Object data
black chalk; framing line in brown ink
height 296 mm × width 154 mm
Gerrit Berckheyde
Standing Women, Seen from the Front
Haarlem, 1670 - 1698
Inscriptions
Technical notes
watermark: countermark with letters PM
Condition
Some foxing
Provenance
...; sale, Jacob de Vos Jbzn (1803-78, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 22 May 1883 sqq., no. 52 (‘Hiob Berkheyden. Feuilles d’étude. - Trois dessins. A la sanguine et à la pierre noire’), fl. 48, to the Vereniging Rembrandt (L. 2135), for the museum (L. 2228) as J. Berckheyde1
Object number: RP-T-1883-A-265
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt
Copyright: Public domain
Context
The artist
Gerrit Berckheyde (Haarlem, 1638 - Haarlem, 1698)
He was probably trained by his older brother, Job Berckheyde (1630-1693). In the 1650s, as a young teenager, Gerrit travelled with Job along the Rhine to Heidelberg to study and draw German architecture.2
The brothers established themselves in their native Haarlem around 1653-54 and probably shared a workshop.3 Gerrit joined the Guild of St Luke on 27 July 1660.4 He specialized in townscapes. Gerrit drew figure studies in red and black chalk to be used as staffage for his paintings, a large number of which have been preserved. The models for these drawings were shared among Haarlem artists and recorded by different hands during joint drawing sessions. In the past Gerrit’s drawings have thus often been confused with those of other Haarlem artists, especially Cornelis Bega (1631-1664).5 He is not known to have had students, but he collaborated with Jan van Huchtenburg (1647-1733) and possibly Nicolas Guérard (?-1719), Dirk Maas (1656-1717) and Johannes Lingelbach (1622-1674).6
From 1666 to 1681, Gerrit was a member of the Haarlem society of rhetoricians, the ‘Wijngaardranken’. He served as an official for the Haarlem Guild of St Luke between 1691 and 1695. He died unexpectedly on 10 January 1698, when he fell into the Brouwersvaart and drowned. He was buried in the nave of the St Jan four days later.7
Carolyn Mensing, 2020
References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, III (1721), pp. 189-97; A. van der Willigen, Geschiedkundige aantekeningen over Haarlemsche schilders, Haarlem 1866, p. 70; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, III (1909), p. 376; H. Jantzen, Das niederländische Architecturbild, Leipzig 1910, pp. 87-88; H. Gerson, Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Amsterdam 1942, pp. 168, 204, 25; B. Haak, Hollandse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw, Amsterdam 1984, p. 392; C. Lawrence, Gerrit Adriaensz. Berckheyde (1638-1698): Haarlem Cityscape Painter, Doornspijk 1991; C. Lawrence, ‘Berckheyde Family’, Grove Art Online, 2003, online at https://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000008029; I. van Thiel-Stroman, ‘Gerrit Adriaensz Berckheyde’, in P. Biesboer et al., Painting in Haarlem, 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 105-06
Entry
This study was previously associated with the figure of a standing woman in a similar pose, but holding a basket on her head, who appears – both in the same sense and in reverse – in several of the artist’s paintings, especially his views of Cologne from circa 1670 and after.8 These include pictures in the Staatliches Museum, Schwerin (inv. no. G 46); the Kölnisches Stadtmuseum, Cologne (inv. no. HM 1903/41); the Niedersächsiches Landesmuseum, Hannover (inv. no. PAM 981); and the Allentown Art Museum, PA (1987.031.004) – not to mention several others that have appeared on the art market in recent years, for example at Christie’s in 1995,9 and at the Dorotheum in 2013.10 Besides painted views in Germany, the same figure can be found in Berckheyde’s painting of the Temple of Vesta, Rome, with a Herdsman and other Figures, which was offered for sale by Christie’s in 2013.11
Since Berckheyde never travelled to Italy, he must have relied on a second-hand source for the depiction of ancient Roman buildings. Moreover, given the frequent and precise repetition of the motif of the basket-holding woman in so many of the artist’s paintings,12 it is likely that it, too, depends on another prototype (and not the present study).
