Provenance

Frederik Muller & Co.

est. 1843

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See all 12 works of art
Shown from the knees up, a pale-skinned woman with gray hair and wearing a scarlet-red, velvet dress looks at us in this vertical portrait painting. The woman’s shoulders and face are angled slightly to our left so she gazes out of the corners of her dark blue eyes under sloping brows. Her pink lips are closed, and jowls soften her chin line. She wears a black cap over her gray hair, and gold, jeweled earrings hang from her ears. A double strand of pearls is around her neck. The bodice of her dress is cut straight across the shoulders, and white cloth covering her decolletage is tucked into the neckline. A muted gold cloth wraps around the woman’s left shoulder, to our right, across her back, and down over her other elbow. The red dress’s sleeves split over the puffy white sleeves of her undergarment. The woman rests her right elbow, to our left, on a ledge, and her other hand hangs by her side with those fingers nestled into the fabric of her skirt. An iridescent, gold-colored cloth drapes over the ledge to our left and behind the woman. A stone column is along the left edge of the painting and a sunset sky over a grassy, tree-filled landscape is visible to the right. The artist signed and dated the lower right corner, “NMaes 1676.”
Nicolaes Maes, Portrait of a Lady, 1676, oil on canvas, Gift of Joseph F. McCrindle, 2001.138.1

Portrait of a Lady

Nicolaes Maes · 1676 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2001.138.1

A stone bridge with turrets at each end spans a placid river in this horizontal landscape painting. The bridge takes up the right half of the composition, moving from the right edge of the canvas back and to our left. The horizon line comes about a quarter of the way up the painting so much of the tan-colored bridge is nearly silhouetted against the sky. The sun, low in the sky to our right, angles sharply through the four large stone arches of the bridge. The sky glows with golden light along the right side of the composition, and deepens to pale and then aquamarine blue to our left. Vegetation hangs down from the tops of tower-like structures rising at each end of the bridge. Along the shadowed riverbank, close to us, two men on horseback talk and gesture toward the bridge. Another standing to our right seems to point to a man in a boat near the shore, who stands with his arms spread. A dog looks at the man in the boat, and another man herds three cows through the water, near the lower left corner of the painting. All of the men except the cowherd wear or hold wide-brimmed hats and wear jackets and stockings in black, yellow, navy blue, or crimson red. The riverbank opposite us us sheer and rocky, but details are difficult to make out in the shadows there. Beyond the riverbank, sunlight brushes the tops of rolling green hills. Two buildings with low towers sit among the hills in the distance. Mountains beyond become more blue in the hazy light along the horizon.
Jan Asselijn, The Tiber River with the Ponte Molle at Sunset, c. 1650, oil on canvas, Florian Carr Fund, New Century Fund, and Nell and Robert Weidenhammer Fund, 2012.129.1

The Tiber River with the Ponte Molle at Sunset

Jan Asselijn · c. 1650 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2012.129.1

Eight cows bathed in warm sunlight stand and lie on a riverbank carpeted in mossy green in this horizontal painting. The cows are amber, ginger, or tawny brown, bone white, or black, and all have short, curving horns. Seven are clustered closely together, at the bottom center of the painting. There, one tawny red cow with a white face looks at or toward us as it lies at the middle of the grouping, legs tucked under her big body. The eighth cow is black with a white face, and lies just to our left of the group. Behind the cows, to our right, a hill rises about halfway up the right side of the composition. Three men meet at the top. One man is on horseback with his back to us, while the other two stand to the right holding tall staffs. They are dressed in sage-green, tan, or peanut-brown tunics and knee-length pants, and they all wear hats. Beyond the cows, the silvery-blue river extends back to a row of low trees in the deep distance on the horizon, which comes about a quarter of the way up the composition. A few sailboats with white sails navigate the waterway. The sky, which takes up about three-quarters of the composition, is filled with puffy white, pale gray, and shell-pink clouds. A shaft of sunlight breaks through the clouds near the top center of the composition and falls toward the men on the hill. Birds flying in a loose band are painted with a few swipes of brown, tiny in the distance. The artist signed the lower right, “A:Cuijp.”
Aelbert Cuyp, River Landscape with Cows, 1645/1650, oil on panel, Gift of Family Petschek (Aussig), 1986.70.1

River Landscape with Cows

Aelbert Cuyp · 1645/1650 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1986.70.1

