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Mediterranean Harbor

Adam Pijnacker (Dutch, 1622–1673)
about 1650

Medium/Technique Oil on panel
Dimensions 33 x 46.7 cm (13 x 18 3/8 in.)
Framed: 47.6 x 63.7 x 6.4 cm (18 3/4 x 25 1/16 x 2 1/2 in.)
Credit Line Gift of Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, in support of the Center for Netherlandish Art
Accession Number2021.713
OUT ON LOAN
On display at High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA, April 19, 2024 – July 14, 2024
CollectionsEurope
ClassificationsPaintings
Adam Pijnacker, who spent three years in Rome, specialized in imaginary depictions of the Italian countryside and Mediterranean harbors. In this Italianate scene, he romanticizes a teeming port. Dutch merchants, dockworkers and exotic types sit and stand amid unloaded cargo, against a backdrop of ships and a sun-filled sky. Such artistic fantasies or capricci held a strong appeal for Dutch buyers who yearned to be transported to distant corners of the world.

ProvenanceTheodor Gerhard Lürman (b. 1789 - d. 1865), Bremen; probably by descent to his sons, Johann Theodor Lürman (b. 1812 - d. 1889) and Stephan August Lürman (b. 1820 - d. 1903) [see note 1]. 1952, Kunstsalon Abels, Cologne. Private collection, Bremen. Until 2000, collection of a merchant bank, Hamburg [see note 2]. November 25, 2000, anonymous sale, Lempertz, Cologne, lot 1227. Haboldt and Co., Paris and New York; 2001, sold by Haboldt and Co. to Eijk and Rose-Marie van Otterloo, Marblehead, MA; 2021, gift of Eijk and Rose-Marie van Otterloo to the MFA. (Accession Date: December 15, 2021)

NOTES:
[1] See Gustav Pauli, “Die Gemäldesammlung der Familie Lürman,” Zeitschrift für Bildende Kunst 15 (1904): 170 and, for more on the Lürman collection, Andrea Weniger, “'Die Sammler und die Seinigen'. Die Gemäldesammlung des Aeltermann Lürman in Bremen,” in Museum Revisited: Transdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf eine Institution im Wandel (Bielefeld, 2010). This painting does not appear in the 1904 or 1905 Lürman sales.

[2] Provenance from 1952 to the Hamburg collection is according to Frederik Duparc, Golden: Dutch and Flemish Masterworks from the Collection of Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo (New Haven, 2011), cat. 45. There is a Kunsthandel Abels label on the back of the painting.