18th-century Old Master Painting By Andries Vermeulen (dordrecht 1763-1814) Landscape

Andries Vermeulen (Dordrecht 1763 – 1814 Amsterdam)

Travellers Along a Country Road near a Watermill

Oil on panel, 33 x 42 cm (13 x 16.5 inch)

Contained in an antique giltwood Neoclassical frame, possibly the original frame

Signed 'A Vermeulen' (lower right)

Provenance
Private collection, The Netherlands

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Andries Vermeulen was born in Dordrecht in 1763, the son of the landscape painter Cornelis Vermeulen (1732–1813).1 Andries was initially taught by his father, who instructed him to copy Old Master paintings, especially the works of Albert Cuyp and Meindert Hobbema, with whom the young artist identified deeply. He was further educated by Thomas Gaal, director of the ‘Teekenakademie’ (drawing academy).

In 1803 the Amsterdam wine merchant Willem Wreesman gave Vermeulen the important commission to paint a panorama of Amsterdam, inspired by the panorama of Paris by Pierre Prévost and measuring 7 by 52 metres, with a diameter of 17 metres. The project was much delayed and remained unfinished at the time of Vermeulen’s death in 1814, when it was completed by the landscape painters Willem Uppink and Cornelis de Kruijf.2

Our landscape by Vermeulen is among the artist’s most refined and sophisticated works, with particularly fluent and spontaneous brushwork. It can for instance be compared to a Mountainous Landscape in the collection of the Dordrechts Museum (fig.).3 Other paintings by Vermeulen are preserved in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe and the National Gallery, London.

1. For Andries Vermeulen, see J. Erkelens, ‘Dordtse schilders 6: Cornelis Vermeulen (1732-1813) en Andries Vermeulen (1763-1814)’, Kwartaal & Teken 16 (1990), no. 1, pp. 14-17.
2. For the Amsterdam panorama, see E. Wouthuyzen, ‘Schets voor een panorama van Amsterdam vanaf de Oudekerkstoren door Andries Vermeulen, 1803’ in: Erik Schmitz, Marijke Carasso-Kok and Jaap-Evert Abrahamse (eds.), De verbeelde wereld: liber amicorum voor Boudewijn Bakker, Bussum 2008, pp. 11-17.
3. Oil on panel, 24.5 x 33 cm, inv. no. DM/928/192.