A sand-colored church dominates the right two thirds of this canvas in this horizontal landscape. Low-lying blue-green mountains recede into the deep distance to our left. To our right, the building is made up of staggered, squared-off walls with rectangular windows set at seemingly irregular intervals. To the left and near the center of the composition, a circular building has a low domed roof. Plants growing on the building suggest that this is a ruin. A tall obelisk stands in front of the round portion of the church, to the left of center in the composition. We look into the arched ruins or construction of another building behind and above the church. A dirt road crosses diagonally from our left to right in front of the structure. A person wearing a red hat and purple robe sits inside a carriage drawn by two black horses. The driver wears a blue uniform, as do two men walking alongside the carriage.
Pieter Jansz Saenredam, Church of Santa Maria della Febbre, Rome, 1629, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.34

Church of Santa Maria della Febbre, Rome

Pieter Jansz Saenredam · 1629 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1961.9.34

Shown from the thighs up, a pale-skinned woman looks down and off to our left as she holds the pointed end of a dagger toward her chest in this vertical painting. Her lips are slightly parted, and her arms are spread wide as holds the hilt of the dagger in her right hand, to our left. Her hooded, dark brown eyes are rimmed with red. Her head tilts to our left, her pale lips parted. There are gray shadows at the corners of her mouth and along her jawline. Her brown hair is pulled back under a cloth covering painted with white flecks to suggest shiny thread or possibly jewels. She wears a long, tawny-brown gown with diaphanous sleeves. The bodice is laced up over a cream-white undergarment with a deep V neck and voluminous sleeves with unfastened cuffs near her wrists. She wears a large, teardrop-shaped pearl in the ear we can see and two necklaces. One necklace is a strand of pearls, and the other is a gold and possibly jeweled pendant with another teardrop pearl hanging from a cord. A gold belt drapes around her hips over a narrow waist. She is warmly lit from the upper left and set against an earth-brown background. The artist signed and dated the center left, “Rembrandt 1664.”
Rembrandt van Rijn, Lucretia, 1664, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.76

Lucretia

Rembrandt van Rijn · 1664 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1937.1.76

Shown from the chest up, a bearded man with pale skin and flushed cheeks wears a chestnut-brown jacket with a thick, lace-trimmed, pleated, cream-white collar in this octagonal portrait painting. The man’s body is angled to our right, and he cuts his light brown eyes back to look at us. Wrinkles line the corners of his eyes under dark brows, and he has a straight, narrow nose and high cheekbones. His red lips are closed and almost lost in the shadow of his full, trimmed beard. His dark brown hair is combed back from a receding hairline and falls around his ears. The dense, ruffled collar comes up to the earlobe we can see. His brown vest has a row of gold buttons down the front, and there are more gold buttons down the sleeve. He is lit from our left so the far side of his face is in shadow. The dark brown background lightens slightly around his face.
Thomas de Keyser, Portrait of a Gentleman Wearing a Fancy Ruff, 1627, oil on copper, The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund, 2012.12.1

Portrait of a Gentleman Wearing a Fancy Ruff

Thomas de Keyser · 1627 · oil on copper ·  Accession ID  2012.12.1

This painting shows a young person from the waist up, sitting with their hands folded on a brown surface. The person is angled slightly to the left, looking up into the distance. They have pale skin, soft, rounded facial features, and long, wavy light brown hair. They wear a vibrant red garment with green ties down the front and a red cap on their head. In the background, there are rocky blue and brown cliffs, tall leafy green trees, and tall gray buildings and towers under a clear blue sky.
Agnolo di Domenico del Mazziere, Donnino di Domenico del Mazziere, Portrait of a Youth, c. 1495/1500, oil on panel transferred to canvas and solid support, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.294

Portrait of a Youth

Agnolo di Domenico del Mazziere, Donnino di Domenico del Mazziere · c. 1495/1500 · oil on panel transferred to canvas and solid support ·  Accession ID  1939.1.294

