View of an Italian Port

early 1660s

Nicolaes Pietersz Berchem

Artist, Dutch, 1620 - 1683

A man and woman on horseback are on a strip of land also occupied by livestock, dogs, and seven other people in front of a body of water and towering cliff in this horizontal landscape painting. The couple on horseback is in the lower left quadrant of the composition, and they both have pale, peach-toned skin. The man’s silvery-white horse pulls its head down and back toward its front legs, mouth open. The man sits with one hand holding the reins and the other planted on his hip, palm facing out. He wears a white cloth tied around his neck, a tan-colored jacket, loose, nickel-gray pants, knee-high brown boots, and a wide-brimmed, peanut-brown hat with plumes of mauve-purple feathers. The man has shoulder-length, dark, curly hair and a goatee. A curved horn hangs from a strap looping across his torso, and a scarlet-red cloth is bunched over the saddle. Behind the white horse, the woman’s brown horse faces us. The woman wears a dark yellow dress with white sleeves and a white cloth along the neckline. Her hair is loose under a wide-brimmed, brown hat with dark yellow and white feathers. A falcon perches on her glove-covered hand. The mounted man talks to another man who stands next to the white horse. That man also has peach-toned skin, holds a lance, and wears a dark, royal-purple coat. A clean-shaven, pale-skinned young man sits and hunches toward two dogs at his feet in the lower left corner of the picture. Two more men wearing long robes stand a short distance away behind the boy. One has their back to us and the other, facing us, has dark brown skin and wears a turban. He holds one hand out, palm up. The person on this side sits in a boat near the left edge of the painting, looking off in that direction. He has dark, peach-colored skin and also wears a turban and robe. Six dogs spaced across the picture from the left edge to the mounted couple have brown or black fur with white spots. In the lower right corner of the composition, a person wearing tattered brown and red clothes sits facing away from us next to a cow and two sheep, all of whom lie down. The cow looks in our direction, head held low. Three goats mill about, and two sheep lie in a pile by the water’s edge as two men coax another goat onto a rowboat already laden with at least two cows. A two-masted sailing ship sits askance in low water to the right. A sailboat edges into the scene from the right edge, and a ship with sails unfurled sails near the cliff face to the right. That rocky outcropping comes almost halfway across the picture and is painted in tones of earthy brown and marine blue. Blocky structures along the top of the outcropping are hazy in the distance. The body of water stretches back to the horizon, where there are more outcroppings on the right and a church tower on the left. Mounds of white, puffy clouds against a vivid blue sky fill the top three-quarters of the composition behind the rock formations.

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In this scene, Nicolaes Pietersz Berchem captures both the beauty of the Italian landscape and the cool, crystalline light that imbues it with its distinctive atmospheric quality. Towering cliffs, surmounted by a round bastion and a sturdy tower, form the dramatic backdrop for the arrival of a Dutch merchant ship in a calm harbor. The galley with the furled sail lies tilted to one side, indicating that it is low tide. Two lighters—small wide-bottom barges used to ferry goods to ships anchored in deeper water—seem to await the Dutch ship’s arrival. A hunting party joins several cattlemen and goatherds at the water’s edge. The elegant couple on horseback is focused on the falcon airing its wings on the woman’s arm. The man with the staff standing next to the pair is likely the master of the hunt, the individual in charge of the dogs.

Berchem was one of the most popular and successful of the Dutch seventeenth-century Italianate landscape painters. A native of Haarlem, he probably visited Italy sometime between 1653 and 1656. Berchem’s extensive oeuvre of paintings, drawings, and etchings consists of imagined views of the Italian countryside, depictions of the hunt, as well as biblical and mythological scenes. The large number of prints made after his paintings in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is indicative of Berchem’s fame.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 49

Artwork overview

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century: View of an Italian Port, early 1660s

This horizontal painting shows a group of eight light-skinned musicians and onlookers gathered closely around a rectangular, carpet-covered table. The front edge of the table runs parallel to the bottom edge of the painting, and seems close to us. Shown from about the waist up, the men and women’s vivid lapis-blue, coral-red, buttercup-yellow, lilac-purple, and moss-green garments fall in crisp folds. Bright reflections on the fabric suggest a satin-like material. Two women wear feathers in their hair and one man’s hat is plumed. One man, wearing crimson red and black, sits with his back to us to our left on the near side of the table. He holds the neck of a bass viol, about the size of a cello, with his left hand, and points to pages of an open music book with the bow in his right hand. The other people cluster on the far side of the table. A man to the left plays a violin; a woman at the center plays a guitar-sized bandora, and a woman to our right plays a lute. The musicians, along with a man who leans over the table from between the two women, look down at the music books. A young man behind the woman at the center holds up a glass of pale liquid with his right hand as he touches his left forefinger to his smiling lips. A man and woman stand close together in the background to our right, in the top right corner of the canvas.

