Rijksmuseum

Object data

pen and brown ink, with grey wash; possibly later additions in watercolour and dark grey wash; framing line in black ink

height 111 mm × width 196 mm

Inscriptions

stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)
inscribed on old lining paper (removed, but preserved), in graphite: upper left, 88 Z; lower left, in a nineteenth-century hand, Het Fort Michiel of Petler Schans / buyten de Stad S Hertogenbosch / A0 1672; centre right, in a nineteenth-century hand, A[n]ché Gruyter / Oct 82; lower right, J de Grave
stamped on old lining paper (removed, but preserved): lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: none

Provenance

…; ? collection Willem Gruyter, sr (1763-1832), Amsterdam;¹ ? his son, Willem Gruyter, jr (1817-1880), Amsterdam; ? his sale, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos and C.F. Roos, jr.), 24 October 1882 sqq., no. 180, together with 15 other drawings, fl. 43 for all, to ‘van Gogh’;² …; acquired by the museum (L. 2228), with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt, 1888³

Object number: RP-T-1888-A-1615

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The artist

Josua de Grave (Amsterdam 1643 - The Hague 1712)

He was the son of the French merchant Claude Pietersz de Grave [Graeff] (c. 1597/98-after 1667) and Sara Bols (?-c. 1655) and was baptized in the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, on 2 July 1643.⁴ De Grave had three brothers and two sisters.⁵ He grew up in Haarlem, where the family moved soon after his birth. In 1659, at age sixteen, he entered the Haarlem Guild of St Luke,⁶ but it is unknown with whom he trained. Based on a drawing dated 1663, depicting a landscape in the vicinity of Paris, now in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (KdZ 2480),⁷ we know that he moved to Paris during or after his training. De Grave lived in Paris until 1668, after which he moved to Maastricht.

In Maastricht he likely met Barend Klotz (?-?) and Valentijn Klotz (c. 1646-1721), two fellow draughtsmen affiliated with the Dutch army.⁸ Until 1670, the trio resided in Maastricht, where they made around sixty drawings of the city and its surroundings. Only a handful of these drawings are signed (e.g. inv. nos. RP-T-1946-63 and RP-T-1911-100).⁹ In the following decades, the three artists accompanied the army of the Dutch States-General under the Stadholder Prince Willem III of Orange Nassau (1650-1702) on their various campaigns: to Bergen op Zoom (1671-early 1672), cities around the Dutch ‘waterlinie’ (1672) and various regions in the southern Netherlands and present-day Belgium (1674, 1675 and 1676).

On 3 December 1670, De Grave married Jenneton de Bisson (1645-?) in Maastricht.¹⁰ The newlyweds moved from Maastricht to The Hague, joining De Grave’s sister and his brother, Cornelis, who had moved there already.¹¹ After each military campaign, De Grave returned to The Hague, where he settled permanently after the last campaign in 1676 and died in July 1712.¹² Several drawings dated between the 1670s and the 1710s record sights around the city. In the final years of his career, he also produced paintings and drawings of (Italianate) gardens and fantasy landscapes (e.g. inv. nos. RP-T-00-148 and RP-T-1895-A-3063).

Josua de Grave often signed his work, using his full name or a variation, such as J. de Grave or Josua de Grave fecit. In many instances, he also included a location and a date. His signature is usually followed by a colon, then the year and the day and month (expressed as a fraction). His handwriting is quite distinct, using elegant, curly (capital) letters and a typical old-fashioned letter ‘e’. His drawings were initially quickly sketched in graphite or black chalk, after which he applied brown ink lines to further work out the composition. He seemed to have relied on a certain formula for most of his drawings, placing the horizon in the centre of the sheet and scattering the main elements around it. He often included trees, foliage or figures closer to the foreground, creating a repoussoir. De Grave drew his trees by outlining the trunks and branches, then scribbling in the leaves using cloud-like shapes.¹³ In most instances, in addition to the brown ink composition, grey washes are applied sparingly, particularly for the shadows on houses and roofs, foliage and simple cloud formations. Drawings that are more heavily washed are likely to have been worked up by (a) later hand(s).

Carolyn Mensing, 2019

References

R. van Eijnden and A. van der Willigen, ‘Klotz, Valentijn’, in U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XX (1927), pp. 549-50; R.J.G.M. van Hasselt, ‘Drie tekenaars van topografische prenten in Brabant en elders. Valentijn Klotz, Josua de Grave en Constantijn Huygens Jr.’, Jaarboek Oudheidkundige Kring ‘De Ghulden Roos’ 25 (1965), pp. 145-55; M.H. Breitbarth-van der Stok, ‘Josua de Grave, Valentinus Klotz en Bernardus Klotz’, Bulletin Koninklijke Nederlandse Oudheidkundige Bond 68 (1969), pp. 96-98; J.H. van Mosselveld and W.A. van Ham, Tekeningen van Bergen op Zoom. Topografische afbeeldingen van Bergen op Zoom en omgeving uit de zestiende tot en met de achttiende eeuw, exh. cat. Bergen op Zoom (Markiezenhof) 1973-74, pp. 15-18; G. Gordon, ‘Grave, Josua de’, in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols., London/New York 1996, XIII, pp. 323-24

Entry

The fortress of Saint-Michiel in ’s-Hertogenbosch, a star-shaped defensive structure also known as the Pettelaarse Schans, was built in 1623 to prevent Maurits of Orange (1567-1625) from capturing the city during the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648). The fortress was deliberately destroyed in 1672, during the ‘disaster year’, to stop a potential siege by the French army.¹⁴

If the date later inscribed on the verso of the sheet is correct, this drawing was probably made just before the destruction of the fortress, for the drawing depicts it still intact.

It is somewhat difficult to attribute the present drawing with certainty, owing to the lack of inscriptions and the minimal use of brown ink lines in this bare landscape. The outlines most closely resemble those in the drawings of De Grave, who used cloud-like shapes for leaves and shrubberies. The coloured washes, as well as some darker grey enhancements in the areas of shadow and the grass, might have been added by a later, perhaps eighteenth-century hand. Only a few of De Grave drawings include watercolour washes and those that do display a varied style and colour palette.

Carolyn Mensing, 2020

Literature

R.J.G.M. van Hasselt, ‘Drie tekenaars van topografische prenten in Brabant en elders. Valentijn Klotz, Josua de Grave en Constantijn Huygens Jr.’, Jaarboek Oudheidkundige Kring ‘De Ghulden Roos’ 25 (1965), pp. 145-92, no. 159 (as Josua de Grave)

Citation

C. Mensing, 2020, 'attributed to Josua de Grave, View of the Fortress of Saint-Michiel, near ’s-Hertogenbosch, Den Bosch, 1672', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.51814

(accessed 23 November 2024 23:36:15).