and winter landscapes, also notable as an industrialist and art collector. He is ‘now considered the outstanding marine painter of 17th century Holland’. He lived all his life in Amsterdam, and as well as working as an artist, spent much of his time helping to manage his father Franchoys large dyeworks, which specialized in the expensive dye carmine, and which he eventually inherited in 1674.
Presumably because of this dual career, there are fewer than 150 surviving paintings, a relatively small number for the industrious painters of the Dutch Golden Age.
He probably received some training of Simon de Vlieger, whose style is closest to his early paintings and perhaps other masters such as Willem van de Velde the Elder.
The majority of his works are marine or river views, nearly always with several vessels, but he also left a number of small winter landscapes somewhat in the manner of Aert van der Neer, these all seem to date between 1652 and 1654.