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Born on 05 November 1619: Philips de
Koninck (or Koningh) — Dutch painter who died on 04
October 1688.
— Philips Koninck is the best-known member of a family of artists.
He studied with his brother Jacob [1615 – >1690] in Rotterdam,
and he was also a student of Rembrandt
in Amsterdam, where he settled in 1641. Although he painted various subjects
(the poet Vondel praised his portraits and history pictures) his fame now
rests on his landscapes. He specialized in extensive
views, and his work has a majesty and power that rivals the similar
scenes of Ruisdael; the National Gallery in London has four outstanding
examples. Like many Dutch painters he had a second occupation; he ran a
prosperous shipping firm and evidently painted little in the last decade
of his life. His wealth enabled him to collect drawings. He was a prolific
draftsman himself and his sketchy penmanship can be deceptively close to
Rembrandt's.
— Among his contemporaries, Philips Köninck (also Coning, Coningh,
Coningh, Koning, Konnink) was known as a figure painter, specializing in
portraits, genre and religious scenes. But nowadays he is known and praised
as a landscape-painter. Philips was born in Amsterdam, the son of a successful
goldsmith, and trained in the studio of his brother Jacob, a painter, who
taught him from 1639 to 1641 in Rotterdam. Subsequently he returned to Amsterdam,
where he lived for the rest of his life. Köninck was a wealthy man, owning
a company, which operated horse-drawn passenger barges between Rotterdam
and Amsterdam. He seems to have been a friend rather than a student of Rembrandt
but he was certainly influenced by the great master in his manner of rendering
biblical subjects.
Köninck’s landscapes are characterized by
a high viewpoint and a sky, which occupies at least half of the picture
space. They are cloudscapes as much as extensive landscapes. Wide stretches
of flat or slightly hilly land under a great expanse of sky are the realistic
view of Holland. Waterways and paths intersect the land; houses are dotted
in the foreground. These landscapes were mostly carried out in warm, brown-yellow
tones. The landscape with a high sky was particularly in favor in the 1650s
and 1660s, not only in the work of Köninck, but also in that of Jacob
Isaackszoon van Ruisdael [1628 — 10 Mar 1692] and also in the
etched landscapes of Rembrandt van Rijn [15 Jul 1606 – 04 Oct 1669].
— LINKS
— Distant
View with Cottages Lining a Road (1655)
— Wide
River Landscape — Distant
view in Gelderland (1655)
— Adoration
by the Magi — Panoramic
landscape (1665)
— Plain
in Holland (1670) — The
baptism of the Chamberlain
— Dutch
Landscape Viewed from the Dunes (1664, 122x165cm) If Koninck's development
had stopped in the middle of the seventeenth century, he would be remembered
as a talented Rembrandt follower. But from about 1649-1650 until about 1665
he created a series of very large panoramic views in a distinctive personal
style. They are closely related to the classical phase of Dutch landscape
painting and are amongst the great glories of Dutch art.
— An
Extensive Landscape with a Hawking Party (132x160cm) The human figures
on the painting were done by J. Lingelbach.
— Panorama
View of Dunes and a River (1664, 94x120cm) _ Philips Koninck was a member
of Rembrandt's entourage. His drawings and early painted landscapes show
that he learned from Rembrandt. However, by the middle of the century he
began to paint large panoramic views that are independent of the master's
style. They rank with the most grandiose of the age. Where Molenaer
and Houckgeest more or less assumed a specific viewing position outside
the pictorial space, and Saenredam's
perspective suggests looking from within it, many landscape painters positioned
the beholder in undefined or even impossibly high positions. Koninck often
suggested such a bird's-eye view in his sweeping panoramas of Dutch fields
and rivers beneath imposing skies. The absence of one fixed viewpoint implies
that the viewer is seeing an objective record of a city or landscape, recorded
without human intervention. It has been suggested that, by positing such
a freely surveying eye, these landscapes resemble the exquisite maps produced
in great variety and quantity in the Dutch Republic. The maps depicted in
genre scenes, hung on walls like paintings, indeed indicate that seventeenth-century
viewers did not make the modern distinction between paintings as "art" and
maps as "knowledge."
— An
Extensive Landscape with a Road by a Ruin (1655, 137x167cm) _ Among
his contemporaries, Philips Koninck was known as a figure painter, specializing
in portraits as well as in genre and religious scenes, rather than as a
landscapist as he is known today. He was born in Amsterdam, the son of a
successful goldsmith, and trained in the studio of his brother, Jacob, who
worked in Rotterdam. Subsequently he returned to Amsterdam, where he lived
for the rest of his life. Koninck was a wealthy man, owning a company which
operated trekschuiten (horse-drawn passenger barges) between Rotterdam and
Amsterdam. He seems to have been a friend rather than a student of Rembrandt
but he was certainly influenced by him in his manner of painting(and drawing)
biblical subjects. Koninck's landscapes are characterized by a high viewpoint
and a sky which occupies at least half of the picture space. They are cloudscapes
as much as extensive landscapes. He emphasizes the flatness of Holland,
a more realistic approach than, for example, that of Aelbert Cuyp, who attempts
to make his landscapes more varied by the inclusion of hills and mountains
taken from his imagination rather than from his observation of the Dutch
countryside. The landscape with a high sky was particularly in favor in
the 1650s and 1660s, not just in the work of Koninck, but also in that of
Jacob van Ruisdael and also in the etched landscapes of Rembrandt. This
painting of 1655 is an outstanding example of Koninck's landscape art. The
colors, which in some of his canvases have sunk into uniform browns and
greys with the passage of time, are particularly vivid and the painting
is remarkably well preserved.
— Village
on a Hill (1651, 61x83cm) Koninck is one of the last generation of Dutch
landscape painters. In the 1660s, there was a general tendency to "upgrade"
the various genres. During this period, the interiors of Vermeer and de
Hooch became increasingly elegant, and even the still-lifes were freighted
with "noblesse". In the work of Koninck, this trend even affected the landscapes,
in which he positioned courtly figures and palatial architecture. In the
1650s, by contrast, when Koninck was at the height of his creative powers,
he produced landscapes of exceptional purity, bringing the flat panoramic
landscape to its greatest perfection. A soft and golden light is cast across
the flat countryside, illuminating things that are, in themselves, uninteresting:
sandy dunes, the occasional tree, some water, a village. There is nothing
remarkable or jarring. The sensation is where the brown earth is bathed
in sunlight to a golden hue. Koninck was influenced by Rembrandt's landscape
painting, which represents a chapter in its own right within his enormous
oeuvre. Rembrandt's influence is evident in the golden-brown tone of his
paintings and in the way Koninck occasionally integrates unexpected and
fantastic objects such as a glittering bridge spanning the water, a ruin
or a fairy-tale castle. |
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