Landscape

Adam Pynacker was born in Pijnacker near Delft around 1622 and spent several years in Italy, an experience that shaped his entire career as a painter of Italianate landscapes in the Dutch Golden Age tradition. This undated work simply titled 'Landscape' in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp reflects Pynacker's mature manner: the warm golden light characteristic of the Italian campagna at sunset, tall silhouetted trees providing vertical counterpoints to horizontal recession, and staffage figures or animals completing the idyllic scene. Pynacker belonged to the generation of Dutch Italianate painters that also included Jan Both and Jan Asselijn, artists who transformed their Italian experiences into an idealised vision of the southern landscape that proved enormously popular with Dutch collectors longing for the warm south they knew mainly from prints and paintings. His compositions typically show a strong contre-jour or backlighting effect, with the sky suffused with warm gold and the foreground objects silhouetted against it — a device he developed into a personal signature more pronounced than in the work of his Italianate contemporaries.

Oil on canvas or panel, Pynacker's landscapes are characterised by warm golden-brown grounds over which cool atmospheric blues are applied in the distance, creating a recession effect that differs from the cool tonality of Dutch northern landscape specialists. His foliage is built with short, comma-like strokes that create texture without defining individual leaves.