(Antwerp 1544–1606 Amsterdam)
Wooded river landscape with a village, Venus and Adonis and travellers,
oil on panel, 56 x 71 cm, framed

Gillis van Coninxloo spent his apprenticeship under Pieter Coecke van Aelst and Gillis Mostaert. In 1585 the Calvinist Coninxloo left his home town after it was occupied by the Spaniards, settling in the Palatinate City of Frankenthal two years later. There he became one of the most important representatives of a new trend in landscape painting known as the “Frankenthal School”, which included painters such as Anton Mirou and Pieter Schoubroeck. In 1595 Coninxloo moved to Amsterdam. His works influenced painters such as Jan Brueghel I, Pieter Schoubroeck, Roeland Savery and David Vinckboons. Thus wrote E. Plietzsch about Coninxloo in his book on the Frankenthal school of painting published in 1910: “Of all the Netherlandish artists who, in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, had an effect on the further development of landscape painting, Gillis van Coninxloo was the one whose works proved most profoundly influential”. He divided Coninxloo’s stylistic development into three periods marked by his sojourns in Antwerp (1570–1588), Frankenthal (1588–1595) and Amsterdam (1595–1606), respectively. The comparatively high vantage point of the landscape backdrop and the organisation of colours in a brown foreground, a green middleground and a blue background suggest that the present painting belongs to the group of Coninxloo’s highly imaginative, effectively composed early works.