Catalogue raisonné: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 291: 

Technical notes: The support consists of a horizontal
oak panel.
The preparation consists of an evenly applied white
ground that completely covers the surface structure of
the support.
The paint layer has been applied thinly. The figures
and vegetation have been painted over the foreground
and background. Very poor adherence to the support.
There are extensive horizontal blisters in the ground.
Extensive loss of ground and paint layers, mainly in the
sky. The painting is in very poor condition.

Provenance: Martin von Wahrendorff, Näsby;
bequeathed by Von Wahrendorff in 1859 (inv. 1863, no.
42)

Bibliography: Sander IV, p. 121.

A view across a spacious coastal landscape of gently
rolling hills, dotted with rows of small rounded trees
and with snow-capped mountains in the far distance.
In a corner of the foreground, on the right, a traveller
with his back turned to the viewer draws the attention
of a woman and child to points of interest in the landscape
beyond.

This painting is a good example of a type of extensive
vista of an essentially imaginary countryside of
which there are numerous examples depicted by Lucas
van Uden between the 1630s and ’50s. The manner is
consistent with documented work by the artist of
about 1640.1 Van Uden composed his ambitious
panoramic landscapes respecting an artificial system in
which natural elements are arranged as on a stage.
They typically feature a hillside to one side with tall
trees with transparent foliage and a lush plain opposite,
neatly articulated and parcelled out with coppices
and rows of small rounded trees, stretching away to
the distant horizon. The Mountain Landscape, with its
bird’s-eye perspective and high horizon, still belongs
to an earlier Netherlandish “worldview” tradition, as
practiced by artists such as Jan Brueghel I and Joos de
Momper II. A unifying light green hue pervades, while
yellow and light brown accents punctuate the scene.
When working on a modest scale, as in the present
picture – in paintings, finished watercolour drawings
and etchings – Van Uden often achieved a certain
unpretentious delicacy and tenderness, not always
present in his larger paintings.
CF

1 Compare a painting (oil on wood, 75 x 127.5 cm), signed and dated
“1640”, formerly in Paris, Heim-Gairac, 1953 (Cat. 1953, no. 40, fig. 8);
and a small painting (oil on wood, 25 x 34 cm), formerly at The Hague, S.
Nijstad, 1951; see a photograph on file at the RKD, The Hague. Cf. further
the small format pictue of Spring in the series of the Four Seasons in
Vaduz, Coll. of the Prince of Liechtenstein, inv. no. G 489; see
Essen/Vienna 2003, p. 276 nos. 101–102, illus. in colour on p. 277 [K.
2Schütz]

Berglandskap