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Artist or Maker: Gerrit Adriaensz. Berckheyde (Haarlem 1638-1698)
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Provenance: In the collection of a noble French family since the second half of the 19th century.
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Notes: THE PROPERTY OF A LADY (LOT 22)
Having spent the last 150 years in the same private collection, during which time it was never exhibited in public, the existence of the present picture was hitherto almost entirely unknown. Its rediscovery constitutes a major addition to the oeuvre of Gerrit Berckheyde who, along with Jan van der Heyden, can be considered the greatest of all Dutch painters of townscapes.
Berckheyde painted several views of Amsterdam and The Hague during the course of his career but it is for views of his native Haarlem that he is most celebrated. He joined the painter's guild there in 1660 and later in that decade began to paint views of the city's landmarks, supposedly in response to local demand (see W. Liedtke, 'Pride in Perspective: The Dutch Townscape', in Connoisseur, CC, April 1979, pp. 264-73). The setting for most of his Haarlem views was the Grote Markt which, like the Dam in Amsterdam, was the commercial and civic hub of the city. Its principal buildings - the church of St. Bavo's, the town hall and Lieven de Key's Vleeshal (meat market) - represented Haarlem's religious, political and commercial institutions that together embodied the city's identity and source of pride.
His viewpoint here is from the Klokhuisplein (belfry square) at the east end of the Grote Markt, looking west towards the town hall. Berckheyde lived less than 100 metres away on the Jansstraat which ran northwards from the Grote Markt, opposite the fish market, just out of the picture space on the right. The view is dominated by the north transept of St. Bavo's built between the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries. At its base are the fish stalls (long since removed) and beyond, at the western end of the square, the town hall and the entrance to the Zijlstraat on the right. The town hall was built in the late fourteenth century on the site of the former Gravenzaal, the hunting lodge of the Counts of Holland, and underwent several alterations in the first half of the seventeenth century. The windows and the entrance on the left (here hidden by the fish stalls) were remodelled in 1630; the classical projecting facade on the right was re-designed by Lieven de Key in 1633; and the wing on the right, receding down the Zijlstraat, was added in circa 1620-30. The boxes on top of the townhall's roof were nesting boxes for storks. The town hall survives today with a few further modifications. The seven dormer windows in the roof and the tower on the far left (the pinnacle of which is just visible here) have been removed and the main tower was destroyed in 1772, the present one being a reconstruction of 1914. The projecting balcony over a doric columned portico on the right (again largely hidden here by the fish stalls) was destroyed in 1886. The houses on the north side of the square no longer exist.
It is now generally accepted that Berckheyde's vision of Haarlem was strongly influenced by Samuel Ampzing's laudatory, topographical account of the city - Beschivinge ende Lof der Stad Haerlem ('Description and Praise of the City of Haarlem'), published in 1628 and which, in Lawrence's words - 'extolled Haarlem's magnificent buildings, soaring towers and well kept buildings, as well as her virtue and glory' (C. Lawrence, Gerrit Adriaensz. Berckheyde, Dorrnspijk, 1991, p. 29). Liedtke goes so far as to suggest that many of Berckheyde's Haarlem scenes were in effect the pictorial equivalents of Ampzing's verse remarking that 'the book as well as paintings of Haarlem buildings, shared the same market and fulfilled similar functions' (see W. Liedtke, in the catalogue of the exhibition, Otto Naumann Ltd., Inaugural Exhibtion of Old Master paintings, New York, 12 January-1 March 1995, p. 114, under no. 25). This correlation is made abundantly clear when the present picture is viewed alongside Ampzing's description of the same setting: 'So striking, so spacious, one stands to look around, (here) the city's authority is established the proud palace, the great vast church, and the markets of fish and meat' (op. cit., p. 40). St. Bavo's is praised as 'That big barrel, praised in the whole country, Such a beautiful and daring building as ever a church was made A credit to the town, a miracle of the country, And almost a greater work than made by human hands' (op. cit., p. 11). Ampzing goes on to describe the town hall in more detail concluding 'How can a country exist where all the morals Where all the discipline of laws is trampled upon Like the soul, the body is the bond of life So is justice the moral of a nation' (op. cit., p. 48). Seen in this context, the present work ceases to operate simply as a topographically accurate rendition of the buildings of Haarlem. Berckheyde and by implication his audience, must have appreciated the ethical significance of the structures he depicted. So in this case society is presided over by the towering authority of the church and by the judicious legal system ('the life blood of the nation') housed in the town hall, both of which are shown bathed in sunlight. The people who occupy the square - the burgers and the city's merchants - are shown to be prosperous and content and the implication seems clear that this well-ordered and just society whose success was founded on commerce, was reliant on the moral values expounded by the church and the state.
Ampzing's account also contained illustrations in the form of engravings by Jan van de Velde II after drawings by Sanraedam, depicting the interior and exterior of St. Bavo's and the town hall. These formed the basis for some of Berckheyde's standard Haarlem compositions, for instance the View of the Town Hall (Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum) and the Interior of St. Bavo's (London, National Gallery). The present composition is altogether more original and perfectly illustrates the artist's desire in the mid-1670s to experiment with new perspectives. As Lawrence stated (op. cit., p. 37), 'For reasons that are not clear, around 1674 Berckheyde abandoned this trusted scheme in several pictures which demonstrate his inventive and often brilliant approach to composition'. The outcome in this case is an arrestingly composed tour de force dominated by the towering transept of St. Bavo's; the effect of its height accentuated by the fact that its full elevation cannot be contained within the pictorial space. At the same time, Berckheyde manipulates the natural effects of light and shaddow caused by the fall of clear afternoon light to create a heightened sense of drama and movement. His use of an emboldened palette is characteristic for the later 1670s and the unusual monumentality of the figures can probably best be compared with a View of the Grote Markt, of 1675, from the other direction, in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon. Another panel painted from approximately the same viewpoint as the present work and also datable to the early 1670s is in the Raleigh Museum of Art, North Carolina. In that picture the view is withdrawn slightly and turned to the right to reveal two extra houses on the north side of the square. The most stiking difference is the diminutive scale of the figures.
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