View of the Bulwark De Westerbeer, with the Mill De Beer, near the Haarlemmerpoort, Amsterdam

Amsterdam, c. 1650

Object data

black chalk, with grey wash; framing line in black chalk (mostly trimmed)

height 203 mm × width 318 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed: upper left, in brown ink, retraced in black chalk, 3
inscribed on verso: lower left, in a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century hand, in brown ink, b (?) n° 3
stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of the Vereniging Rembrandt (L. 2135); below that, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228); below that, with the mark of De Vos (L. 1450)

Technical notes

Watermark: Foolscap; cf. Laurentius 2007, nos. 493-94 (The Hague: 1647)

Provenance

…; collection Jacob de Vos Jbzn (1803-82), Amsterdam (L. 1450); his widow, Abrahamina Henrietta de Vos-Wurfbain (1808-83), Amsterdam; his sale, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 22 May 1883 sqq., no. 446, with two other drawings, fl. 41, to Georg Carl Valentin Schöffer,¹ for the Vereniging Rembrandt (L. 2135); from whom acquired by the museum (L. 2228), 1887²

Object number: RP-T-1887-A-1385

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

Context

The artist

Roelant Roghman (Amsterdam 1627 - Amsterdam 1692)

He was the son of Hendrick Lambertsz Roghman (1602-1647/57) and Maria Saverij and was baptized on 25 March 1627 in Amsterdam’s Nieuwe Kerk. His father worked as an engraver,³ as did two of his five siblings: his sisters Geertruyt (1625-c. 1651/57) and Magdalena (1632⁴-after 1669).⁵ Through his mother, Roelant was a grandson of Jacob Savery I (1566-1603) and a great-nephew of Roelant Savery (1576-1639), after whom he was named. It is not known under whom he trained, but it is likely that he was influenced by the example of his grandfather and great-uncle. Although sometimes grouped with the pupils of Rembrandt (1606-1669), Roghman never actually studied with him. They were friends, however, and according to Houbraken, Rembrandt refused to accept Jan Griffier (1645/52-1718) as an apprentice because he was already studying with his friend Roghman.

Roghman was a prolific draughtsman, whose earliest dated works are two drawn views of tollhouses on the River IJ, both dated 1645, in the Van Eeghen collection, Stadsarchief, Amsterdam (inv. nos. 10055/28) and 10055/29).⁶ Among the works possibly made even earlier is a pen-and-wash drawing in the Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden (inv. nos. C 1798), clearly influenced by Roelant Savery.⁷

In 1646/47, Roghman embarked on his most ambitious project, the series of some 250 castle drawings, of which the Rijksmuseum owns 49 individual sheets. Besides travelling through the Dutch provinces to make castle drawings and topographical views, he also visited Brussels and the region around Cleves.⁸ A number of alpine landscapes – including one in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (inv. no. MB 221), dated 1654⁹ – suggest that he must have travelled to the Alps that year,¹⁰ presumably passing through France. A trip further south may be documented by a View of San Giacomo a Rialto in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (KdZ 2617), traditionally attributed to the artist,¹¹ and a signed drawing in the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Sailing Boat at a Moorage, could have well been made in Venice.¹² In 1657, Roghman stayed in Augsburg, where he had a set of six etched alpine landscapes published by Melchior Küsel (1626-1684)¹³ and contributed a drawing to an album amicorum (inv. no. RP-T-1898-A-3991). No later than 1658, he was back in Amsterdam, where he is documented during the 1660s. In 1672, his opinion was sought on the authenticity of a group of Italian paintings in a legal dispute between Gerrit Uylenburgh (c. 1625-1679) and Friedrich Wilhelm, Elector of Brandenburg (1620-1688).

Roghman’s rare paintings feature mostly mountain scenes and were probably done after his trip to the Alps. Of his circa fifty etchings, mostly landscapes, one depicts the Breach of the St Anthony’s Dike,¹⁴ a famous incident in 1651 that was also recorded by Jan Asselijn (c. 1610-1652), for example in his painting in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. SK-A-5030), Willem Schellinks (1627-1678) and Jacob Esselens (1626-1687).

