Salomon Leonardus Verveer

Collection Sir Hamilton Symour, bought at the Exposition Nationale des Beaux Arts in Brussels, 1845
Collection R.T. Gwynn
Frost & Reed, London
Private collection, Scandinavia
Richard Green, London
Private collection, Canada

Brussels, Exposition Nationale des Beaux-Arts, 1845, cat.no. 806 (as Vue de Dordrecht; effet de grand matin)

The canvas has been relined. Very minor retouches along upper left edge due to frame abrasion. A few very minor retouches in the sky. One retouch in the wall of the house to the left, some tiny filled-in craquelure in the house, the seated man and the horse drawn carriage to the left. Tiny filled-in craquelure in the water below the ferry. One minor retouch along the lower right edge. Otherwise this work is in very good condition. Set in a nice gilded frame.
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The year 1845 was a very important one in Verveer's career. After having travelled extensively in Germany and France, he had returned to the Netherlands and, at the age of 32, had become a member of the Royal Academy in Amsterdam. In the same year he exhibited the present lot in Brussels, which consequently sold to Sir Hamilton Symour, the thenwhile British Ambassador in Belgium.

One can see why the ambassador was charmed by this painting. Under a sunlit morning sky, a group of villagers is crowding down onto a jetty to load their goods onto the ferry which awaits them in the river Maas. Across the river the tower of the Grote Kerk (Great Church) of Dordrecht can be clearly seen.

Augustus Hare (1834-1903), the great Victorian travel writer, wrote extensively about the town of Dordrecht which he passed through while travelling in Holland.  An excerpt from his writings could almost apply to the present composition:

"Our morning at Dortrecht (sic) was very delightful, and it is a thoroughly charming place. Passing under a dark archway, we found ourselves at once on the edge of an immense expanse of the shimmering river, with long rich polders (water meadows) beyond, between which the wide flood breaks into three different branches. Red and white sails flit up and down them, and with what a confusion of merchandise are the boats laden and how bright is the colouring, between the weedy posts to which they are moored. On the left a broad esplanade of brick, lined with ancient houses and a canal with a bridge. All this we observe standing in the shadow of a huge church, the Groote Kerk, with a nave of the fourteenth century and a gigantic brick tower which encloses several tiers of windows between long Gothic arches." (Sketches in Holland and Scandinavia, 1885).

This majestic riverscene is truly a highlight in Verveer's oeuvre and may well have signalled his international break-through. The fact that the current lot was lithographically reproduced and in 1845 published in one of the leading Dutch art magazines only underlines this.