View of the Steenbergse Poort at Bergen op Zoom from the South-west

Context

The Rijksmuseum holds a collection of 119 landscape drawings by three late seventeenth-century draughtsmen, Josua de Grave (1643-1712), Valentijn Klotz (c. 1646-1721) and his relative (possibly a brother or cousin?), midshipman (‘adelborst’) Barend Klotz (?-?). During the Franco-Dutch war (1672-78), the three artists accompanied the army of the Dutch States-General under the command of Stadholder Prince Willem III of Orange (1650-1702) on several campaigns to Brabant, Limburg, Hainaut and East Flanders, during which they depicted the encampments, landscapes, cities and villages they encountered along the way. The three artists probably drew in situ and share a very similar style. They often depicted the same sites or even directly copied each other’s works. Only a few of these sheets are fully signed. As a result, several of the drawings in this group have been shifted back and forth between the three artists’ oeuvres.

Drawings made during the campaigns of the Dutch army

De Grave and both members of the Klotz family lived and worked in Maastricht around 1668 and probably met each other there. Between 1668 and 1671, they produced circa sixty drawings of the city and its environs. During these years, they likely became acquainted with the regiment of the Netherlands Marine Corps Capt. Harderwijk (?-?) through Barend Klotz, who was a midshipman, possibly in his regiment.² Although related documents have not been found, we may assume Barend might have advised the other two artists to join the regiment as independent artists.
The three artists joined the regiment of Capt. Harderwijk at Bergen op Zoom in 1671. The following year, the artists produced at least eighty-four drawings of the city, its surroundings and neighboring towns.³ They made detailed drawings of the buildings, as well as views of the city from different vantages. Among examples of drawings of the same motif, whether drawn side by side or one copied from the other, are two drawings of the city fountain (‘stadsfontein’) on the beach of Bergen op Zoom, one sheet by Josua de Grave in the Rijksmuseum’s collection (inv. no. RP-T-1899-A-4236) and one attributed to Barend Klotz in the Noordbrabants Museum, ’s-Hertogenbosch (inv. no. 12180).⁴ Many of the buildings and fortifications depicted in these drawings no longer exist, and as such, these sheets also function as historical records of the city.

In 1672, better known as the ‘disaster year’ (rampjaar), the three artists followed the Dutch army under the command of the newly appointed Capt.-Gen. Willem III, Prince of Orange throughout the southern Netherlands. His armies were stationed in Breda, ’s-Hertogenbosch and Maastricht, tasked to prevent the French from capturing the upper regions of the Dutch Republic.⁵ In 1674, 1675 and 1676, the three artists accompanied the army during their campaigns to the southern Netherlands and present-day Belgium, drawing the sites they encountered. Interestingly, they refrained from depicting any of the battles; sheets that include soldiers were drawn within the encampments, portraying a more idyllic side of army life (e.g. inv. no. RP-T-00-145). Occasionally, they recorded the ravages of the various battles in cities through which they passed during their journeys; Valentijn Klotz drew the ruins of the church in Grave in two sheets in the Rijksmuseum’s collection (inv. nos. RP-T-1900-A-4362 and RP-T-00-172).

We can trace the exact route of the army of the States-General by studying the detailed descriptions in the diaries of Constantijn Huygens II (1628-1697), the newly appointed secretary to Willem III. Huygens, who was an artist himself, also drew a few of the same sites as De Grave and both Valentijn and Barend Klotz (e.g. inv. no. RP-T-1899-A-4268). Huygens never specifically mentioned any of the three artists, although he did record an encounter with an artist that did not meet with his approval. On 16 September 1675, he wrote that that night he had met a draughtsman of little importance through a certain Mr. Naeldwyc and that he showed him unimportant drawings (‘le soir un certain crayonneur de peu d’importance, que mr. de Naeldwyc m’avoit adressé, me fit voir des pieces de sa facon et de peu d’importance.’).⁶ Huygens’s diary is a useful source for the dating and further identification of the sites of some of the sheets by De Grave and Valentijn and Barend Klotz in the Rijksmuseum’s collection.

