William Beckford (1760-1844), Fonthill Abbey and Lansdown Tower, Bath;
James M. Macnabb;
J.W. Macnabb, 1860;
J.F. Macnabb, 1915;
J.A. Macnabb, 1937;
Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, December 22, 1937, lot 57, to Scharf, for Nicholas Argenti;
Nicholas Argenti, London, by 1938, no. B/28;
By whom (deceased) sold, London, Sotheby's, July 8, 1981, lot 58;
With Galerie Sanct Lucas, Vienna, 1984-85;
Private collection, The Netherlands;
Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, December 5, 2007, lot 46, ♌there purchased by the present collector.

Possibly Cardiff, National Museum of Wales, lent by Mrs A. Conran (according to the catalog of the Galerie Sankt Lucas exhibition); Vienna, Galerie Sankt Lucas, Winter Exhibition, 1984-85.

 

H. Dattenberg, Niederrheinansichten der holländischen Künstler des 17. Jahrhunderts, Düsseldorf 1967, no. 14;
C. Lawrence, Gerrit Adriaensz Berckheyde (1638-1698): Haarlem Cityscape Painter, Doornspijk 1991, p. 80, note 19b.

 

 

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is in beautiful condition. It has been recently restored and should be hung as is. The panel is un-reinforced on the reverse. It is made using two pieces of oak joined horizontally through the middle. The painting is flat and the paint layer is stable. Under ultraviolet light there are a few very tiny retouches visible in the sky, but this is the least that one can expect from pictures of this type. In the foreground hardly any restorations, if any at all, have been applied. The condition is clearly marvelous and unusual.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Gerrit Berckheyde studied in Haarlem with his elder brother, Job. In the 1650s the Berckheyde brothers travelled along the Rhine visiting Cologne, Bonn, Mannheim and Heidelberg. Reputedly they worked for Charles Ludwig, the Elector Palatine in Heidelberg. In around 1660 Gerrit returned to Haarlem and was admitted to the Guild of St. Luke in the summer of that year. From 1660 onwards, he painted almost exclusively townscapes, mainly of Haarlem, Amsterdam and The Hague, and he became, with Van der Heyden, the greatest painter of townscapes of the Dutch Golden Age. From 1666 to 1681 Gerrit was a member of the Haarlem society of rhetoricians, 'De Wijngaardranken' ('The Vine') to which his brother was connected as well. Arnold Houbraken tells that his life came to an end when he fell into the Brouwersvaart on his return home from a good night out, and drowned. No pupils are documented but his works had a lasting influence especially on the eighteenth-century townscape painters Jan ten Compe and Isaac Ouwater.

Like his contemporary Jan van der Heyden, Berckheyde more often than not painted capriccio views of cities. While elements of the present picture are no doubt based on drawings that Berckheyde is presumed to have made when he visited Cologne, the two great churches are placed in a capriccio setting. As in other pictures he chooses here to contrast architectural details from different periods, so that he stresses the Gothic characteristics of Sankt Gereon, with the Romanesque structure of Sankt Aposteln. The unusual architecture of Sankt Gereon, with its ten-sided dome and eliptical nave clearly made its mark on Berkcheyde, since he depicted it on at least eight occasions, more often than any other German church. The church of Sankt Gereon, to the left of the present composition, is seen from the same angle (also including the wall marking off the left of the composition) in a painting by Berckheyde in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and the church of Sankt Aposteln to the right is seen from the same angle, but closer to, in a painting in Bonn.¹

Berckheyde appears to have started to paint German cityscapes in the early 1670s, and on the basis of the costume of the well-dressed woman inspecting the market stalls, this picture is likely to date from shortly after 1670.

The present painting was once in William Beckford's collection. The immensely rich and eccentric Beckford (1760-1844), a genius in many fields, is primarily known as the author of the gothic novel The History of the Caliph Vatlick (1780). He was also a great lover of art and accommodated his significant collection at Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire, the megalomaniac country house he built for himself, which, although not much of it survives, is known as one of the most remarkable examples of the Gothic Revival in England.

1.  Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, Pennsylvania, & Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn, inv. 59.103; see Lawrence, under Literature, pp. 79-80, reproduced plates. 87 & 84 re𝐆spectively.