Zwadderen in oil paint

Abstract

Landscape painting can directly address concepts of the world’s origin and its organization. Dutch dune landscapes, however, were and continue to be extremely unstable environments, consisting of damp hollows and wind-borne sand, and resisting any attempt to be shaped or organized. Theresa Brauer’s essay asks its readers to closely examine two of Jan van Goyen’s landscapes that exhibit exceptional fluidity both in painting technique – Van Goyen utilizes a wet-on-wet application of oil pigments – and in the subject they depict: the transitional coastal landscape of Holland. The works are discussed in dialogue with Samuel van Hoogstraten’s description of a painting technique he calls zwadderen, and with Joost van den Vondel’s poetic yet dismissive reflection on incidental forms in landscape painting. The essay contextualizes Jan van Goyen’s landscapes within the framework of nature-theoretical discourse prevalent in the seventeenth century, which contemplates a particular world in a state of motion.