Scholarly Series:  Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Johan van Lanschot, Leiden, by 1753;[1] by inheritance to his son-in-law, Pieter Cornelis, baron van Leyden [1717-1788, known during his lifetime as the Heer van Leyden van Vlaardingen], Leiden;[2] by inheritance with the paintings in his collection to his son, Diederik van Leyden, [1744-1810/1811], Leiden and Amsterdam;[3] sold, with the rest of his father's painting collection, for 100,000 florins to a consortium formed by L.B. Coclers, Alexander Joseph Paillet, and A. de Lespinasse de Langeac;[4] (sale of the van Leyden painting collection, A. Paillet and H. Delaroche, Paris, 5-8 November 1804, 1st day, no. 8);[5] H. Delaroche. John Parke, Esq., London; (his sale, Peter Coxe, London, 8-9 May 1812, no. 37). (John Smith, London); sold to John Webb, Esq., London. Chevalier Sébastien Érard [1752-1831], Château de la Muette, near the Bois de Boulogne, Paris; (his estate sale, at his residence by Lacoste and Coutelier, 7-14 August 1832 [originally scheduled for 23 April and days following], no. 62);[6] purchased by Alexis-Nicolas Pérignon, Paris, for Jonkheer Johan Steengracht van Oostcapelle [1782-1846], The Hague;[7] by inheritance to his son, Hendrik Steengracht van Oosterland [1808-1875], The Hague; by inheritance to his nephew, Hendricus Adolphus Steengracht van Duivenvoorde [1836-1912], The Hague; (his estate sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 9 June 1913, no. 4); Mr. Boyer.[8] by inheritance from the collector’s grandfather to private collection; (sale, Adar Picard Tajan, Paris, 9 April 1990, no. 82); Robert H. and Clarice Smith, Washington; gift (partial and promised) 1990 to NGA; gift completed 1996..
[1] Van Lanschot is identified by the inscription on an engraving of the painting executed by Abraham Delfos in 1753. Given the family connection between Van Lanschot and Van Leyden, it is probable that the painting engraved was the Gallery’s, although, as Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann has noted, it is possible that one of the copies after View of an Italian Port was the model for the print.
[2] See the description of Sale F-80, by Benjamin Peronnet, in The Getty Provenance Index© Databases, accessed 17 February 2012, and J.W. Niemeijer,“Baron van Leyden, Founder of the Amsterdam Print Collection,” trans. Patricia Wardle, Apollo (June 1983): 461-468. As Niemeijer explains, in Van Leyden’s own day the title of baron was not actually used; when alive he was known as the Heer Van Leyden van Vlaardingen. He is given the title of baron in later publications, a title that was indeed his, as an ancestor was created a baron of the Holy Roman Empire in 1548.
[3] Niemeijer 1983, 468. While his son inherited the paintings, Van Leyden’s large and important print collection was bequeathed to his grandson, after whose death in 1789 it became the property of the young man’s mother. Sold in 1806 to Louis Napoleon, it was first housed in The Hague, then Paris, and was eventually returned in 1816 to Amsterdam, where it formed the nucleus of the print collection at the Rijksmuseum.
[4] This information is given in the catalogue for sale 6323 at Christie’s, London, 7 July 2000, as part of the provenance for lot 17 (Jan Both, An Italianate evening landscape with a muleteer and goatherds on a wooded path, a river and mountains beyond, now NGA 2000.91.1, An Italianate Evening Landscape), but no source is cited.
[5] The sale was originally scheduled for 5 July 1804, and rescheduled for 10 September 1804 (the date printed on the sale catalogue), before finally taking place in November.
[6] The catalogue incorrectly described the painting as being on panel.
[7] The information about Parke’s ownership through that of Steengracht is found in the 1913 sale catalogue.
[8] An annotated copy of the auction catalogue housed at the NGA library notes that Boyer purchased the picture for Fr 7,900.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1991

  • Art for the Nation: Gifts in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1991, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

Bibliography

1829

  • Smith, John. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters. 9 vols. London, 1829-1842: 5(1934):47, no. 137.

1831

  • Catalogue des tableaux italiens, flamands, hollandais et français: des anciennes écoles, qui composent la magnifique galerie de M. le Chevalier Érard. Paris, 1831: 82-83, no. 62.

1854

  • Waagen, Gustav Friedrich. Treasures of Art in Great Britain: Being an Account of the Chief Collections of Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, Illuminated Mss.. 3 vols. Translated by Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake. London, 1854: 2:95.

1907

  • Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century. 8 vols. Translated by Edward G. Hawke. London, 1907-1927: 9(1926):80, no. 107.

  • Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 10 vols. Esslingen and Paris, 1907-1928: 9(1926):80, no. 107.

1958

  • Schaar, Eckhard. Studien zu Nicolaes Berchem. Cologne, 1958: 86.

1991

  • National Gallery of Art. Art for the Nation: Gifts in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1991: 74-75, color repro.

1995

  • Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, 1995: 23-24, color repro. 25.

2003

  • Waagen, Gustav Friedrich. Treasures of Art in Great Britain. Translated by Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake. Facsimile edition of London 1854. London, 2003: 2:95.

2012

  • Vries, Annette de, Quentin Buvelot, and Femke Foppema. Passie voor schilderijen: de verzameling Steengracht van Duivenvoorde. Exh. cat. Kasteel Duivenvoorde, Voorschoten. Leiden, 2012: 42, 84-85, color repros. 5 and 35.

2014

  • Wheelock, Arthur K, Jr. "The Evolution of the Dutch Painting Collection." National Gallery of Art Bulletin no. 50 (Spring 2014): 2-19, repro.

Inscriptions

lower right: Berchem

Wikidata ID

Q20177566

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