Summary

Oil painting on canvas, Herdsfolk retiring from a Watering-place at Eventide by Nicolaes Berchem the elder (Haarlem 1620 – Amsterdam 1683), signature concealed by frame, signed bottom left: Berchem, circa 1655/65. In the foreground a peasant with his back to the spectator stands on a path between towe cows, his dog besdie him. Further up the path a man is seated sideways on a horse accompanied by a pedestrian; there is a pool at the left, and on the right beside the path a mass of high rocks.

Full description

If any single artist can be taken as typifying the Italianate Dutch school of landscape painting it is Berchem. Thanks to his productivity, versatility, and longevity; thanks to the number and calibre of his pupils; thanks to his own etchings of figures and animals, and to the 18th-century engravings after his pictures; and thanks to the figures that he painted in the landscapes of other artists; he was, though a less original artist than -say - Jan Asselijn or Adam Pijnacker, the most influential of all the artists of this tendency. It is therefore a little surprising to discover that this consummate landscape and small-figure painter was the son of an equally distinguished artist in a quite different speciality, the still-life painter, Pieter Claesz. (1596/97-1661); and that Berchem himself was confidently producing real-seeming scenes of Italy for several years before he actually went there, which was probably some time between 1653 and 1656. Nothing could convey so well the way in which an art apparently based upon close observation of the quotidian, was actually a product of the mind and of lessons absorbed from fellow-artists. It is partly because of Berchem's prolific output - Hofstede de Groot lists 850 paintings by him, which is a considerable number, even allowing for misattributions - that has perhaps discouraged any attempt to draw up a catalogue raisonné of his work, and partly because his use and re-use of sometimes borrowed motifs, which occur in pictures painted some years apart, that it is difficult to date Berchem's many undated pictures precisely. Nonetheless, it seems possible to say that the present painting should be dated to some time between 1655 and 1665; to the period, that is, a little after Berchem's return from his putative visit to Italy, when he had begun to filter the Italianate Dutch mode of landscape painting, through his own experience and strong sensibility, into formulae of his own. A close parallel in handling, despite the difference of support, is supplied by the signed and dated panel with Cattle and Sheep in a Landscape of 1655 at Ascott itself . More comparable, both in subject-matter and in its powerful back-lighting, albeit in a much broader landscape setting, is the painting on canvas customarily called The three droves of 1656 in the Rijksmuseum , and the Shepherdess carrying a kid across a ford of 1658 in the Royal Collections . There are also powerful affinities with the Ford between ruins, also of 1658, formerly on loan from the Rijksmuseum to the Institut Neérlandais in Paris . In all these pictures, however, there is perhaps more particularity and less generalisation than in the present one. That, and the fact that no date accompanies the signature on the present painting - Berchem seems virtually to have abandoned dating his landscapes after the 1650s (there is a rare exception, dated 1673, in the Royal Collections) - would seem to indicate that it should rather be dated in the early to mid-1660s. Such a dating would also agree with the fact that the main figure in the painting, the drover seen from behind, appears to be an adaptation of a more gentlemanly figure studied in a beautiful drawing formerly in the collections of the Earls of Warwick and I.Q. van Regteren Althena . This was originally made for, or used in, a painting of Hunters relaxing in an Italian courtyard (Private collection), commonly dated to around 1660, in which the figure's pose is better justified by his being shown leaning on a ledge, with drinking-pot and glasses at his elbow. A similar adaptation of this figure of a gentleman-sportsman to that of a rustic is found in a drawing, known only from a copy in the Hamburg Kunsthalle, that was in turn used in the Italian Landscape at sunset of around 1655-65, on loan from the Netherlands State Office of Fine Arts to the Boymans-van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam . Like the Asselijn, the Hobbema, the Ostade, and the de Jonghe - like, indeed, almost all the finest Dutch pictures at Ascott save the Cuyp - this