Panoramic Landscape, François van Knibbergen, c. 1655 - c. 1665 – (François Van Knibbergen) ◄ Previous Next ►

Artist: François Van Knibbergen

Date: 1665

Size: 97 x 140 cm

Technique: Oil On Canvas

Influenced by his fellow townsman Jan van Goyen, Van Knibbergen painted fairly monochrome river landscapes and panoramas.2 This composition, with its low horizon and the repoussoir on the right, recalls Van Goyen’s panoramas, but is larger (cf. SK-A-2133). It was painted rapidly, possibly in a single session, with the artist working from the background to the foreground in what Van de Wetering has called a ‘mindless routine’.3 The signature was scratched into the wet paint with the handle of the brush in a single flowing movement. The way in which the painting is built up corresponds exactly with Van Knibbergen’s working method as described by Samuel van Hoogstraeten in an account of a painting competition involving Van Knibbergen, Van Goyen and Porcellis.4 The extensive landscape was conceived from a high vantage point; with the viewer gazing over the artist’s shoulder, as it were, from the hill in the foreground. Dotted along the river flowing in the distance are villages with church spires. Tradition has it that this is a landscape near Cleves, but there are no specific clues that would identify it precisely.5 Since there are few known dated works by Van Knibbergen, it is difficult to establish the chronology of his work. It is assumed that panoramas like this one belong to his late period. Gerdien Wuestman, 2007 See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 163.