Shepherd and Shepherdess Seated in a Landscape

? Haarlem, c. 1655

Object data

black chalk, with some opaque white, over some traces of graphite, on paper toned with light brown wash; indented for transfer; verso: partially blackened for transfer; framing line in brown ink

height 204 mm × width 253 mm

Inscriptions

signed: lower left, in black ink, Casteleijn.Fecit
inscribed on verso: left, in an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century hand, in graphite (with the sheet turned 90°), 50; lower left, by Johann Edler Goll von Franckenstein, in brown ink, N 785. (L. 2987); below that, in an eighteenth-century hand, in graphite (effaced), ƒ-ú=1..[?] 0:-
stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: letters CC; similar to Heawood, no. 2897 (Amsterdam: 1646)

Condition

Abrasions at left border; small loss at upper right corner; small hole, restored, left of the shepherd’s shoulder; verso traces of black colour along the borders

Provenance

…; collection Johann Edler Goll von Franckenstein (1722-85), Amsterdam and Velzen (L. 2987); ? his son, Jonkheer Johan Goll van Franckenstein (1756-1821), Amsterdam and Velzen; ? his son, Jonkheer Pieter Hendrik Goll van Franckenstein (1787-1832), Amsterdam;¹ …; possibly anonymous sale, Amsterdam (J. de Vries et al.), 20 November 1826, Album S, no. 27 (‘Philemon en Dafné, door Casteleyn’), with four other drawings, fl. 11-5, to ‘Siebouts’;² …; sale, Adriaan van der Willigen (1766-1841, The Hague) and his nephew, Adriaan van der Willigen Pz (1810-76, Rotterdam and Haarlem), The Hague (A.G. de Visser), 12 August 1874, no. 49; …; sale, A.G. de Visser (?-?, The Hague), Amsterdam (F. Muller), 16 May 1881 sqq., no. 70, fl. 116, to the dealer J. de Vries, Amsterdam;³ from whom, fl. 133, to the museum (L. 2228), 1881

Object number: RP-T-1881-A-101

The artist

Casper Casteleyn (Haarlem c. 1625 – place unknown, after 1661)

Casper (or Jasper) Casteleyn was the fifth child of the Haarlem-born Mennonite printer and bookseller of Flemish origin, Vincent Casteleyn (1587-1658), and his wife, Maycke Jaspers (?-1661). Of Casper’s eight siblings, four followed their father’s footsteps: Johannes Casteleyn (1612-c. 1653) was a bookseller and paper merchant in Amsterdam; Pieter Casteleyn (1618-1676) was the editor from 1651 to 1676 of the Hollantse Mercurius; Jacob Casteleyn (?-?) was a member of the Guild of booksellers in 1650; and Abraham Casteleyn (1628-1682) was the founder of the Oprechte Haarlemse Courant in 1656. Two of his brothers were trained as painters. The eldest, Vincent Casteleyn II (1609-1659), first studied medicine, then was apprenticed to Pieter de Grebber (1595/1605-c. 1600), entered the Haarlem Guild of St Luke in 1636, moved to Amsterdam two years later and to Rotterdam in 1647. The other artist brother was the publisher Pieter Casteleyn, who was taught in 1635 by Willem de Poorter (1608-in or after 1649/51) and also by Pieter de Grebber.

Casper Casteleyn was himself admitted as a painter to the Haarlem Guild of St Luke on 6 May 1653. His earliest work dates from the previous year, his design in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1852,1211.23), for the engraved and etched Portrait of Dirck Raphaelsz Camphuysen, etched by Salomon Savery (1593/94-1683) in 1652 (e.g. RP-P-OB-5582).⁴ The following year Casper designed the title-page of an anatomy book (inv. no. RP-T-1890-A-2395). The designs by Casper for the pages of his brother’s Hollantse Mercurius were engraved by Savery, as well as by Cornelis Visscher (1628/29-1658).

Although not so well known today, in the seventeenth century Casteleyn was apparently regarded as a renowned painter. Cornelis de Bie, in his Gulden cabinet (1662), mentions a ‘Casteleyn’, usually likened with Casper, who was inclined to art since his youth and who was still active in 1662.⁵ Only a few paintings can now be securely given to the artist, including Granida and Daifilo (1652) in the State Hermitage, St Petersburg (inv. no. ??-7647). His latest dated painting is Minerva Visiting a Prisoner (1659) in the Muzeum Kolekcij im. Jana Pawla II, Warsaw (inv. no. unknown).⁶ History paintings by him are mentioned in seventeenth-century inventories, and according to a sale catalogue of 1893, he might have been active until circa 1670.⁷ Only a few signed drawings by the artist are known, and the boundary between his oeuvre and that of his elder brothers Vincent II and Pieter is not always clear.