painting belonged to the individual only recently given his due as the greatest collector amongst the 'English' Rothschilds, Baron Lionel de Rothschild (1808-1879), the eldest son of the founder of the British branch of the great banking family, Nathan Mayer (1777-1836) . Though Baron Leopold was from the English branch of the family, his title and his particle - a translation of the German 'von' - came from the Austrian barony conferred upon his father in 1822, which Lionel was permitted to accept and transmit to his heirs male by royal licence of 1838. His collections were chiefly kept at 148 Piccadilly, with at least one picture, a Murillo of the Good Shepherd, at Gunnersbury Park (which had been acquired by N.M. Rothschild in the year before he died). Gustav Waagen was taken to the former by Daniel Oppenheim (1800-1882), who was in some sense the house artist of the Frankfurt branch of the family, and who painted the pair of pictures celebrating the beginnings of its historic rise now at Ascott. At that period, however, the collection was relatively modest in extent - Waagen called it: "a small but very choice collection of paintings, chiefly of the Flemish and Dutch schools" - and it was only with the acquisition of two collections en bloc - that of Charles Heusch, by Baron Lionel on his own, in 1862, and that of the Jonkvrouw van Loon, acquired in partnership with his French cousin, baron Edmond de Rothschild just before his death - that Baron Lionel's collection of paintings attained real extent and quality, particularly in so far as the Dutch School was concerned. The present picture was amongst those bought with the collection originally formed by Charles Heusch (c.1775 - 1848) whose collection had itself been visited and commented upon by Gustav Waagen both in 1835 and 1851. On the latter occasion he commented: "As early as 1835 the late Mr Heusch was in possession of a very pleasing collection of pictures of the Dutch School, which, since then, he had increased by a number of chefs d'oeuvre, so that, if not the most numerous, it is, at all events, one of the choicest collections of this school in England." . Seven paintings from the Heusch collection survive at Ascott . Heusch's son had himself bought the picture after the Fordham sale at Christie's in 1863, and it had previously gone through a number of other collections in the first half of the 19th century. When Waagen wrote, it was still in the collection at Wolterton Park (which Waagen called 'Wolverton') of Horatio, 3rd Earl of Orford of the 2nd creation (1783-1858), who had perhaps attempted to compensate in some little way for the deeply regrettable sale to Catherine the Great of the Walpole Collection from Houghton by the 3rd Earl of Orford of the 1st creation in 1779,by buying other pictures, albeit of a quite different character: "This nobleman .... has considerably enriched the collection with fine specimens of rare masters of the Italian school of the 15th and 16th centuries, and with an admirable picture of the old German school" [an anonymous triptych, that Waagen believed to be by Matthaeus Grünewald]. There were, however, also some fine Flemish and Dutch 17th-century pictures, including Rubens's fine "Rainbow" Landscape from the Balbi Collection (now Wallace Collection, London) and a superb Extensive Landscape with windmill of 1655 by Philips Koninck (Firle Place), along with the present picture by Berchem, which Waagen describes as: "A rocky landscape, with a procession of shepherds and animals. In his late cool and heavy manner. Inscribed" . The Berchem had, in fact, been a purchase of Lord Orford's father, Horatio, 2nd Earl of Orford (1752-1822) at a local sale in 1819. He bought it at the auction in Norwich of the collection of another, and even more interesting Norfolk collector, the merchant and brewer, John Patteson (1755-1833), MP . His collection consisted of two main components: the first consisted primarily of Dutch and Flemish pictures, which he had begun to collect himself when travelling on the Continent, on what was half a business trip and half a grand tour, in 1778-79, and to which he added by purchases through agents thereafter. The other component was the collection of Dr. Cox Macro (1683-1767), whose prime Netherlandish element was a whole group of canvases by the immigrant to England, Peter Tillemans (1684-1734). These Patteson came into through his wife, Elizabeth Staniforth (1760-1838), Cox Macro's niece and heir. The failure in 1819 of a London bank with which he was associated, coming on top of a number of