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Gallery Text

While many Northern artists of his generation traveled to the Eternal City, Pynas is unusual in that he stayed in Rome on two separate occasions—between 1605 and 1607, and again in 1616–17. This impeccably preserved landscape was probably made during or soon after Pynas’s first Italian sojourn. Although contemporary sources suggest that the artist studied Italian landscape from life, this drawing certainly derives from the imagination. Many stylistic and technical features of the work—the combination of dense parallel hatching and controlled washes, the carefully ordered composition, and the close attention to the effects of light—indicate Pynas’s familiarity with the landscape tradition developed in Italy by Paul Bril (as seen in the drawing displayed nearby). With its overgrown ruins of ancient buildings, its wild, oversize foliage, and its lack of human figures, the scene evokes a landscape that has been taken over by the powerful forces of nature.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
2023.640
People
Jan Symonsz. Pynas, Dutch (Alkmaar 1581/1582 - 1631 Amsterdam)
Title
A Mountainous Landscape with an Arched Bridge over a River
Classification
Drawings
Work Type
drawing
Date
1605-1607
Culture
Dutch
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/358849

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Brown ink and gray wash over traces of black chalk on off-white antique laid paper, framing line in dark brown ink
Dimensions
14.3 × 19.1 cm (5 5/8 × 7 1/2 in.)
framed: 31.3 × 40.2 × 2 cm (12 5/16 × 15 13/16 × 13/16 in.)
Inscriptions and Marks
  • collector's mark: Recto, lower right, black ink: cross encircled (Lugt 2903c, not identified)
  • collector's mark: Verso, lower left, brown ink: RA [encircled] (Lugt 4618, mark of I.Q. van Regteren Altena)
  • watermark: bottom of sheet: fragment of a coat of arms (possibly arms of Burgundy and Austria)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Unidentified collector (Lugt 2903c). Prince Wladimir Nikolaevich Argoutinsky-Dolgoroukoff (without his mark)[1]. I.Q. van Regteren Altena, Amsterdam (Lugt 418), by descent to his heirs; [Christie's, London, July 10, 2014, lot 34]; Maida and George Abrams Collection, Boston, gift; to Harvard Art Museums, 2023

[1] According to Christie's sale catalogue

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
The Maida and George Abrams Collection, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Gift of George Abrams in appreciation of Peter Schatborn
Accession Year
2023
Object Number
2023.640
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Publication History

  • Catalogue des dessins anciens, du moyen-âge et de la renaissance . . . composant la collection de M.A. Beurdeley, auct. cat., Galerie Georges Petit (Paris, June 8-10, 1920), lot 118
  • Jan Gerrit van Gelder, Jan van de Velde, 1593-1641, Teekenaar-Schilder, Martinus Nijhoff ('s-Gravenhage, The Netherlands, 1933), p. 18 n. 1
  • The I. Q. van Regteren Altena Collection. Part 1, auct. cat., Christie's, London (London, July 10, 2014), lot 34, repr.
  • Joanna Sheers Seidenstein and Susan Anderson, ed., Crossroads: Drawing the Dutch Landscape, exh. cat., Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, 2022), pp. 83, 231, repr. p. 85 as fig. 10

Exhibition History

Subjects and Contexts

  • Dutch, Flemish, & Netherlandish Drawings

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu