Old Masters Day Auction

Willem de Heusch

An Italianate landscape with shepherds

VAT reduced rate

Lot Closed

July 7, 01:25 PM GMT

Estimate

30,000 - 50,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

Willem de Heusch

Utrecht 1625 - 1692

An Italianate landscape with shepherds

signed lower right on the rock: GDHeusch: f

oil on oak panel

unframed: 30.5 x 38.3 cm.; 12 x 15⅛ in.

framed: 45.1 x 53.4 cm.; 17¾ x 21 in.

Possibly the Duke of Sutherland, Stafford House, London;
Wtih Alfred Brod, prior to 1964;
Henry and June ('Jimmy') Weldon, New York;
By whom posthumously sold, London, Sotheby's, 2 May 2018, lot 137, where acquired.

N.T. Minty, In the Eye of the Beholder: Northern Baroque Paintings from the Collection of Henry H. Weldon, exh. cat., New Orleans 1997, pp. 60–61, no. 24, reproduced;
N.T. Minty and J. Spicer (eds), An Eye for Detail, 17^th-Century Dutch and Flemish Paintings from the Collection of Henry H. Weldon, exh. cat., Baltimore 1999, p. 58, no. 23, reproduced.

Willem de Heusch specialised in Italianate landscapes in the style of Jan Both with whom he is likely to have trained. De Heusch is thought to have travelled in Italy around 1640, but was back in Utrecht by 1649 where he is recorded as a dean of the Guild along with Both and Cornelis Poelenburgh.

The idyllic setting of the present composition, with spindly trees and boulders lining a pathway which winds towards a hillside beyond, all aglow in golden light, is characteristic of the work of the artist. De Heusch often signed his paintings using the initial G, short for Guillaume or Guglielmo, the italianised form of his first name.

A red wax seal on the reverse of the painting may bear the arms of the Lindenfels of Strasburg.