Salomon van Ruysdael

Sale, Paris, Drouot, 20 November 1929, lot 99;
With W.E. Duits, London, 1930-31;
Anton W. M. Mensing (1866-1936);
His deceased sale, Amsterdam, Frederik Muller & Co, 15 November 1938, lots 92a and 92b (for fl. 4600 to S. Rosenberg);
Acquired by the grandfather of the present owners soon after the Mensing sale.

W. Stechow, Salomon van Ruysdael, Berlin 1975, p. 78, nos. 60 & 61.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an external expert and not an employee of Sotheby's. These two fine estuary views are on perfectly flat, bevelled oak panels, showing no trace of movement past or present. They have clearly been carefully preserved, with no accidental damage and few interventions in the past; the present varnish and minimal, discreet restoration probably dates back a few decades. As with other works of this period and circle the liquid flow of the brushwork was drawn so lightly across the ground that the grain of the wood gradually becomes more visible as the oil paint grows naturally more transparent over time. In places the ground can be seen slightly more unevenly than elsewhere. Estuary View of Haarlem. The central cloud is slightly unevenly thin, and in the beautiful distant horizon a little central patch of wear can be seen. There is a small retouching just above this and also in the sea below, two other small retouchings to either side of the sail and one at the junction of the clouds at upper centre left. A few minute strengthening touches are visible under ultra violet light in the central cloud, with occasional tiny touches in the upper right corner and down the mid right edge. Pendant Estuary Scene. Slightly thinner places can be seen in a few areas, but overall both of these great cloudscapes are beautifully preserved. A few rare little retouchings are visible under ultra violet light : tiny strengthening touches in the mid and upper right sky, one or two small touches down the grain near the horizon, a small cluster at the centre of the base edge and along the top edge in the middle. The far sails on the left have been reinforced slightly. Any such touches are of minimal significance overall however in the unusually pure condition of this pair of paintings. 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."

In the mid-to-late 1650s and early 1660s Ruysdael painted a number of estuary scenes composed along a similar upright format and depicting small vessels in a light breeze in either late afternoon or early evening. The sky is always dominant and partly cloudy, the foreground normally cloaked in shadow; here the waters are unusually choppy and the sun is struggling to reach either land or sea. In all these works Ruysdael works wet in wet, here most notable in the background where some of the details on the horizon are scratched into the thickly applied horizontal strokes that make up the lower reaches of the sky. While pairs are unusual in Ruysdael's oeuvre, of those that are known most are upright river or estuary landscapes such as these and a very similar pair, dated 1657, sold in these Rooms 8 July 2009, lot 3 (for £380,000).


Provenance
Anton W.M. Mensing joined the Dutch auctioneer Frederik Muller & Co in 1885 as an energetic bookbinder and assistant to the then director Frederik Adama roan Scheltema. He became partner of the firm in 1892 and, following the death of Scheltema, expanded the firm with art auctions. This resulted in the first international market for works of art, applied art, and historic scientific instruments in the Netherlands which continued into the 1930s. Mensing amassed an extraordinary collection of old master paintings himself, all of which were sold at Muller in 1938 two years after his death. The most active bidder at the sale was John Paul Getty and a large number of the 112 lots ended up in the eponymous museum in Los Angeles and, in the case of the most expensive lot in the sale, Rembrandt's Portrait of Martin Looten, in the L.A. County Museum of Art, donated there by Getty in 1953. Mensing had in fact begun by collecting bookbindings and the five hundred unique examples that he amassed were acquired in 1909 by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague, a collection of unique bookbindings made up almost in its entirety of the Mensing donation along with those of Kings Willem I, II, and III.