Perhaps Berckheyde was inspired for the motif of the basket-holding woman in a print by Cornelis Bega (1631-1664),13 in which a walking peasant woman balances a large round basket on her head and holds a pitcher in her hand (e.g. RP-P-RP-P-BI-760).14 In all likelihood, however, there was once a figure study by Berckheyde of a woman with a basket on her head, for he usually incorporated his figure studies exactly in his paintings, even if occasionally reversed or with minor changes in dress or lighting. The same model studied in the present sheet was represented in a similar drawing – in which the basket is held in her right hand while she clutches up her skirt with her left – that was sold as Bega in Berlin in 1917.15
In any case, this woman was a favourite model for both Berckheyde and Bega, as well as other Haarlem artists. She is seen seated and wearing the same dress – though without the neckerchief – in a black chalk study by Berckheyde at the Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA (inv. no. 2009.207).16 That Berckheyde and Bega sometimes drew her together is seen by a comparison, for example, of a red chalk standing figure study by Berckheyde in the Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris (inv. no. 5112),17 which is matched by a rendition by Bega in the Courtauld Gallery, London (inv. no. D.1952.RW.2174).18 In yet another study by Berckheyde, also in red chalk and now in the Morgan Library & Museum, New York (inv. no. 1996.3), also once given to Bega,19 this same model is seated near a wooden barrel, a pose that Bega used for his painting of an Oriental Market Hall, which was on the Munich art market in 1971,20 and for which the Rijksmuseum’s drawing of a Standing Youth in a Large Hat, with a Basket under his Arm (inv. no. RP-T-1883-A-264) was also exploited. Although there is no known corresponding study by Berckheyde, the same woman was represented by Bega in the Rijksmuseum’s inv. no. RP-T-1883-A-271, as well as in drawings by at least one other unidentified Haarlem artist.
Bonny van Sighem, 2001/Jane Shoaf Turner, 2020
Literature
P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, no. 16;
F.W. Robinson, One Hundred Master Drawings from New England Private Collections, exh. cat. Hartford (CT) (Wadsworth Atheneum)/Hanover (NH) (Hopkins Center Art Galleries)/Boston (MA) (Museum of Fine Arts) 1973-74, p. 180; C. van Hasselt, Rembrandt and his Century: Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century: from the Collection of Frits Lugt, Institut Néerlandais, Paris, exh. cat. New York (Pierpont Morgan Library)/Paris (Institut Néerlandais) 1977-78, p. 13, under no. 6 (n. 13); F. Fox Hofrichter (ed.), Haarlem: The Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. New Brunswick (NJ) (The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum) 1983, p. 58, under no. 8; M.A. Scott, Cornelis Bega (1631/32-1664) as Painter and Draughtsman, 2 vols., Ann Arbor (MI) 1984 (PhD diss., University of Maryland), pp. 88-89, 133-37, 430, no. GB1, p. 437, under no. GB31, fig. 127; W.W. Robinson, Seventeenth-century Dutch Drawings: A Selection from the Maida and George Abrams Collection, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Vienna (Graphische Sammlung Albertina)/New York (Pierpont Morgan Library)/Cambridge (MA) (Fogg Art Museum) 1991-92, p. 206, under no. 94; B.P.J. Broos and M. Schapelhouman, Nederlandse tekenaars geboren tussen 1600 en 1660, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1993 (Oude tekeningen in het bezit van het Amsterdams Historisch Museum, waaronder de collectie Fodor, vol. 4), p. 40, under no. 26 (nn. 1-3)
Citation
B. van Sighem, 2001/J. Turner, 2020, 'Gerrit Berckheyde, Standing Women, Seen from the Front, Haarlem, 1670 - 1698', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.27417
(accessed 28 December 2024 17:09:05).