Arcadian Landscape with an Altar
Artist
Juriaan Andriessen
(Dutch, 1742 – 1819)
Datec. 1800
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensionseach 135 3/4 x 68 in. (344.8 x 172.7 cm)
ClassificationsPaintings
Credit LineGift of Mrs. William Sisler/Mary Sisler Foundation, 1976
Object numberSN954
In the late eighteenth century in Amsterdam it became fashionable for the wealthy to install decorative wall coverings in the Rococo style in the public rooms of their homes. To cater to these tastes, decorators’ workshops produced murals painted on canvases, while factories manufactured cheaper alternatives such as stenciled and printed wallpapers. The Amsterdam painter Jurriaan Andriessen created many of the highest quality murals surviving from this period. His workshop specialized and excelled in sets of paintings like the ones in this gallery.
Patricians, noblemen, and prominent businessmen were among Jurriaan Andriessen’s patrons, although the majority were individuals who had climbed the social ladder in one or two generations through success in trade. Newly wealthy, they craved the trappings of nobility embodied in fanciful decorations popular in the domestic interiors of French aristocrats. These panels thus demonstrate the popularity and permeation of the Rococo style beyond France.
These murals depict “Arcadian Landscapes.” Remote and mountainous, the Greek region of Arcadia has always been a classical place of refuge. The inhabitants of rustic, secluded Arcadia were proverbially primitive herdsmen leading simple, pastoral, and unsophisticated yet happy lives. Ancient and Renaissance poetry immortalized lovely, verdant, and tranquil Arcadia, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it inspired painters of landscapes, both real and imaginary.
On View
On view
last quarter of 1600s or first quarter of 1700s
H. Buckland
