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| Title | Rocky Landscape with Figures | |
| Collection | Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford | |
| Artist | Bloemen, Jan Frans van (Flemish painter, 1662-1749, active in France and Italy) | |
| Date Earliest | about 1690 | |
| Date Latest | about 1715 | |
| Description | Born in Antwerp, Jan Frans van Bloemen travelled via Lyon and Turin to Rome. Working in Rome under the name Orizonte, he became an important exponent of landscape paintings in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin. His employment of Poussin's landscape style can be seen in this painting, where a distant view of Italianate mountains is framed on the left side by a tree. As in the paintings of Poussin, the inclusion of figures in the foreground brings a point of interest to the composition, while their gestures effectively lead the eye back into the landscape. | |
| Current Accession Number | P40 | |
| Former Accession Number | P.E.40 | |
| Subject | landscape; figure | |
| Measurements | 19.5 x 22 cm (estimate) | |
| Material | oil on panel | |
| Acquisition Details | Bequeathed by Cecil Higgins 1949. | |
| Publications | Wright, C., Old Master Paintings in Britain: An Index of Continental Old Master Paintings Executed before c.1800 in Public Collections in the United Kingdom, London, 1976, pp. 6, 18, 232. | |
| Notes | As with many of the paintings from the original collection of Cecil Higgins, there is no documentary evidence as to when or where this work was purchased. However, like the majority of the collection, it was probably acquired from a local dealer in the inter-war period. For van Bloemen, see: Busiri Vici, A., Jan Frans van Bloemen 'Orrizonte' e l' origine del paesaggio romano settecentesco, Rome, 1974. See pp. 36-37 for the way that van Bloemen, Claude and Dughet created the idea of the pittorico and pittoresco with images of the Roman Campagna. For van Bloemen and other painters of Italian views in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see: Carpegna, N., Paesisti e Vedutisti a Roma nel '600 e nel '700, Rome, 1956, pp. 10-12, ill. nos. 25-26. |
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| Rights Owner | Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford | |
| Author | Bryony Bartlett-Rawlings | |