Adriaen van de Velde

About this book

A Dutch Italianate, Adriaen Van de Velde represents a point of artistic communication across borders, fusing agricultural landscapes in Holland with mythological Arcadian scenes in Italian settings. He died at the early age of 35, and yet he produced a great number of masterpieces that earned him tremendous posthumous fame in the 18th and 19th centuries, when he was one of the most sought-after names among collectors in Germany, France and England. Compared to Mozart's chamber music by the renowned art historian Wolfgang Stechow (1896-1974), Van de Velde's works are delicate and carefully composed and demonstrate his mastery of lighting effects as well as the human figure. His father Willem van de Velde the Elder and brother of the Younger were both marine painters, who in the winter of 1672-73 moved from Leiden to England to work in the service of King Charles II. Adriaen, by contrast, almost certainly never travelled outside his native country and chose to paint landscapes rather than seascapes. His meadows, Italianate views, beaches, dunes, forests, winter scenes and portraits in landscape settings and are among the very best that the Dutch Golden Age has produced.