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The landscapes of adriaen van de velde
are among the very best that the Dutch Golden
Age produced, showing great variety and superb
draughtsmanship, depicting meadows, Italianate
views, beaches, dunes, forests, winter scenes,
and portraits in landscape settings. The short-lived
artist's work was greatly appreciated in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, highly
sought after by collectors in Germany, France
and England. Despite that fame and the exquisite
quality of Adriaen van de Velde's output, this
exhibition marks the first time that a substantial
body of his work has been assembled.
The artist made figure and animal studies in
seductive red chalk and compositional studies
in pen and ink in preparation for his paintings,
making it possible to follow very precisely the
various phases in his creative process - perhaps
more so than is possible for any other Dutch artist
of the period. For this reason, and because of their
exceptional quality, drawings form a major part of
the exhibition that this catalogue accompanies,
with some of them reunited for the first time with
the paintings for which they were studies.
Summary
Accompanying the first ever exhibition devoted to the Dutch painter and draughtsman Adriaen van de Velde (1636–1672), this is also the first monograph on the landscape artist - one of the finest of the Dutch Golden Age.
