Jan Siberechts, Pastoral Landscape, 1684. Oil paint on canvas;  23 × 28 in. (58.4 × 71.1 cm). Gift of the Berger Collection Educational Trust, 2020.16

image height: 23 in, 58.4200 cm; image width: 28 in, 71.1200 cm; frame height: 31 1/4 in, 79.375 cm; frame width: 36 1/2 in, 92.71 cm; frame depth: 3 in, 7.6200 cm

[lower right] J Siberechts. 1684. f.

European and American Art Before 1900

European Painting and Sculpture before 1900

This is one of the earliest pictures to represent an actual view of the English countryside. The location has been tentatively identified as the village of Edensor in Derbyshire, in the East Midlands, and its features are manifestly English: the large tree in the foreground, likely an oak; the characteristic hedgerows in the distance; a typically English church in the right middle ground, and at the center a hillside being quarried. The picture also reflects Siberechts’s training in Flanders and the influence of the Flemish master Sir Peter Paul Rubens, whose painting Summer: Peasants Going to Market with its similar details Siberechts could have seen at the home of his patron George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham.

Mondschein & Co., Ltd., London, 1940; sale, Lempertz, Cologne, May 22, 1986, lot 106; with Rafael Valls, London; private collection, England; sale, Christie’s, Amsterdam, November 10, 1997, lot 124; Sarandon Consultants Ltd., Tortola, B.V.I.; through whom purchased by William M. B. Berger and Bernadette Johnson Berger, Denver, 1998; Berger Collection Educational Trust; gifted to the Denver Art Museum, 2020. Provenance research is on-going at the Denver Art Museum and we will post information as it becomes available. Please e-mail provenance@denverartmuseum.org, if you have questions, or if you have additional information to share with us.

• “Treasures from the Berger Collection: British Paintings 1400-2000” — Denver Art Museum, 10/2/2014 – 9/9/2018