Allaert van Everdingen

Probably Consul A. Heymel, Dresden;
Probably His sale, Berlin, Lepke, 5-6 November 1889, lot 172;
Private collection, England;
By whom sold (The Property of a Gentleman), London, Christie's, 31 October 1969, lot 120, (as Dutch School, 17^th Century);
Where acquired for 5500 gns by B. Cohen;
With Trafalgar Galleries, London, before 1972;
From whom acquired by Mr. and Mrs. Noah L. Butkin, Cleveland, 1972;
By whom given to the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1974 [acc. no. 1974.105].

Cleveland, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Year in Review for 1974, March 1975, no. 47;
New Brunswick, New Jersey, The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, Haarlem: The Seventeenth Century, 20 February - 17 April 1983, no. 38.

The Burlington Magazine, December 1973, p. xlv, advertisement for Trafalgar Galleries (reproduced in color, as The Harbour at Muiden);
Cleveland Museum of Art, Handbook, 1978, p. 157, reproduced;
Cleveland Museum of Art, Catalogue of Paintings:  Part Three.  European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries, Cleveland 1982, pp. 232-233, no. 100, reproduced fig. 100;
J. Glaubinger, "Two Works by Allart van Everdingen," in The Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art, October 1982, pp. 265-271, reproduced figs. 12 - 13;
F. Fox Hofrichter, Haarlem:  The Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick 1983, p. 78, no. 38, reproduced;
P. C. Sutton, A Guide to Dutch Art in America, Grand Rapids 1986, p. 336;
A. Chong, European & American Painting in The Cleveland Museum of Art:  A Summary Catalogue, Cleveland 1993, p. 73, reproduced;
A. M. Gealt, Painting of the Golden Age.  A Biographical Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century European Painters, Westport, CT and London 1993, p. 201;
A. I. Davies, Allart van Everdingen 1621-1675, First Painter of Scandinavian Landscape, Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Ghent 2001, no. 20, p. 213, reproduced plate 20.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has been restored fairly recently. The canvas has been lined using wax as an adhesive. The paint layer is clean, varnished and retouched. The retouches, as one would expect, are visible under ultraviolet light in the sky addressing some slight thinness mainly in blue at the top, there is a structural repair in the center of the sky and another in the white cloud on the far left. Other retouches have been applied in the sails and the hull of the boat on the right, and there are a few in the shadowed portion of the harbor in the foreground. The painting should be hung as is.
"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."

This peaceful and idyllic view of a Dutch harbor can be dated to the early 1660s.  Although Everdingen did not often date works painted during this period of his career, the present work was clearly executed during a transitional moment when the artist moved away from his earlier depictions of stormy, tumultuous seascapes towards more fully topographical works such as View of Alkmaar with Boats on the Zeglis (Davies, op. cit. no. 22), which has been dated to circa 1670.¹

Although efforts have been made to identify the town represented here -- with both Muiden and Medemblik being suggested and rejected as the potential location -- it is possible that the cityscape is simply an amalgamation of different elements and not a faithful representation of an actual city.  Most of the structures that line the shore in this work could be found anywhere in seventeenth century Holland -- the windmill that features prominently to the right, the drawbridge, houses and city gate were standard features of any town's skyline.  The tower that appears framed by the triangular configuration of the masts of the boat in the foreground, however, is more distinctive.  It has been identified as the tower of the Groothoofdspoort, a building in Dordrecht, and it appears in a number of Everdingen's works.²  This is not a topographical view of Dordrecht, however, and so it seems much more likely that the artist combined different architectural motifs that he had observed during his travels in order to create a harmonious and cohesive composition.  

Everdingen has unified the image through his use of a silvery, blue-gray palette, heightened by touches of pink and salmon in the water, sails and along the horizon, which hint at the coming sunset.  The inclusion of the laborers working on the large wijdschip -- identifiable by its three masts -- in the left foreground, is characteristic of Everdingen, who unlike many of his contemporaries who painted Dutch marines and landscapes, took an avid interest in the depiction of human industriousness.  Nevertheless, scenes such as this one are relatively rare in Everdingen's oeuvre.  The artist is better known for his rugged Scandinavian landscapes and waterfalls, which make up the majority of his body of work and which had a profound impact on the work of Jacob van Ruisdael. 

1.  Glaubinger, op. cit. p. 271.
2.  Ibid., p. 269.