Jan Looten (Amsterdam, 1618 - 1681)

Jan Looten  (Amsterdam, 1618 - England 1681) "Wooded Landscape with Travelers and Village in the Distance" Oil on canvas Coeval gilded frame  Canvas cm. 100 x 120 Frame cm. 117 x 134 Perfect condition Provenance: Sotheby's, Old Master Paintings, Amsterdam 7.11.2000 (lot 28) The painting is accompanied by a written appraisal by Prof. Raffaella Colace   This important large-format painting on canvas is the undoubted work of Jan Looten, a famous Dutch painter contemporary to Jacob Van Ruisdael and Meindert Hobbema, from whom he was strongly influenced. From 1660 onwards, his activity took place in Amsterdam (the artist later moved to England where he had great success), a city that, along with Haarlem, was one of the most important centers for landscape painting, characterized by the rendering of atmospheric and tonal effects that are very well expressed in the representation of seascapes and wooded landscapes. Looten represents them with views of undergrowth illuminated by a full and strong sunlight that breaks through the shadows, achieving evocative contrast effects. Particularly characteristic of the artist's paintings are the slender trees along paths that run towards the heart of the forest, casting long shadows on the ground and cutting their boughs moved by the wind against a blue sky crossed by white and foamy clouds. Equally recurrent are the dry vegetation, broken trunks and large roots that almost always appear in the foreground, giving a sense of wild wilderness: a solitary and unexplored nature, that of Looten, which welcomes few characters, some hunters or travelers, silent human presences within a majestic nature. The splendid painting examined here very well represents all these stylistic elements, also offering us a sample of the artist's refined technical expertise in the description of details; the most diverse forms of the trees of the vegetation, the foliage dotted with touches of light, the small village in the distance rendered with the tip of the brush as the characters animating the spectacular set design. All this through a smooth and compact painting and a palette played on green, grey, yellow and blue tones.   A typically Nordic analytical eye, which perfectly reconciles with the airy sense of the view that, from a raised point of view, captures distances in an open valley and enters the tangle of lights of the vegetation of the forest, where the clear vision of the foregrounds gives way to dissolving effects.   Beyond the individual figurative elements, it is the sense of depth and the light score that strike the viewer in this landscape, real and surreal at the same time.   In the catalog of Looten's public works, rightly considered one of the most interesting landscape painters present in Amsterdam in the mid-seventeenth century, significant terms of comparison can be found between the painting in question and the canvases executed in the 1950s and 1960s.  For example, the wooded landscape of the Boymans Van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam dated 1658 and that of the Gemaldegalerie in Kassel, in which we find, beyond the individual figurative elements, the same compositional structure with the path towards the forest in the foreground and the lateral opening onto a valley.   The canvas is in excellent condition, complete with a splendid coeval gilded frame.   A certificate of authenticity is issued in accordance with the law with a detailed descriptive sheet written by a professional antique dealer registered with FIMA.   All photographic details of the work in high definition on the private website link;  https://www.antichitaischia.it/it/prodotto/paesaggio-boschivo-con-viandanti-e-villaggio