Jan (1640) Weenix (1642 - 1719)
Lot 40: Jan Weenix (Amsterdam 1642-1719)
Christie's
More About this Item
Description
A scoter, a kingfisher and other game, in a park landscape with classical buildings beyond
signed 'J. Weenix. f 1711' (lower right)
oil on canvas
42 1/2 x 37 in. (107.9 x 94 cm.)
Artist or Maker
Jan Weenix (Amsterdam 1642-1719)
Provenance
with Demotte, Paris.
Notes
THE PROPERTY OF A LADY OF TITLE (LOT 40)
Pupil of his father, Jan-Baptist Weenix (1621-1660/1), the artist's early activity was in the 1660s and 70s was largely concerned with the production of Italianate landscapes and harbour scenes in a style reminiscent both of his father and Nicolaes Berchem.
After about 1680, however, Jan abandoned these subjects in favour of flower pieces and the hunting still lifes for which he is best known. Along with his cousin, Melchior d'Hondecoeter, who painted similar hunting still lifes, their pictures became highly prized in the last decades of the seventeenth century. By the outset of the eighteenth century the genre had become increasingly popular for stately decorations. From circa 1702 to 1714, Weenix served as court painter to the Elector Palatine Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz of Düsseldorf, for whom, between 1712 and 1714, he painted twelve large hunting scenes designed as wall panels for the Elector's lodge, Schloss Bensberg, near Cologne (Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen). Although Weenix regularly travelled to Dusseldorf to make plans for his decorations and supervise the installation of his work, he continued to reside in Amsterdam, where he died.
The present picture is a notable example of the artist's fully mature style painted in Amsterdam the year before work began on the Bensberg series. It appears to be his only extant dated work from 1711.
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