Twelve men and a woman kneel on the ground to either side of a moss-green rock and gesture or gaze up at a man floating on a black cloud, flanked by eight men, four to each side, in this vertical painting. The scene has an arched top with a shiny gold background within the curve. All the people have pale skin. The man at the top center, Jesus, sits enveloped in a red robe over a bare chest and feet. He looks down and to our left with light brown eyes under furrowed brows, and his brown hair falls to his shoulders. He has a long, straight nose, a curly beard, and his lips are closed. He holds up his right hand, on our left, with the first two fingers raised. In his other hand, he holds a thin, cross-topped staff with a fluttering red pennant marked with a cross. Red wounds pierce the palms of both hands and blood seeps from a gash over his right ribs. Bands of black clouds, one on each side, are occupied by four bearded men seen from the waist up in a vertical row, looking toward Jesus. Each man holds an object or two, including a palm frond, a book and miniature unicorn, two stone tablets, a harp, or sword, or they hold their hands up in prayer. In the upper corners, above where the gold background arches down, winged angels are painted in translucent white against a navy-blue background. Below Jesus and his cloud, a group of six men to our right and six men and a woman to our left create loose parentheses to either side of a smooth, rounded, green rock. The rock appears broken along the bottom and two footprints are impressed into the top. Closest to us to our left, a woman with pale skin and blond hair, wearing a deep, cobalt-blue mantle over her shoulders, looks up with light eyes and a slight smile on small lips. She holds her hands together in prayer and has a wide, flat, gold halo surrounding her head. Next to her, a cleanshaven young man with blond, curly hair, wearing a green cloak, wraps one arm around her and holds his other up in front of his chest. The other men all have trimmed or long beards. Some are balding with gray or white hair, and some have thick, chestnut or cinnamon-brown hair. They wear robes in crimson red, emerald green, lapis blue, or apricot orange. Most look up to the sky with furrowed brows, but one man, to our right, looks down at his neighbor. A row of leafy plants sprouts along the bottom edge of the painting, under the rock. Rays of light, created by lines incised into the gold background, radiate down from Jesus and upward from the heads of the people below.
Johann Koerbecke, The Ascension, 1456/1457, tempera on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1959.9.5

The Ascension

Johann Koerbecke · 1456/1457 · tempera on panel ·  Accession ID  1959.9.5

A woman is shown from the waist up behind a ledge, on which a baby stands in front of a gold background in this vertical painting. Both people have pale skin, blond hair, light brown eyes, and small, pale pink lips. To the right, the woman’s body is angled slightly to our left, toward the child. Her head tips down so her forehead overlaps the baby’s head. The woman has close-set, almond-shaped eyes under thin brows. Her hair is pulled back and her head encircled with a string of pearls and a red bead or gem, which rests in the middle of her forehead. Her hair is also partially covered by a white veil and a blue cloak patterned with gold leaves, vines, and dots. The lining of the cloak is moss green, and her dusky pink dress is also edged and decorated with gold designs. She holds one long-fingered hand up to the child’s knee and braces his back side with her other hand. The child stands on chubby legs on tiny, sandaled feet. He leans close to the woman and looks off to our right with hooded, wide-set eyes. His lips are downturned, and he has chubby cheeks and a knobby chin. He wears a strand of red beads and a moss-green tunic over translucent white cloth. He stands on a red cloth draped over the center of the white ledge. A piece of a small, round red fruit with a long stem sits on the ledge to the right. The space behind the people’s shoulders is painted muted mauve pink with gray streaks. The woman and child both have halos punched into the gold background above. A branch with two pears is in the top left corner and another branch, perhaps holding an apple, is in the top right. The panel is framed by a raised lip, also painted gold.
Carlo Crivelli, Madonna and Child, c. 1490, tempera on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.264

Madonna and Child

Carlo Crivelli · c. 1490 · tempera on panel ·  Accession ID  1939.1.264

An ice- and powder-blue sky swirled with faint peach takes up the top two-thirds of this landscape painting. A farm, field, road, and fence lie beyond the snow-dusted, spiky branches of a tree jutting into the scene from the lower right corner. The road extends from the bottom left corner into the distance near the left edge of the canvas. The fence cuts across the space closer to us, and the snowy field beyond reflects the cool blues of the sky. The pale green and peanut-brown farmhouse and buildings are topped with pale blue, snow-covered roofs. Dark forms near the road in the distance could be a person or a person and child, and two more people lean into the wind alongside the buildings to our right. The artist signed the lower left corner, “Sisley.”
Alfred Sisley, First Snow at Veneux-Nadon, 1878, oil on canvas, Donated by Lolo Sarnoff in memory of her grandfather, Louis Koch, 1983.98.1

First Snow at Veneux-Nadon

Alfred Sisley · 1878 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1983.98.1

Bibliography

2004

  • Mörzer Bruyns, Willem F.J. "Frederik Muller & Co. and Anton Mensing: The first international art auction house in Amsterdam, and its director." Quaerendo 34, no. 3-4 (2004): 211-239