UDEN, Lucas van

The painting shows an extensive alpine landscape with travellers and dogs below a large waterfall. The monumentality of nature depicted is unlike the artist’s characteristic landscapes.

Lucas van Uden’s work plainly owes much to Rubens with whose workshop he had a close relationship. In particular he painted numerous rather small-sized copies and pastiches of his landscapes some of which were probably painted on Rubens’s behalf; the earliest of them was done while Rubens was still alive, as the 1635 copy of Rubens’s lost Coastal Landscape with Storm shows.

The artist’s efforts to provide a faithful view of nature, a characteristic of his small panels, are evident in this extensive landscape showing drovers and their animals beside a river, too.

This painting was executed in collaboration with David Teniers the Younger who painted the figures and the scene in the background.

This painting is a close repetition of Rubens’s Landscape with Stone Carriers. Van Uden clearly knew Rubens’s work very well, for he copied several other compositions, as well as borrowing specific motifs from the older artist.

The literary source for the contest between the Muses and the Pierides was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, V, 294-678. The nine daughters of Pierus, King of Emathia, overconfident of their musical talent, challenged the Muses to a singing contest. After all had performed, the adjudicating nymphs declared the Muses the winners. The Pierides unwisely clamoured against their decision, and as punishment for their presumption and rudeness were transformed into magpies.

The painting shows a panoramic river landscape with a rainbow, together with a sailing boat and shepherds resting with their herd in the foreground.

The picture shows a river landscape with figures conversing on a road. The composition appears to be inspired by a painting by Rubens (A shepherd with his flock in a woody landscape, National Gallery, London).

Lucas van Uden, together with Jan Wildens, is considered the foremost Flemish landscape painter among the contemporaries of Rubens. This landscape is one of the rare winter scenes painted by the artist.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 9 minutes):

Antonio Vivaldi: Concerto in F minor RV 297 op. 8 No. 4 (Winter)

The painting depicts a wooded dune landscape with travellers and dogs resting near a path together with a horseman, and a shepherd with his flock, with a view of a village in the background.

The painting shows a wooded landscape with a woman carrying a waterjug on a path, together with other women carrying baskets nearby. It is signed and dated lower left: Lucas v. vden./ Anno 1648.