A wooded landscape with two trees in the foreground, with a woman on horseback and mounted huntsmen beyond, signed lower left and right: J Hagen, oil on canvas, 151 x 140 cm, framed

Certificate:
Dr Walther Bernt (“... an uncontested, characteristic, and excellently preserved work of museum quality by the important Hague landscapist Joris van der Haagen”).

Provenance:
Coll. E. Swartz, Norrköping (1896);
collection of the Swedish Prime Minister and industrialist Carl Swartz, Norrköping (1920);
European private collection.

Literature:
O. Granberg, Les Collections Privées de la Suède, Stockholm, 1896, p. 270 (as “a masterpiece by Jan Wynants”);
idem, Trésors d’Art en Suède, Stockholm 1911, vol. I, no. 48;
C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragenden holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, vol. VIII, Esslingen-Paris 1907, no. 230 (as Jan Wynants).

The present painting, whose figural staffage is by the hand of Johannes Lingelbach, is a work of quality, as Walther Bernt wrote and it should be considered as one of Joris van der Haagen’s most important works and comparable to the paintings of similar subject matter and dimensions that are in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

The son of the painter Abraham van der Haagen, Joris van der Haagen grew up in Arnheim. After his father’s death in 1639, he left his native town for The Hague. In 1643, he became a member of the Hague guild of painters, in which he held several important positions. In 1644, he became an honorary citizen of the town. Van der Haagen left the guild after twelve years in order to establish a new association of painters, the ‘Confrerie Pictura’, together with some of his colleagues.

Walther Bernt writes that Joris van der Haagen was a “Hague painter of wooded landscapes, flat or slightly hilly, viewed on a wide scale and with emphasized horizontals, featuring shacks along paths by watersides, quiet streamlets in forests, solitary clusters of trees, with views into the distance, extremely delicately executed and well composed. Occasionally, they are reminiscent of the wooded landscapes by painters of the Ruisdael group (J. Lagoor and A. Verboom). … In his paintings, most of which are signed, the figures are rarely by his own hand: for his Italian landscapes, they were done by Nicolaes Berchem or Adrieaen van de Velde…” Landscapes suffused with bright light are typical of Van der Haagen. Although they are often bathed in a southern light, they evidently render Dutch scenery. Haagen strove to depict the beauty and scenic diversity of his native country. His landscapes are characterized by balanced compositions, a delicate technique, and sensitive atmospheres. Combining all of these merits, the present painting excellently demonstrates Joris van der Haagen’s high standing and artistic talent, which account for his rank among the leading Dutch landscape painter of the 17th Century.