Berchem was the son and presumably pupil of Pieter Claesz, a Haarlem painter of down-to-earth still lives. He also studied with a variety of artists, including Jan van Goyen, and became a prominent member of the Haarlem artistic community, on one occasion travelling to Germany with fellow townsman, Jacob van Ruisdael. The last decade of his life was spent in Amsterdam. Berchem painted some northern forest landscapes (like the one of the later 1640s in Dulwich Picture Gallery) of a type which this training and milieu might lead one to expect. The majority of his work however is Italianate, either inspired by an undocumented visit to Italy, which can only have occurred between 1651 and 1653, or by exposure to the work of returning Italianates such as Cornelis van Poelenburgh, Pieter van Laer, Jan Both and Jan Asselyn, all of whom were back home by the mid 1640s.

This landscape shows how the Italy of the imagination is as important as the Italy which can be visited and observed. In imagination Italy is a garden protected by a mountain wall. According to van Mander, Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Italian visit resulted in ‘many pictures from life on his journey, so that it was said of him, that while he visited the Alps, he had swallowed all the mountains and cliffs, and, upon coming home, he had spit them forth upon his canvas and panels; so remarkably was he able to follow these and other works of nature’. Berchem’s subject in this painting and the Italian Landscape with Figures and Animals (RCIN 404818) is similarly the journey - the herdsman and muleteer leading their beasts over mountain passes (in this painting) and onto scorched plateaus in time to arrive at an inn by sunset (in RCIN 404818).

Signed and dated: NBerchem / 1673