Provenance
Private collection, France; (art dealer, Lille); purchased 1980 by Arthur K. and Susan H. Wheelock, Washington, D.C.; acquired 1986 by gift and partial purchase by NGA.
Accession Number
1986.10.1
Medium
oil on panel
Dimensions
overall: 33.6 x 47.9 cm (13 1/4 x 18 7/8 in.) | framed: 53.6 x 67.6 x 2.5 cm (21 1/8 x 26 5/8 x 1 in.)
Classification
Painting
Credit Line
Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund and Gift of Arthur K. and Susan H. Wheelock
Tags
Painting Baroque (1600–1750) Oil Painting Panel Painting Dutch
Background & Context
Background Story
Pieter Molijn (1595-1661) was a Dutch Golden Age painter known for his tonal landscapes of the Dutch countryside in the manner that he helped develop in the 1620s and 1630s. Landscape with Open Gate from c. 1630-35 depicts a Dutch landscape with an open gate in the tonal manner that distinguishes Molijn's best work—the restrained palette and atmospheric perspective that define the tonal phase of Dutch landscape painting. The c. 1630-35 date places this in the period when the tonal manner was being developed by Molijn, Jan van Goyen, and others as the first distinctive Dutch landscape style.
Cultural Impact
Landscape with Open Gate is important in the history of Dutch landscape painting because it demonstrates the tonal manner that Molijn helped develop in the 1630s. The restrained palette and atmospheric perspective of the tonal manner represented the first distinctive Dutch landscape style—a style that substituted atmospheric effect for the more colorful Italianate manner of the previous generation and established the tonal landscape as the dominant mode of Dutch landscape painting in the 1630s and 1640s.
Why It Matters
Landscape with Open Gate is Molijn's tonal Dutch landscape: a Dutch countryside scene in the restrained palette and atmospheric perspective that he helped develop as the first distinctive Dutch landscape style. The c. 1630-35 painting shows the tonal manner that dominated Dutch landscape painting in the 1630s and established atmospheric effect as the defining characteristic of Dutch landscape.
