On 13 April 2024, an exhibition of a single painting begins its run in the Foyer of the Hermitage Theatre. In it the museum is presenting Landscape with Bathers, a work by the school of the Dutch painter Cornelius van Poelenburgh (1594–1677). The Hermitage received this picture as a gift from our long-time friend, the art collector and patron Mikhail Yuryevich Karisalov.
Against the background of some Arcadian landscape with ruins, the artist depicted a groups of nude female bathers, in the centre of which is a woman sitting on a rock with her face turned towards the viewer. In the depths one more female figure can be seen standing in the water. A broad panoramic view opens up in the distance.
By all indications, compositional and stylistic, this painting is an original work by the school of the Dutch painter Cornelius van Poelenburgh, whose oeuvre introduced into Dutch painting motifs of Classical antiquities, a vivid, bright colour scheme and the conveyance of sunlight. The painter, who worked in Utrecht, Rome, Florence and England, was the head of a large artistic studio with numerous pupils and followers. His art’s strong stylistic influence can be traced across several generations of North European Italianists.
Landscape
with Bathers has undoubted artistic value, but the painting’s past is also interesting. The work is recorded in the inventory of items that came into the Imperial Hermitage on 12 November 1886 from the Golitsyn Museum in Moscow. It is known to have been displayed in the halls of the Hermitage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, something recorded during museum inspections in 1912 and 1924. In 1931 the painting was transferred from the museum to the Antikvariat organization for subsequent sale, being valued at 100 roubles. It is difficult to trace its history after that. There can, however, be no doubting that the return of Landscape
with Bathers has special meaning for the Hermitage.
