Tower on a Coast

Adam Pynacker came from Schiedam, near Rotterdam, where the light is grey and the land is flat. Like a number of Dutch painters of his generation he travelled south to Italy, stayed about three years, and came home to spend the rest of his life painting the warmth he had seen there. This coast, with its old tower and its amber haze, is that memory turned into a product. There was strong demand in the Dutch Republic for southern scenery, for the kind of golden evening light the buyers themselves rarely saw, and painters like Pynacker supplied it. The tower and the shore are not a real place you could find on a map. They are assembled from studies and imagination into one ideal Mediterranean afternoon, the leaves along the bank catching the low sun that became his signature effect.