Collectors

The drawings by Josua de Grave, Valentijn and Barend Klotz were widely collected in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They are often annotated on the versos and include several collectors’ marks of prominent collectors. Most of the inscriptions refer to the location the drawing was made, often inscribed in a similar, possibly nineteenth-century hand. Collectors such as Sybrand Feitama II (1694-1758), Johann Edler Goll von Franckenstein (1722-1785), William Esdaile (1758-1837), Frederik Carel Theodoor, Baron van Isendoorn à Blois, Heer van Feluy and De Cannenburgh (1784-1865) and Jacob de Vos Jbzn (1803-1878) owned several sheets by these artists. Over the years, many of them were sold or donated to public institutions around the world, but there are probably still quite a large number of sheets in private hands. In 1965, Van Hasselt counted at least 578 in public collections,⁷ but more drawings have surfaced since his publication appeared. Frederik Muller (1817-1881), collector and dealer, who owned a large collection by De Grave and Klotz, refers to at least 300 drawings made by Josua de Grave alone, depicting the encampments of the Dutch army in Limburg and Brabant.⁸ The Rijksmuseum’s holdings includes about fifty sheets from Muller’s collection.

Characteristics, style and attribution

The drawings in the Rijksmuseum’s collection share many similarities in subject-matter, style and format – often corresponding to the dimensions of the folios in a standard sketchbook. About half of them lack original inscriptions, dates or signatures, making attributions challenging. For the attribution of those sheets that do include inscriptions, a useful comparison of the handwriting has been clearly laid out by Mosselveld and Van Ham in their 1973 catalogue.⁹ Josua de Grave most often signed his drawings. Typical of his hand are quick, loose strokes and the use of very distinguishable, curly capital letters. The handwriting of Valentijn and Barend Klotz share more similarities, but, on closer examination, Valentijn’s handwriting is more irregular and messy and his capital letter ‘B’ is distinctly different. As for Barend’s handwriting, his style is more calligraphic and he used a typical seventeenth-century ‘W’ in several of his sheets.¹⁰(https://geheugen.delpher.nl/nl/geheugen/view?identifier=UBL01%3AP313-2N027){target="_blank"}). Further, he most consistently used the old-fashioned ‘e’, which looks like an ‘o’ with a loop through its centre. Based on the drawings that bear inscriptions, further comparisons of the artists’ drawing styles can be made. As a result, several sheets could be more firmly attributed to one of the three artists.

Stylistically, the museum’s collection of drawings by the three artists can be roughly divided into four groups. The first group is initially drawn with graphite and finished with thin brown pen lines. These drawings have something of a ghostlike quality, lacking shading and volume. The handling of the pen and the manner in which the forms are described in these ‘bare’ drawings provide a starting point for differentiating the artists’ hands (compare, for example, inv. nos. RP-T-1888-A-1608, RP-T-1900-A-4361 and RP-T-1907-25).

In the second group, the artists enhanced their pen-and-ink compositions with sparingly applied grey washes to create depth and shadows. The grey wash seems to have been used predominantly in the architecture, the foliage and more sparingly in the form of clouds in the sky (e.g. inv. nos. RP-T-1898-A-3538 and RP-T-1888-A-1642). The third group includes more heavily applied washes, possibly added by later hands (e.g. inv. nos. RP-T-1890-A-2272, RP-T-1899-A-4281 and RP-T-00-736). Interestingly, many of the drawings in the third group seem to have had an initial inscription in the lower or upper section of the sheet, but these inscriptions have been erased and concealed with grey wash at some point. These drawings do, however, include inscriptions in graphite on the verso, probably in a nineteenth-century hand, which presumably transcribe what was once written on the recto and provide a clue to the date of the later grey wash additions.

The final group of drawings feature coloured washes in different shades and intensities, also in all likelihood added later, possibly by eighteenth-century collectors who wished to ‘improve’ their drawings, a common practice at the time. Good examples are two drawings by Josua de Grave made in Bergen op Zoom (inv. nos. RP-T-1899-A-4235 and RP-T-1899-A-4236) which were in the same collection and whose colours are very similar. Further, two drawings depicting Huis Kluys near Brussels (inv. nos. RP-T-1905-64 and RP-T-1905-65), both now attributed to De Grave, could have been coloured by the artist himself at a later date (possibly after 1700) or by a different artist. This pair belonged consecutively to Johann Edler Goll von Franckenstein, possibly Jacob de Vos Jbzn, William Esdaile and René Jacques della Faille de Waerloos (1830-1902).¹¹ The first mention of a drawing with colour appeared in the sales catalogue of William Esdaile,¹² but the watercolour washes might have been added at an earlier stage. Another coloured drawing by the same artist, the View of Fort Navagne (inv. no. RP-T-1911-100), belonged to the collection of Sybrand Feitama II, a collector known to have paid artists to ‘improve’ his drawings.¹³

Carolyn Mensing, 2019