ATTRIBUTED TO JACOB VAN STRIJ | A COASTAL LANDSCAPE WITH RIDERS AND FISHERMEN

Lady Grizel Winifred Louisa Hamilton (1880-1976), daughter of the 12th Earl of Dundonald;

Her sale, London, Christie’s, 28 March 1947, lot 53, for £462 to Hallsborough;

Frederick Mont, 1951;

With Newhouse Gallery, New York, 1953 (when advertised in The Burlington Magazine, July 1953);

Private collection, Netherlands;

Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby Mak van Waay, 1 May 1974, lot 35;

With Alan Jacobs Gallery, London (all the above as Aelbert Cuyp);

By whom sold to the present owner in 1977.

This exceptionally well-preserved panel has long been considered to be by the hand of the great Dutch Golden Age painter of Italianate landscapes Aelbert Cuyp (1620-91). It appears instead however to be a high-quality derivation from a painting by Cuyp that is listed as in a private collection. 

The proposed attribution to Jacob van Strij seems entirely plausible on stylistic grounds and is further supported through the existence of a drawing of this composition by the artist in the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main (inv. no. 4501), which may be preparatory for the present work although reveals some changes.¹ As pointed out by Drs. M. Sander Paarlberg, it is evident that the Van Strij brothers were familiar with the composition given that a painting by Abraham, representing an Interior with a Woman Reading a Bible, today in Cragside House, Rothbury, Northumberland shows the painting hanging above the fireplace.² 

A dendrochronological report prepared by Dr Ian Tyers, dated February 2004, reveals that the panel of the present work is derived from a tree grown in the eastern Baltic that was probably felled during the middle two decades of the 17th century. According to Drs Paarlberg other examples are known of the Van Strij brothers utilising 17th century panels, and indeed the artists were accused at an early date of making copies and falsifications after Cuyp.

We are grateful to Dr Fred G. Meijer and Drs M. Sander Paarlberg of Dordrechts Museum for independently endorsing a tentative attribution to Jacob van Strij, on the basis of first-hand inspection and from photographs, respectively.

¹ http://www.staedelmuseum.de/go/ds/4501z

² https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/cottage-interior-with-an-old-woman-reading-the-bible-170597