About this artwork
Asselijn painted this swan around 1650, in Amsterdam. He was about 40, a landscape painter who had spent a decade in Italy and returned to the Netherlands to paint Italianate landscapes. This swan is unlike anything else in his output, and it became one of the most famous animal paintings in Dutch art.
A large white swan sits in a nest near the edge of a body of water. Its wings are raised, its neck arched, its beak open in a threat display. It is defending its nest against an approaching dog, visible at the lower left as a small brown head emerging from the water. Behind the swan, an egg is visible in the nest. The painting is life-size: the swan dominates the canvas, its white feathers filling most of the composition.
The painting was read as a political allegory almost from the moment it was made. In the 17th century, viewers identified the swan with the Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt, the leader of the Dutch Republic who was murdered by a mob in 1672. The dog was identified with the enemies of the state, and the egg with the Netherlands itself. The inscriptions that were later added to the painting, visible as text on the surface, reinforced this reading: the swan is labeled as de Witt, the dog as the enemy. The allegory was probably applied after the painting was made, but it stuck, and the painting entered the Rijksmuseum as a political statement.
Asselijn was born in Dieppe around 1610, the son of a French glassmaker who had settled in Amsterdam. He trained under Jan Both and traveled to Italy in the 1630s, where he painted Italianate landscapes in the style of Claude Lorrain. He returned to Amsterdam in the 1640s, and the swan painting dates from this period. He died in 1652, and the swan is the only painting by him that is widely known today.
Oil on canvas, 144 by 171 centimeters, roughly 57 by 67 inches. Asselijn painted the swan with thick, loaded strokes of lead white, building the feathers in layers of impasto. The surface is rough and tactile, with the paint standing up from the canvas in ridges. The water and the background are painted more thinly, in dark browns and greens.
The nearly square format and dramatic subject make this print work well in a living room, hallway, or entryway. The white swan against the dark background reads well in any light. A white frame picks up the swan's plumage. The 16x20 or 18x24 size gives the feathers and the dog enough detail to appreciate up close.
The painting is in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, one of the museum's most famous works.
This is a public domain artwork (CC0). We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 18x24 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.