unsuccessful business ventures by his own firm, Patteson & Iselin, and the ruinous expenses of Parliamentary campaigns, brought John Patteson to the verge of bankruptcy. One of the first things to be sacrificed was his picture collection, which was sold by Mr Christie at Patteson's Norwich house, in Surrey Street, on 28-29 May 1819 lot 82. Intriguingly, the title-page says of the pictures that: "the greater number were purchased by the Proprietor at the commencement of the French Revolution, at Frankfurt and elsewhere on the Continent." Why Frankfurt should have been singled out in this way, we do not know. Patteson certainly had business interests there, and had spent a little less than a month there on his tour in 1778. It was not a city then particularly noted for its collections, but such collectors as there were - such as Goethe's father - were of the urban patriciate or well-to-do middle class of officials and merchants, whose taste lay precisely chiefly in the direction of small Dutch cabinet pictures But after the outbreak of the French Revolution, Frankfurt was at first a safe haven on the other side of the Rhine, and near Coblenz, in which French émigrés first attempted to settle and intrigue: it could well be that some of them had carried small Dutch pictures with them, as easily negotiable objects, and that Patteson was somehow on hand to snap them up at bargain prices. However he acquired them, there is a certain aptness in the fact that the present painting, now part of a permanent memorial to the taste of the Rothschilds as collectors, should in all probability first have come to England from their city of origin. Bibliogpahic References: John Chambers, 1829, i, 217; John Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the most eminent Dutch, Flemish an dFrench Painters: Supplement, 1842, p.814, no.156; G.F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, 1854, III, p.434; C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of teh Works of the most eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century, 1928, IX, no.717; The Ascott Collection, The National Trust, 1963, No.9, p.9 (entry by F.St. John Gore) (revised 1974; reprinted 1980); Andrew Moore, Dutch and Flemish Painting in Norfolk, 1988, p.65. Exh: British Institution, 1829, no.113; 1842, no.156; Origin of Landscape Painting in England, Kenwood, 1967, no.2. Notes: . (i) F. St. John Gore, The Ascott Collection, The National Trust, No.3; also from the collection of Baron Lionel de Rothschild. (ii) cf. Bob Haak, The Golden Age:Dutch Painters of the 17th Century, New York, 1984, p.383 & fig. 813. (iii) Christopher White, The Dutch Pictures in the Collection of her Majesty the Queen, Cambridge, 1982, no.17, p.20 & pl.16. (iv) cf. exh. cat. Nederlandse 17e Eeuwse Italianiserende Landschapschilders, Centraalmuseum, Utrecht, 1965, no.78, pp.155-56 & pl.81. (v) cf. exh. cat. Seventeenth Century Dutch drawings:A selection from the Maidu and George Collection, Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam, 1991, no.74. (vi) cf. exh. cat. Between fantasy and reality:17th Century Dutch Landscape Painting, Tokyo Station Gallery, &c., 1993, no.73, p.218 & col.pl.p.123. (vii) cf. Michael Hall, 'The English Rothschilds as Collectors', in exh. cat. in Georg Heuberger (ed), The Rothschilds, (2 vols.) Sigmaringen and Woodbridge, Frankfurt-am-Main 1994. (viii) G.F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, 1854, vol.II, p.129. (ix)Waagen, op.cit., vol.II, p.252. After his visit of 1835 he had actually just called it a "pretty collection" (Works of Art and Artists in England, 1838, vol.II, p.401; misspelling the owner's name as 'Huysch'). (x) Gore, cat.nos. 2, 9, 11, 13, 34, 52 & 53. (xi) Waagen, 1854, vol.III, p.434; cf. also exh. cat. Dutch and Flemish Painting in Norfolk, Norfolk Museums Service, 1988, HMSO, London, pp.64-65, for the 3rd Earl of Orford as a collector. (xii) For Patteson, see Andrew Moore in exh.cat.cit., 1988, pp.40-47 & 119-127. (xiii) cf. R. Hüsgen, Nachrichten von Frankfurter Künstlern und Kunstsachen, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1780; 2nd edn., as Artistisches Magazin, ibid., 1790. Also Goethe himself, in Dichtung und Wahrheit (1811-33)and Kunst und Alterthum am Rhein und Main (1816), which last includes a celebration of the remarkable Morgenstern 'che Miniaturcabinet (Goethe-Hans, Frankfurt) - the 'Hausaltar' composed of miniature copies of all the - primarily Dutch 17th century - pictures given to the Goethes' drawing-master, J.L.E. Morgenstern, and his son and grandson to restore.