Barend Cornelis Koekkoek
Barend Cornelis Koekkoek
Wooded landscape with farmers
Oil on canvas (mounted). 30,5 x 35,5 cm.
Signed lower left: B. C. Koekkoek.
Provenance
German private collection.
This small-format cabinet piece, unknown to date, depicts the entrance to a forest, with a forest stream to the left, a water mill in the background, and in the centre of the picture, in a sunny clearing, two pack donkeys, a goat, and some people conversing. In the background some people are following their way through the forest.
The well-preserved painting was created in 1836 in Kleve - where Koekkoek had moved with his young family from Hilversum in 1834 because of the wooded landscape - at a crossroads in Koekkoek's oeuvre. In the light palette, the very naturalistic early phase of the entire oeuvre comes through, but in the composition, with the already powerful but still open forest scenery, the painting already points ahead to the often very heavy forest landscapes created after 1840.
As to the provenance of the painting, there are two clues on the back of the frame thanks to two stickers. The oldest label is on the stretcher and states that the painting was exhibited under No. 293 at an exhibition in Königsberg i. Pr., probably at the very important Kunstverein founded there in 1832. The second label is from the Berlin frame maker George Gropius, who framed the painting in April 1841, indicating that the painting was probably in private hands in Berlin at that time. George Gropius (1802-1842) was an art dealer and publisher. These two labels make it possible to identify the painting with Koekkoek's painting with the appropriate title "Eine baumreiche Landschaft mit einem Waldbache", which was exhibited in 1837 under number 235 at the Kunstverein Danzig, a cooperating partner of the Königsberger Kunstverein, as " Eigenthum des hrn. Stadtr. Reimer zu Berlin" (cf. R. Meyer-Breme: Die Ausstellungskataloge des Königsberger Kunstvereins im 19. Jahrhundert, Cologne/Weimar/Berlin 2005, p. 66: 1837). Georg Andreas Reimer (1776-1842) was the most important Berlin collector of paintings of his time, whose collection of 1942 paintings was auctioned in 1842 and 1845.
The painting is included in the new catalogue raisonné of B. C. Koekkoek's paintings under no. 36/30. We thank Dr. Guido de Werd for this catalogue contribution.