Roghman apparently never married and from 1686 lived in Amsterdam’s Oudemannenhuis (Old Men’s Home). His last dated drawing is from 1657, but according to Houbraken, he continued to produce art well into his old age. He died on 3 January 1692 and was buried in the St Anthonis Kerkhof, Amsterdam.

Annemarie Stefes, 2018

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, I (1718), pp. 173-74; III (1721), p. 358; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, II (1910), p. 464; R. Juynboll, ‘Roelant Roghman’, in U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXVIII (1934), p. 518, with earlier literature; W.T. Kloek, ‘Een berglandschap door Roelant Roghman’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 23 (1975), no. 2, pp. 100-01; F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols, Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, XX (1978), pp. 67-93; H. Gerson and B.W. Meijer (eds.), Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der Holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Amsterdam 1983 (rev. ed.; orig. ed. 1942), pp. 27, 49, 130, 186, 293, 307, 356, 403; W. Kloek and J.W. Niemeijer, De kasteeltekeningen van Roelant Roghman II, Alphen aan den Rijn 1990, pp. 1-14; W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-92, X (1992), pp. 4989-5174; 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. 642

Entry

The drawing belongs to a series of six views drawn along the ramparts of Amsterdam, apparently made during the course of one day.¹⁵ Linked by style and subject-matter, four of the related sheets are in the British Museum, London (inv. nos. SL,5214.98, SL,5214.99, SL,5214.100 and SL,5214.101),¹⁶ and the fifth is in the Stadsarchief, Amsterdam (inv. no. 010097006426). None of these drawings is signed, but on grounds of style, Roghman’s authorship has never been contested. Somewhat reminiscent of the artist’s castle drawings of 1646-1647, they reveal a greater freedom in the handling of chalk and wash and were probably made circa 1650.¹⁷

Like his friend Rembrandt (1606-1669), Roghman strolled along the city walls of Amsterdam, then fortified with twenty-one bulwarks, sixteen of which were crowned by windmills that combined both a military and a commercial function.¹⁸ The present sheet depicts the bulwark known as De Westerbeer (‘The Western Bear’), with its grain mill De Beer (‘The Bear’),¹⁹ which was situated north of the Haarlemmerpoort (Haarlem Gate).²⁰ In the right foreground, in front of the mill, a woman is spreading laundry to dry in the sun. Discernible along the bulwark to the south, in the left distance, is the Haarlemmerpoort, with its distinctive clock tower built between 1615 and 1618 after a design by Hendrick de Keyser (1565-1621).²¹ All the principal topographical motifs of the present composition appear in the background of one of the London sheets (inv. no. SL,5214-101), which shows the same view from a vantage further north, from the bulwark De Bocht, dominated in the foreground by the grain mill called De Verrevanger (‘The Replacement’). Since Roghman came from a family of millers,²² it is to no surprise that he found such subject-matter attractive.

Bakker’s suggestion that Roghman actually accompanied Rembrandt on the latter’s walks to the bulwarks while still a youth was dismissed by Kloek.²³ There are too many differences in detail, for instance, in their respective views of the bulwark De Blauwhoofd, such as a two-master present in Rembrandt’s drawing in the Albertina, Vienna (inv. no. 17560r),²⁴ which is missing from the abovementioned drawing by Roghman in the Stadsarchief, which nonetheless has a similar viewpoint.

Two of the British Museum drawings (inv. nos. SL,5214.99 and SL,5214.100) are inscribed and numbered on the lower edge of their recto in the same old hand as annotated the verso of the present sheet, no 6 b (?).²⁵

Annemarie Stefes, 2018

Citation

A. Stefes, 2018, 'Roelant Roghman, View of the Bulwark De Westerbeer, with the Mill De Beer, near the Haarlemmerpoort, Amsterdam, Amsterdam, c. 1650', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.59902

(accessed 24 November 2024 00:00:10).