Jan van Kessel, Landscape with a Village Church

by Atelier Liesjes

On the left, two mighty oak trees with broad, almost black crowns dominate the scene; beneath them, a woman stands by a brick-lined well, operating the long handle. A man in a dark coat walks along the sandy path with a stick, accompanied by a small dog. On the right lies a village: a low house with a thatched roof, a taller farmhouse with red tiles, and behind it the square tower of a church with a slender spire. In the foreground, felled tree trunks lie in the grass, alongside bushes bearing delicate white flowers. The sky takes up more than half the picture: heavy, creamy-white clouds pile up against a pale blue sky, with a golden glow from the low sun on the left. At the edge of the field on the right stands a small figure, barely larger than a speck. It is a landscape devoid of incident: no figures with any significance, no mythology, just a village going about its business in the evening light. The composition, with a dark grove of trees on the left and a light distance on the right, follows the classic formula of seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painting. The colours are earthy and warm: umber, olive green, moss green, ochre yellow in the cornfield and the creamy white of the clouds. The paint is thin and transparent in the sky, more opaque in the foliage, and the transition from sun to shade is rendered with soft, broad strokes.
Jan van Kessel (Antwerp 1626 – 1679) is best known for his small animal and still-life paintings, but he also painted landscapes in which the Southern Netherlandish tradition of Brueghel and Rubens is evident. He remained in Antwerp throughout his life and became a master of the Guild of Saint Luke in 1645. His work is held in museums in Antwerp, Madrid and Vienna. A tranquil, summery landscape for a classical interior.