Panoramic landscape with a fortified town

JACOB DE VILLEERS

Leiden 1616 – 1667 Rotterdam

The little know painter Jacob de Villeers, for a long time only one picture in the Boijmans Museum was known, came from Leiden. It is believed that he was a student of Rembrandt in the 1640s, but no evidence is known. The only confirmed link to Rembrandt is his apprenticeship with Abraham Furnerius, himself a student of Rembrandt. He married Furnerius daughter in 1641. In his mountain-views he is clearly influenced by Rembrandt and Hercules Seghers landscapes. His treatment of light and mountains is strongly connected to Seghers. Trough Furnerius and Rembrandt who both admired Seghers work, De Villeers must have been influenced for instance by the landscape of Seghers in the Boijmans Museum. The treatment of the mountain on the right side of the picture enhances the monumentality of the whole composition in the same way as Seghers did in the Boijmans picture.

Professor Werner Sumowski compares this picture with signed pictures in the Alfred Bader Collection in Milwaukee and in the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh.

( Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler band IV Landau 1983, p.2923 and 2924)

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