Annemarie Stefes 2019

References
C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edel vry schilder-const, Antwerp 1661-62, p. 384; A. van der Willigen, Les Artistes de Harlem: Notices historiques avec un précis sur la Gilde de St. Luc, Haarlem/The Hague 1870, pp. 30, 106; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, I (1906), p. 248; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, VI (1912), pp. 140-41 (entry by E.W. Moes); A. Bredius (ed.), Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der holländischen Kunst des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts, 8 vols., The Hague 1915-22, VI (1919), pp. 1985, 1993-99, 2036; VII (1921), pp. 22, 138; P.C. Molhuysen et al. (eds.), Nieuw Nederlandsch biografisch woordenboek, 10 vols., Leiden 1911-37, IX (1933), col. 134-35; A. Beyer et al. (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992-, XVII (1997), p. 167; P. Groenendijk, Beknopt biografisch lexicon van Zuid- en Noord-Nederlandse schilders, graveurs, glasschilders, tapijtwevers et cetera van ca. 1350 tot ca. 1720, Utrecht 2008, p. 183; G. Verhoeven and S. van der Veen, De Hollandse Mercurius. Een Haarlems jaarboek uit de zeventiende eeuw, Haarlem 2011, pp. 21-27

Entry

This signed sheet, considered to be Casper Casteleyn’s best-known work, served as a model for a print (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-BI-6754) by Cornelis van Dalen II (1638-c. 1660/64).⁸ The contours were indented with a stylus and the verso was blackened to transfer the image to the copper-plate – some traces of black chalk dust of which are still visible. Van Dalen’s year of death, 1664, offers a terminus ante quem for the drawing’s date, but it may have been done earlier, given the stylistic links to inv. no. RP-T-1890-A-2395 (1653). There are some pentimenti next to the right leg of the shepherd, indicating that his leg was originally more upright.

The print’s signature includes the inventor’s first initial ‘J’. This could have referred to either of Casper’s brothers Johannes Casteleyn (1612-c. 1653) or Jacob Casteleyn (?-?), but they were both booksellers rather than artists. Instead the initial was doubtless intended to denote ‘Jasper’ or ‘Jan’, two alternate name forms used by ‘Casper’. Casper Casteleyn’s draughtsmanship is characterized by smooth contours, animated by elegant, dark accents, subtly blended white heightening and precise hatching. His skilful rendering of surfaces and modelling is best seen in the folds of the drapery and in the delicately sketched hands, though he struggled with the anatomy of the shepherd’s awkwardly bent left leg and foot. The drawing supports the traditional attribution of other drawings to Caspter Casteleyn, such as two studies of cavaliers in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (KdZ 13030 and KdZ 1400).⁹

Closely related in composition is a drawing of a Couple Seated in a Landscape in Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (inv. no. CC 1),¹⁰ which is also signed with the surname ‘Casteleyn’, but with a ligated initial that could be read as either ‘J’ or ‘P’. It, too, is currently classified as by Casper Casteleyn, but the dress of the man and woman suggest a date in the 1630s, ruling out the hand of Casper (who was born only c. 1625) and pointing instead to his elder brother Pieter Casteleyn (1618-1676) as the more likely candidate. Given the compositional similarity, it could be that Casper knew and was inspired by the Rotterdam drawing or a similar work for the present sheet.

The precise subject of this pastoral depiction – a shepherd crowning a shepherdess with a floral wreath – is unclear; it is probably a scene from classical or contemporary literature. It was erroneously described in a nineteenth-century sale catalogue as ‘Philemon and Dafné’, a conflation of the stories of Philemon and Baucis (an elderly couple) and Apollo and Daphne (a nymph transformed into a laurel tree when pursued by the god). It is more likely to represent either Paris and Oenone, like paintings by Pieter Lastman (1583-1633), one dated 1610 in the High Museum of Art, Atlanta (inv. no. 1990.57),¹¹ or one from 1619 in the Worcester Art Museum (inv. no. 1984.39),¹² or the story of Granida and Daifilo, a subject from the Dutch pastoral play by Pieter Cornelisz. Hooft (1581-1647) that was depicted by Casteleyn himself in an undated painting in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (inv. no. ??-7647).

** Gerdien Wuestman, 2000/Annemarie Stefes, 2019**

Literature

Jaarverslag Rijksprentenkabinet 1881, p. 7; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, VI (1912), pp. 140-41 (entry by E.W. Moes); P.C. Molhuysen et al. (eds.), Nieuw Nederlandsch biografisch woordenboek, 10 vols., Leiden 1911-37, IX (1933), col. 134; F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, V (1951), p. 104, no. 8; A. Stefes, Niederländische Zeichnungen, 1450-1800, 3 vols., coll. cat. Hamburg 2011 (Die Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, vol. 2), I, pp. 161-62, under no. 200

Citation

G. Wuestman, 2000/A. Stefes, 2019, 'Casper Casteleyn, Shepherd and Shepherdess Seated in a Landscape, Haarlem, c. 1655', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.31607

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