_Jan van Goyen_ (Dutch: 1596-1656).
Jan van Goyen, one of the first masters in the native Dutch
art of landscape as opposed to the exotic work of the
Italianisers, was born at Leyden in 1596. He studied with the
elder Swanenburch, the father of Rembrandt's first master,
and subsequently went to Haarlem to work under Esaias van de
Velde. His position in the world of art was considerable. In
1640 he was President of the Guild of St. Luke at the Hague;
his portrait was painted by Vandyck and Frans Hals; and Jan
Steen was his son-in-law. His earlier extant pictures date
from 1621, his latest go down to the year of his death. His
production during this period of thirty-five years was immense;
"a single London expert claims to have had at least three or
four hundred genuine pictures by the master passing through
his hands during the last thirty years." Like so many of the
Dutch masters whose works are now prized, he received in his
lifetime very small sums for his pictures--often not more than
fifteen or twenty florins apiece. He tried to help his income
by speculating in houses, and even, after the fashion of the
time, in tulips. But he died insolvent. His work, however, and
influence remained. His extant pictures are very numerous; and
among the successors whose skill was largely formed by him are
Cuyp, Jan van de Cappelle, and Salomon Ruysdael. "The subjects
which he preferred were of two kinds: flat landscapes with a
little broken ground in the front, a cottage, the figures of a
few peasants, and a clump of trees; or, on the other hand,--and
these are his best and most characteristic productions--broad
views of the river scenery of Holland, a wide expanse of water
under a wide sky." He was one of the first to discover a poetry
in the unbroken horizons of his native land. "Where he is at
his best is in the painting of the infinitely varied sky that
overhangs a great Dutch river or estuary, the clouds taking at
every movement new shapes or new effects of light and shade,
and the water below reflecting them" (see an article on "The
Landscape Painters of Holland" in _The Quarterly Review_,
October 1891). In order to give his favourite effects, he
generally placed the skyline very low in the picture, sometimes
not more than a quarter of the canvas being given to the
landscape. Van Goyen aimed rather at tone than at colour.
"His silvery river-views, with all their delicate shades of
grey, are almost studies in monochrome." In his landscapes
the foliage and the herbage partake more or less of brown or
gray. "No heavy, dark, no bright colour disturbs," says Sir F.
Burton, "the dreamy monotone."
This work was formerly ascribed to J. Ruysdael.