Johannes GLAUBER (Utrecht 1646 - ? circa 1726) Port near a forest Canvas. 98 x 131 cm Signed lower right CLAG. Provenance : de Villenoisy family, purchased June 1942 ; Grenoble collection, mid-20th century; By descent to current owner. Johannes GLAUBER is a Dutch painter and engraver. He apprenticed with Nicolaes Berchem, then worked as a copyist of Italian paintings in Amsterdam. He traveled to France (1671-1675), where he was a pupil of A. Van der Kabel in Lyon, then, from 1675, to Italy in Rome, where he was nicknamed Polydore. During this trip, he developed a taste for Gaspard Poussin's landscapes, which were very much in vogue at the time. He then returned to Holland, first to Amsterdam, where he worked in the studio of the painter Gérard de Lairesse, then to The Hague, where he worked for Prince William III of Orange at Soestdijk Castle and elsewhere, before settling permanently in Schoonhoven. Glauber painted Italian landscapes, but not in the typically Dutch "Italianate" style practiced by his predecessors and many of his contemporaries. Instead, his heroic landscapes are inspired by French masters such as Poussin and Gaspard Dughet, which explains their "classical" character, different, for example, from the works of his master Berchem. These his paintings are not of shepherds and their flocks, but of figures dressed in antique style. This French style seems to have been particularly fashionable at the court of the Stadhouders, as the artist was commissioned to decorate the Loo and Soestdijk palaces with large landscapes. We should also mention his important activity as an etcher. etcher.