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Barend Cornelis Koekkoek (1803-62)

Evening Landscape Signed and dated 1844

Oil on canvas | 88.5 x 113.1 cm (support, canvas/panel/str external) | RCIN 403682

Drawing Room, Osborne House

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  • Barend Cornelis Koekkoek (1803-1862) received early lessons from his father, the marine painter Johannes Hermanus Koekkoek, and also studied at the Tekenacademie in Middelburg. He became a pupil at the Academy in Amsterdam and first contributed to an exhibition in 1820. In 1829 he won the gold medal of the Amsterdam society Felix Meritis ('Happy through Merit') with his Landscape with a Rainstorm Threatening (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). In 1834 he moved permanently to Cleve in Germany, where he was recognised as the leading Romantic landscape painter of his generation. Koekkoek's work was frequently copied and forged during his lifetime. He took pains to sign all his pictures, and from 1847 he endeavoured to protect himself from forgers by issuing certificates of authenticity. As an important figure in Cleve's art milieu he founded a drawing academy and, in 1847, a society for the appreciation of art. In 1960 his house became the Städtisches Museum Haus Koekkoek, with a collection comprising many of the artist's paintings, drawings, and studies.

    This landscape is one of a pair (RCIN 403681-2) depicting morning and evening, with a constrast between a stormy working day and a serene, restful sunset. A rugged landscape with two ruined castles on rocky promentaries above a river valley which recedes towards mountains in the distance. A man and woman on a donkey are walking towards the spectator from the lee of a promentary, towards some cattle grazing under a tree in the foreground. Both paintings combine elements from Roman and Dutch landscape painting of the 17th-Century landscape; in this case Claude Lorrain and Jacob van Ruisdael. The latter's influence can be seen in the tangled, spikey oak tree. Claude has inspired the coloured light of the setting sun and the terraces of landscape leading the eye, step-wise into the far distance. The terrain appears to be inspired by the Rhine in Koekkook's native Cleves.
    Provenance

    One of a pair given to Prince Albert by the King of the Netherlands in 1845; recorded at Osborne House, 1876

  • Medium and techniques

    Oil on canvas

    Measurements

    88.5 x 113.1 cm (support, canvas/panel/str external)

    130.5 x 154.0 x 15.0 cm (frame, external)