Frans Jansz. Post Haarlem circa 1612 - 1680

By descent in the family of the present owner since the 18th century.

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is on a fine oak panel with uneven bevelling on three sides. This is perfectly flat, but the paint is faintly raised in the rather thicker paint of the central landscape, which presumably stems from some past atmospheric conditions, as the panel has not apparently had a tendency to move. The surface is quite messy, with a few places that have been slightly cleaned in the sky. There is a little wear in these bluer patches, although the paint elsewhere appears beautifully intact. A little line of tiny white accidental knocks in the building on the right are fairly recent with two other minute white chips in the lower centre. There are also a few tiny lost flakes from the slightly raised ridges of paint nearby in the central landscape, which should be consolidated. The sky has one or two little older dark knocks and occasional fly spots. The copper resinate pigment in the foliage has naturally darkened, but overall the painting is finely intact, with little sign of previous intervention apart from some quite recent cleaning in the sky." This report was not done under laboratory conditions."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Frans Post is unique in Dutch 17th-century painting.  As far as we know, he painted nothing other than views of Brazil, and his career was entirely based on seven remarkable years between 1637 and 1644 that he spent with the Dutch colonists under Prince Maurits on the coast of north-eastern Brazil, near what is now Recife.  Seven paintings (plus some drawings) survive from what was a larger group of paintings and drawings produced during his Brazilian sojourn, but over the remaining 36 years of his life he drew on his recollections of Brazil, perhaps aided by drawings, to produce a remarkable body of work, evoking for his Dutch clientele a faraway land that would have seemed as strange and miraculous to them as it must have appeared to Post himself when he disembarked in 1637.

This picture only came to light earlier this year, after the English edition of the most recent catalogue raisonné of Frans Post's works had gone to press.¹  As one of his few dated pictures, it is an important addition to his oeuvre.  It belongs to the early part of the third phase of Post's career, defined as the years between 1661 and 1669 by the Correa do Lagos, who summarise it thus: 'This short, nine-year period is generally regarded as the most brilliant and prolific phase of the artist's career'.  Only one other painting is dated 1663 - a depiction of an unidentified but well-preserved Franciscan convent (in Berlin, Gemäldegalerie).² 
 
The present picture is composed according to a compositional arrangement that Post used in the majority of his paintings following his return from Brazil to The Netherlands.  By placing the viewer on a hill, Post is able to show a panoramic view over a partly ruined village towards extensively marshy plains (known as varzea) beyond.  Like most of his other paintings made following his return, the present view is a capriccio of a ruined Portuguese village.  The roofless church in the distance with an oculus in its pediment resembles that of Igaraçu, while the smaller houses along the village street, which are still inhabited, resemble those taken from the central parts of Post's views of the ruins of Olinda.³  Post often depicted a mixture of slaves, natives and Europeans in his pictures, but the figures in the present work are all African slaves.

The small size of this work is unusual so early in the third phase, and is more typical of paintings of the late 1660s and 1670s.  The panel, bevelled on three sides, and cut on a taper, is typical. 

1  Pedro & Bia Correa do Lago, Frans Post {1612-1680}. Catalogue Raisonné, Milan 2007.
2  Correa do Lago, op. cit., pp. 208-9, no. 55, reproduced. Only one dated work is known from the following year, 1664, and two from the preceding year, 1662.
3  Post depicted Igaraçu in several pictures; see, for example, ibid., pp. 228-29, no. 66, reproduced. A street of small houses similar to the present one can be seen in the central part of Post's View of the ruins of Olinda, dated 1665, and now in a private collection in Greenwich, Connecticut; idem, p. 244, no. 81, reproduced.