National Gallery of Art

Jan Both’s imposing Italianate landscape invites the viewer to enter into a world that is at once familiar and exotic, where golden evening light floods over distant hills and waterways, and slender foreground trees gracefully reach beyond the very limits of the canvas.[1]  [1]
I would like to thank Jeptha Dullaart for his assistance in writing this entry.
No buildings are found in this extensive, mountainous setting, and there is little human activity beyond the leisurely travels of some peasants and a cowherd along a meandering path that stretches into the distance. Two goatherds have stopped by the wayside and, leaning on their staffs, appear to converse with the familiarity of longtime acquaintances.

This large-scale rendering of a sun-drenched and verdant landscape seemingly free from worldly concerns depicts Italy not as it was in reality but as it existed in the artist’s imagination. Both’s paintings are as much about mood as they are about the specifics of terrain—a quality generated, as Joachim von Sandrart already noted in 1675, from the artist’s ability to evoke the differing light effects at various times of the day.[2]  [2]
Joachim von Sandrart, Joachim von Sandrarts Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von 1675, ed. A. R. Peltzer (Munich, 1925), 185. “Sie [Jan and Andries Both, ed.] mahlten meistens grosse Landschaften, die sie reichlich ordinirten in Ausbildung der Morgenstunden, als wie der Thau noch auf den Feldern ligt und die Sonne über das hohe Gebürge herfür blicket. Also haben sie auch den Mittag, Abend und Sonnenuntergang, den Mondschein bey Nacht und dergleichen in Colorit und anderm dermassen verwunderlich nachgebildet, dass man in ihren Gemälden gleichsam die Stunden des Tages erkennen konte, mit sonst andern eigentlichen Natürlichkeiten der Felder, Berg und Bäumen.”   Like so many of Both’s paintings, this landscape bathed in evening light invites the viewer to settle back and dream.

Both developed this type of painting upon his arrival in Rome in 1637, shortly before he joined the Accademia di San Luca in 1638. In Rome he was reunited with his brother Andries Both (Dutch, 1611/1612 - 1641), who had already moved there in 1633. According to Sandrart, the two artists probably collaborated, with Andries painting the figures in Jan’s landscapes.[3]  [3]
Joachim von Sandrart, Joachim von Sandrarts Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von 1675, ed. A. R. Peltzer (Munich, 1925), 185. While in Rome, Jan established friendships with a number of foreign artists who were interested in capturing the Roman Campagna in their works; of particular consequence for the development of Both’s approach to landscape painting were Claude Lorrain (French, 1604/1605 - 1682), Herman van Swanevelt (Dutch, c. 1600 - 1655), and Gaspard Dughet (French, 1615 - 1675). Together they went on expeditions into the Italian countryside, where Both made drawings that would continue to be sources of inspiration for his paintings even after he returned to Utrecht in 1642.[4]  [4]
Peter Schatborn, Drawn to Warmth: 17th-Century Dutch Artists in Italy (Zwolle, 2001), 93. Details about the circumstances of Both’s initial encounter with these artists are not known, although he may have been introduced to the only other Dutch artist in this group, Van Swanevelt, by the Utrecht artist Cornelis van Poelenburch (Dutch, 1594/1595 - 1667).[5]  [5]
Malcolm R. Waddingham, "Andries and Jan Both in France and Italy," Paragone 171 (1964): 28. Poelenburch had known Van Swanevelt in Rome before he returned to Utrecht in the mid–1620s.

While in Rome, Both participated in an important commission with Claude, Dughet, and Van Swanevelt to paint a series of twenty-two large landscapes for Philip IV’s summer palace in Madrid, the Buen Retiro.[6]  [6]
Malcolm R. Waddingham, "Andries and Jan Both in France and Italy," Paragone 171 (1964): 28–32. The series was commissioned in 1636, thus before Jan Both arrived in Rome. Waddingham argues that Both participated in four of the paintings in this series before he returned to Utrecht in 1641. James David Burke, “Jan Both: Paintings, Drawings and Prints,” PhD diss. (Harvard University, 1976), 81–95, asserts that he was responsible for five paintings in this series.   
He quickly assimilated the stylistic ideals of landscape painting that infused their work, ideals that drew their inspiration not only from the arcadian paintings of Poelenburch, but also from the classicist traditions of Annibale Carracci (Bolognese, 1560 - 1609) and Domenichino (Italian, 1581 - 1641).[7]  [7]
Malcolm R. Waddingham, "Andries and Jan Both in France and Italy," Paragone 171 (1964): 30. The paintings made for this commission generally have a prominent repoussoir to one side—usually a tree or group of trees—beyond which one views the distant, light-filled landscape, a compositional schema that Both retained and later perfected in works such as An Italianate Evening Landscape. Nevertheless, Both’s manner of painting differed from that of his colleagues in Rome in its emphasis on the specific details of naturalistic forms, particularly the rhythms and shapes of branches and leaves.[8]  [8]
James David Burke, “Jan Both: Paintings, Drawings and Prints,” PhD diss. (Harvard University, 1976), 87–91. Moreover, presumably with his brother’s assistance, he populated his landscapes with contemporary figures, not ones drawn from mythology or shepherds dressed as though they belonged to the Arcadia of classical antiquity. He retained this naturalistic approach to his landscape style and figure type throughout his career.[9]  [9]
Joaneath A. Spicer, Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht during the Golden Age. (Baltimore, 1997), 42, aptly described Both’s paintings as depicting “Arcadia from life.” These same qualities are evident in a few of Both’s late drawings, as, for example, Landscape with Trees and Travelers, Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna. See: Peter Schatborn, Drawn to Warmth: 17th-Century Dutch Artists in Italy (Zwolle, 2001), 98–99, fig. O.

The exact chronology of the large-scale landscapes that Both created during his latter years in Utrecht cannot be established because only one of these paintings is dated.[10]  [10]
Landscape with Mercury and Argus, 1650, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Staatsgalerie, Bayreuth. He probably executed the National Gallery of Art’s imposing evocation of the Italian Campagna around 1650, when he had mastered his craft.[11]  [11]
This painting can be most closely compared to three other large arcadian landscapes: Italian Landscape with a Draftsman, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Landscape with Hunters, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and Landscape with Bandits Leading Prisoners, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The painting’s outstanding qualities have long been admired. The 1804 catalog of the renowned Van Leyden Collection, for example, celebrates the painting as being of “étonnante richesse” (surprising richness). The catalog entry, which stresses the brilliant rendering of the trees and the delicacy of their leaves, concludes with the following assertion: “This first-class and absolutely perfect painting represents without a doubt the masterpiece of its artist, and even of its genre.”[12]  [12]
“Ce Tableau capital et de la plus perfection, offre sans contredit le chef-d’oeuvre de son Auteur, et même de son genre.” (Translated by Jennifer Henel.) Catalogue de la célèbre collection de tableau de M. van Leyden (Amsterdam, 1804), 4–5, no. 6.
This enthusiastic assessment of the artistic qualities and “perfection” of this “masterpiece” was later echoed by the German scholar Gustav Friedrich Waagen, who wrote in 1854: “The warm, but not, as sometimes with him, exaggerated, evening light, the more solid impasto, and the more careful execution, make this one of the most beautiful pictures of the master.”[13]  [13]
Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Algernon Graves, Treasures of Art in Great Britain: Being an Account of the Chief Collections of Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, Illuminated Mss., trans. Lady Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake, 3 vols. (London, 1854), 2:111. Indeed, as Waagen intimated, the trees in this painting are particularly lively thanks to their rhythmic shapes and the vigorous accents that articulate their foliage and the bark of their trunks and branches.

No commissions related to Both’s large Utrecht-period landscapes are known, but these works probably decorated the houses of upper-class clients, largely in Amsterdam and Utrecht, who had a strong interest in and love for Italy and arcadian ideals.[14]  [14]
One of Both’s foremost patrons in Utrecht was the Baron Vincent van Wyttenhorst, a major patron of landscape painting who also owned twenty-three landscapes by Cornelis van Poelenburch, who bought works from Both in 1649 and 1651. Both’s paintings were collected in Amsterdam by, among others, Jan Six and Joseph Deutz, and thus by patrons living beyond Utrecht. See Albert Blankert, Nederlandse 17e Eeuwse Italianiserende Landschapschilders (Utrecht 1965; reprint, Soest, 1978), 42, 223, no. 142; Alan Chong, “The Market for Landscape Painting in Seventeenth-Century Holland,” in Peter C. Sutton, Masters of 17th-Century Dutch Landscape Painting (Boston, 1987), 110–112; Jonathan Bikker, "The Deutz Brothers, Italian Paintings, and Michiel Sweerts: New Information from Elisabeth Coyman's 'Journael,'" Simiolus 26, no. 4 (1998): 283, 309; and Peter C. Sutton, Masters of 17th-Century Dutch Landscape Painting (Boston, 1987), 276. A poem commenting on the visual and psychological appeal of a room filled with works by another Dutch Italianate landscape painter, Adam Pynacker (Dutch, c. 1620 - 1673), captures the impact of such decorative schemes: “The walls of the room are painted with artful parks and green woods, lit by a morning sun which shines down brilliantly from the horizon upon lush vegetation, creating the day, so that he who understands art, stands enraptured, and believes Italy appears before his eyes. . . . Here, worn out by affairs of state, he can unwind again, and enjoy himself in these observations.”[15]  [15]
This late seventeenth-century poem was written by Pieter Verhoek (1633–1702) about paintings in the home of a wealthy Amsterdam merchant. I have used Alan Chong’s translation here, with some minor changes; see Alan Chong in Peter C. Sutton, Masters of 17th-Century Dutch Landscape Painting (Boston, 1987), 399. Original text is from Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols. (Amsterdam, 1718–1721; rev. ed., The Hague, 1753; reprint, Amsterdam, 1980), 2:97–99: “nu all wanden / Der zaale, stan bemaald met konstige waranden, / En groene bosschen, van een morgenzon bestraalt, / Die glansryk uit de kim op wilde kruiden daalt, / Den Dag schept, dat wie Konst verstaat, staat opgetogen, / En want Italien t’aanschouwen met zyn oogen. . . . Hier kan hy afgeslooft door Staatszorg, weer den boog / ontspannen; zig in dees bespiegeling verlusten.” One can well imagine a comparable tribute being written about a room containing this masterpiece by Jan Both.

Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.

April 24, 2014