BERCHEM, Nicolaes (Claesz.)

The history of the Dutch seventeenth-century Mediterranean harbour view dates back to Flemish painters like Paul Bril and Jan Brueghel the Elder, who inspired the Italian artists Agostino Tassi and Filippo Napoletano. These Italians, in turn, exerted enormous influence on Claude Lorrain, who combined elaborate fantasy palaces and classical ruins with ordinary genre scenes and turned them into a new type of seaport painting. The Mediterranean harbour view became a popular subject with Dutch Italianate painters active in Rome, Jan Baptist Weenix, Jan Asselyn and Adam Pynacker.

Berchem never visited Italy, he drew inspiration for his Italianate harbour views from the paintings of Jan Baptist Weenix and Jan Asselyn, which are characterized by a fictitious combination of well-known classical buildings in a landscape with genre figures.

During the course of his long and extremely prolific career Berchem, the son of Pieter Claesz, the outstanding still-life painter, painted biblical, allegorical, and mythological themes, views of harbours, winter scenes, nocturnals, battles, and some genre scenes, as well as the Italianate landscapes for which he is so justly famous, but he apparently never tried his hand at still-life painting.

This drawing is a study for the painting entitled Rest, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

This genre-like portrait is rather unusual in Berchem’s oeuvre: there are only four, including the present one.

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This picture shows an evening landscape with drovers and their animals by a river. It is dated to the early 1660s, when Berchem’s Italianate landscapes become more monumental in their effect, with strongly emphasized architectural settings, and often, as here, an evening setting with dark shadows and a rich light from the setting sun catching parts of the composition.

In this peaceful scene, the evening sun illuminates with its dying rays two shepherds and their animals.

The landscape Herdsmen and Herds at a Waterfall was painted in the 1660s, during a phase of the artist’s production which occurred long after any Italian journey. The work shows a rocky valley with a mountain river running through it whose source appears to be the waterfall in the distance. The steep wooded riverbank to the left faces a craggy cliff face on the other side. A couple of goatherds rest on the rocky plateau below, while a larger herd of cattle is being driven off to the right. A narrow path on the far right leads down to the water. A number of other sheep and cattle are being driven along this bank, to cross the river at a shallow spot. The eye moves from the lower edge of the picture up the valley and into the distance, towards sunny mountain uplands. The very painterly emphasis on individual motifs in the foreground, such as the naked branch lying partly in the water, the vegetation on the bank, and the trunks of the large trees, partly denuded of their bark, is characteristic of Berchem’s style from around 1660 onwards. The bright light in the foreground and the bold shadows it casts make the details of the vegetation and rocky landscape stand out clearly. By contrast, the middleground and background are bathed in a soft, diffuse light and seem to swim before our eyes. The use of harsh light and the sharpness of the contours of the individual motifs reveal the influence of Adam Pynacker on Berchem’s later work. This painting, in an unusually large format for Berchem, can be regarded as a typical example of this influence.

Berchem’s pictures have a more pronounced pastoral character than Jan Both’s or Asselyn’s. Shepherds and buxom shepherdesses tending their flocks and herdsmen guarding their cattle receive prominent places in his works. His lively figures are seen in sparkling Italian light among ancient ruins, fording rivers, or set against magnificent panoramic views of vast Italian valleys and mountain ranges. The large scale of his figures often suggests his paintings could be classified as pastoral genre scenes as well as landscapes - the same is true of many of Jan Baptist Weenix’s Italianate paintings. Wisps of white cloud float in Berchem’s dazzling blue skies, and bits of vividly coloured clothing worn by herders, milkmaids, and travellers brighten the cool greens of his landscapes. His peasants enjoy a life of innocence and happiness among their animals. It is an idyllic dream world which appealed to a public that found Arcadia a refuge from worldly cares and responsibility.

The mood of his pictures justifies the claim that Berchem, who died in I683, the year Watteau was born, is one of the precursors of the Rococo. Berchem’s success stimulated a number of close followers. Karel Dujardin was his pupil. The genre painters Pieter de Hooch and Jacob Ochtervelt, artists who soon went their own way, also studied with him.

This mature work of Berchem, influenced by Italian painting, was executed after his second journey to Italy.

Nicolaes Berchem probably was in Italy between 1653 and 1655. It is however clear that this Italian landscape was influenced by the Italianate painter Jan Asselyn.

Along with Jan Both, Adam Pynacker, Jan Asselyn and Karel Dujardin, Nicolaes Berchem introduced landscapes that instead of depicting the Dutch countryside, featured mountainous landscapes of Italian inspiration, with a staffage of rustic farmers and shepherds, and classical ruins from the Italian Campagna. The subdued palette that was favoured by the older Dutch landscape painters such as Jan van Goyen and Salomon van Ruysdael now gave way to strong colour contrasts and bright warm lighting. The landscapes of Berchem and other painters of the Italianate landscape are marked by a new monumentality and a sense of pastoral poetry that was to inspire generations of painters well into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The present landscape was painted a few years after Berchem returned from a trip to Italy. In the foreground a group of Savoyards on their mules are represented between slender birch trees. In the background hills one can see the ruins of a cylindrical structure from Roman times, known as the Tomb of the Plautii. In reality this tomb is situated not in the hills, but along the banks of the river Anio, near Tivoli. It was in this mausoleum that Aulus Plautius, the commander of the Roman invasion of Britain in AD 43 was entombed. The tomb lies next to the equally well-known Roman bridge, the Ponte Lucano, of which here only the square entrance gate can be discerned, just behind the trees. Berchem may have visited Tivoli with its famous tomb when travelling through the Roman Campagna, and indeed he may have sketched it in order to reproduce it in one of his landscapes when back in Holland.

