(Leiden 1596–1656 The Hague)
A dune landscape with peasants resting near a group of trees,
oil on panel, 33 x 24 cm, framed

Provenance:
with Charles Sedelmeyer, Vienna and Paris (1873);
art market, London;
sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 3 October 2001, lot 240;
Private collection, Vienna

Literature:
H.-U. Beck, Jan van Goyen, vol. II, Amsterdam 1973, p. 96, cat. no. 200a

Jan van Goyen was the son of a shoemaker and started as an apprentice in Leiden, the town of his birth. Like many Dutch painters of his time, Jan van Goyen developed his trade as an artist in Haarlem with Esaias van de Velde. At the age of thirty-five, he established a permanent studio in The Hague. His landscape paintings rarely fetched high prices, but he made up for the modest value of individual pieces by increasing his production, painting thinly and quickly with a limited palette of inexpensive pigments. Despite his market innovations, he always sought more income, not only through related work as an art dealer and auctioneer but also by speculating in tulips and real estate. Although the latter was usually a safe avenue of investing money, in van Goyen’s experience it led to enormous debts. Paulus Potter rented one of his houses. Though he seems to have kept a workshop, his only registered pupils were Nicolaes Berchem, Jan Steen and Adriaen van der Kabel. The list of painters he influenced is much longer.