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Lot 90
Description:
Attributed to Abraham Jansz Begeyn (Dutch, 1637-1697), "A Monumental Mountain Landscape with an Eagle Attacking a Chamois", oil on canvas, unsigned, 63 in. x 64 1/2 in., in a modern frame.
- Notes: Note: A precocious talent, Begeyn became a member of the Leiden painters' guild at age 18, and practiced in his native town for a dozen years. After sojourns in Amsterdam (1672), London (c. 1674), and The Hague (1681), he became court painter in Berlin in 1688, on the accession of Frederick, Elector of Brandenburg and later King of Prussia. For the Elector he executed many views of royal towns and seats, whose first-hand studies involved him in travels throughout the Prussian dominions; Begeyn's long stay in Halberstadt, on the edge of the famous Harz Mountains, for example, may well have inspired the wild scenery of this painting, so similar to his other large decorative works for Berlin (where his premature death followed a fall from a scaffold). Begeyn was above all a faithful exponent of the Italianate tyle of Nicolaes (Claes) Berchem (1620-1683), his teacher; and indeed a work such as the latter's comparably-sized (55 1/2 in. x 68 1/2 in.) Mountainous Landscape with Herders Gathering Wood of c. 1665-75 in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, prefigures many aspects of the present picture. This canvas displays unusually monumental animals, and is near the upper limits of Begeyn's standard format-among signed, recently-reported paintings only a 67 in. x 104 in. Landscape of 1660 (sold at Bukowskis, Stockholm, 26 May 2003, lot 402) is larger, and only in width; but many of his signed pictures at about two-thirds this size show exactly similar motifs. Two paired Woodland Scenes with Animals are particularly close (Sotheby's London, 4 July 1990, lot 52), while identical thistles-one of this artist's signature motifs-occur in A Forest Floor (ibid., 5 July 2007, lot 144); A Coastal Landscape dated 1674 displays precisely matching cloud forms (Phillips, London, 6 April 1995, lot 61). Begeyn's River Landscape wi h Figures (ibid., 8 December 1992, lot 75) shares this same strong diagonal, with identical mountains in the center left distance: a generally related diagonal organization also informs his Birds and Butterflies in a Wood, at the Herzog-Anton-Ulrich Museum in Braunschweig (B. Haak, The Golden Age: Dutch Painters of the 17th C., New York, 1984, p. 437, fig. 960). The pose and action of this enormous eagle seem clearly to reflect such a classical prototype as the avenging raptor in standard images of The Punishment of Prometheus; but the huntsman's realism of Begeyn's White Goat (Tajan, Paris, 18 December 1991, lot 165) offers a directly-observed cognate to the stricken prey of this ambitious composition. Reference: "Begeyn, Abraham (Janzs.)," The Dictionary of Art (Grove, London, 1996), vol. 3, pp. 500-501
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October 11, 2008 10:00 AM CDT
New Orleans, LA, US
Neal Auction Company
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