(Amsterdam 1619–1688)
A wooded landscape with three figures conversing, a town in the background,
signed and dated lower left: P. Koninck/.676,
oil on panel, 57 x 78 cm, unframed

Provenance:
sale, Drouot, Paris, 27 June 1989, lot 34;
sale, Sotheby‘s, London, 8 July 2009, lot 5;
Private collection, France

The present panel, depicting the sun-dappled forms of figures in a clearing beneath wind-blown trees and dramatic cloud-filled skies, is a masterful rendition of a Dutch landscape from Philips Koninck’s mature period. Typical of the artist is the sense of light and open space, employing a relatively high viewpoint in order to allow recession to the paysage beyond, with the repoussoir use of foreground details such as the figures on high ground to the left framed by serpentine trees. These features are slightly old fashioned for Dutch Golden Age landscape painting of the period, as is the unusual use of expensive oak panel for the support, given the scarcity of trees of this sort in the Netherlands by the 1670s, and the disruption to the supply of Baltic oak, all of which renders this picture a fairly unique testament to the master’s late output. 

Other compositions by Koninck also employ a similar device of foreground trees on rising slopes, such as An Extensive Wooded Landscape conserved in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (inv. no. 1980.4). A circa 1671 watercolour by the master conserved in the British Museum, (inv. no. OO.9.83) equally displays an extensive panorama unfolding to the left of raised terrain which forms the right foreground. The brother of Jacob Koninck, Philips was allegedly a pupil of Rembrandt, to whom many of his works on paper have previously been ascribed, and uncle of Salomon Koninck.