Follower of Salvator Rosa, An Extensive Pastoral Landscape with Lake, 18th Century Oil on Canvas

Follower of Salvator Rosa, circa 1700

An extensive pastoral landscape with lake beyond

Oil on canvas; held in a gilded period style frame

Dimensions refer to size of frame

Provenance: Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon (1897-1977)

Salvator Rosa (1615-1673) was one of the least conventional artists of seventeenth century Italy and was adopted as a hero by painters of the Romantic Movement in Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He was mainly a painter of landscapes, which are often dark and foreboding, and appears to have been indifferent to the demands of ideal beauty as seen in the landscapes of Claude and Poussin. The slightly more cheerful and bright nature of the view presented here, emerging from the shadowed foreground, indicates the work of an artist clearly influenced by Rosa; the brushwork evident in the foliage of the trees, the figures and lake are also particularly notable in their emulation of the master himself.