Landscape with Sportsmen and Game, Adam Pijnacker
Pynacker spent three years in Italy in the 1640s and on his return to Amsterdam became one of the leading Italianate painters in the Netherlands. This picture features many stylistic characteristics of his Amsterdam phase – cool tonality, sharp definition, and an almost surreal focus on the foreground group of birches to the left, rendered with illusionistic detail.
The blue leaves are the result of a chemical change over time, presumably the result of the fading of the yellow pigment originally mixed with blue to make green. This painting is regarded as one of Pynacker's outstanding achievements.
Adam Christiaensz Pynacker (Pijnacker) (1622-1673) was a Dutch Golden Age painter, mostly of landscapes.