The present painting depicts an Italianate river landscape with herdsmen by the ruins of an amphitheatre, and peasants crossing a bridge. The artist’s careful depiction of the elegant figures and the animals in the foreground creates a subtle balance with the imposing landscape.

Nicolaes Berchem was a landscapist. However, he produced a number of works between 1648 and 1650 in which figures dominate the composition. Later he produced several more pictures with figures so large that the landscape is no more than decor. The Callisto is one of the most impressive of these works.

The beautiful nymph Callisto, exhausted from the hunt, has lain down to rest in a glade. Her robust figure fills the entire foreground. Her right hand rests on a deer and a hare she has brought back from the hunt. She is elegant and coquettish, and she attracts the attention of the lecherous Jupiter, supreme ruler of the gods, who passes by on a cloud in the background.

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This bucolic scene shows milkmaids and shepherds with their flock at the mouth of a grotto, a drover watering his cattle beyond. From the 1650s onwards, Berchem began painting in a purely Italianate style, defined by not only the presence of fragmented architecture and sculpture in his compositions, but by a soft Mediterranean light. The present painting demonstrates the influence of Cornelis van Poelenburgh, under whom Berchem studied. Berchem adopted his murky and largely monotone palette, dominated by browns and ochre, from his contemporary Jan van Goyen.

In the course of their missionary journeys the apostles Paul and Barnabas arrived at Lystra in Asia Minor. The pagan inhabitants, witnessing the miraculous cure of a cripple by Paul and Barnabas, believed that they were Mercury and Jupiter come to earth in human form. When the priest of the temple of Jupiter brought oxen and garlands to make a sacrifice the apostles rent their clothes in dismay. By their exhortations they prevented the sacrifice taking place.

In Berchem’s painting the sacrificial ritual occupies the entire foreground of the painting. The fire burns on the altar emitting clouds of smoke. The priest and his stewards stand beside it, guarding a cow and a goat with garlands around their necks. The priest makes a proffering gesture to the two apostles, one of whom remonstrates with him, while the other rents his garments. They stand side by side on a high pedestal. Towering above the apostles on a far higher pedestal, in the form of a statue, sits astride his eagle, brandishing bolts of lightning.

Nicolaes Berchem, the son of a distinguished still-life painter, Pieter Claesz., was born in Haarlem. The town was a leading centre of landscape painting in the early seventeenth century and among Berchem’s teachers was the landscapist Jan van Goyen. Like many Dutch artists, Berchem travelled to Italy immediately after completing his apprenticeship. He was in Rome late in 1642 and remained there for three years. While in Italy, Berchem made many drawings of the landscape of the Roman Campagna, its cattle and peasants.

On his return to Haarlem Berchem quarried this rich material throughout a long and extremely productive career, painting (and etching) hundreds of Italianate pastoral scenes. As is evident from this painting, he interpreted the Italian landscape and the life of its peasants in an idyllic manner, emphasizing its timeless continuity by the inclusion of antique monuments. These buildings cannot be identified, as they are only loosely modelled on actual ruins. Berchem uses a bright, highly-coloured palette and applies the paint in short, stabbing brush strokes.

In seventeenth-century Holland there was a constant demand for exotic landscapes of this type and Berchem was a highly successful artist. He moved to Amsterdam, which had a larger art market than Haarlem, in about 1677. His work was widely imitated and copied during his lifetime and his paintings enthusiastically sought after in France in the eighteenth century and in England in the nineteenth. This painting, having been in the distinguished Amsterdam collection of Gerrit Braamcamp in the mid-eighteenth century, was bought in Paris by the Duc de Chabot in 1780 and in London in 1840 by Sir Robert Peel.

This is one of the earliest known works by the artist. The figure of the standing man is based on a drawing by Berchem of about 1643-44. The pose has been slightly modified, especially in the right leg.

Nicolaes Berchem, son of the still-life painter Pieter Claesz, belongs to the second generation of Netherlandish Italianists. As yet, no reliable sources are known to exist about a possible visit he may have made to Italy. The only indication of this that we have is a sudden change in style in 1653, which might have been triggered by new impressions from the south. Since Berchem can be shown to have been back in Haarlem by 1656, his Italian journey would most likely have taken place in the years between 1653 and 1655.

This painting was executed after Berchem’s supposed Italian journey.

Many of the Dutch Italianate painters concentrated less on actual Italian themes than on the bright Mediterranean light. There was evidently a demand in the 17th century for paintings of shepherds and cattle in an imaginary and hilly foreign land in which enthusiasts undoubtedly recognized Arcadia. Jan Both, Nicolaes Berchem, Karel Dujardin, Jan Asselyn and Adam Pynacker were masters of the genre.

The painting is a depiction of two shepherdess who are relaxing amidst their resting livestock.

This dramatic painting, dating from late in Berchem’s career, is a rare historical subject by the artist. He gained great popularity during his lifetime as a painter of pastoral scenes, hunting parties and seaports, many of which show the influence of his sojourn in Italy. However, in a departure from his usual subject matter, the artist here depicts the epic Battle of the Hydaspes which took place in 326 B.C. between the armies of Alexander the Great and Porus, a powerful Indian king.

In the depiction of this historic event, Berchem brilliantly depicts the frenzied action at the peak of battle, demonstrating his skill at portraying a highly complex composition with dynamic equestrian groupings.

In the depiction of this historic event, Berchem brilliantly depicts the frenzied action at the peak of battle, demonstrating his skill at portraying a highly complex composition with dynamic equestrian groupings.