Rijksmuseum

Object data

pen and brown ink, with point of brush and grey ink and grey wash, over black chalk and some graphite; framing line in brown ink

height 186 mm × width 299 mm

Inscriptions

monogrammed: lower left, in brown ink, IVA. (in ligature)
inscribed on verso: lower left, probably in a nineteenth-century hand, in blue pencil, 3; below that, in a nineteenth-century hand, in pencil, J. v. Aken
stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of the Vereniging Rembrandt (L. 2135); below that, with the mark of De Vos (L. 1450); next to that, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: pelican; similar to Heawood, no. 199 (Holland: 1644)

Provenance

…; collection Jacob de Vos Jbzn (1803-82), Amsterdam (L. 1450); his widow, Abrahamina Henrietta de Vos-Wurfbain (1808-83), Amsterdam; sale, Jacob de Vos Jbzn, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 22 May 1883 sqq., no. 637, with one other drawing (inv. no. RP-T-1889-A-2028), fl. 15, to the dealer Georg Carl Valentin Schöffer for the Vereniging Rembrandt (L. 2135);¹ from whom, to the museum (L. 2228), 1889

Object number: RP-T-1889-A-2029

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The artist

Jan van Aken (? Amsterdam c. 1614 – Amsterdam 1661)

According to a tradition of unknown origin, he was born in 1614 in Amsterdam. Houbraken described him as a ‘een Paardeschilder, maar in ’t klein’ (‘painter of horses, on a small scale’).² His oeuvre consists of more than forty drawings and twenty-one landscape etchings, including a series of horses after Pieter van Laer (1599-1642)³ and four Rhine landscapes after sketches by Herman Saftleven (c. 1609-1685), one of which is dated 1648.⁴ The nature of Van Aken’s relation to both artists remains unexplored.

Among the examples of dated drawings include two from 1652: Valley with Ruined Bridge in the Special Collections, Universiteit Leiden (inv. no. PK-T-AW-3), and Rocky Landscape with Figures on a Road by a Stream in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1836,0811.1).⁵ Only a handful of paintings can be securely associated with the artist, for instance a pair from the early 1650s, Dune Landscape with Travellers and Gypsies (1650) in a private collection,⁶ and Mountainous River Landscape (165(?)) in the Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie, Warsaw (inv. no. M.Ob.437 MNW), previously published as signed and dated 1650.⁷

What is generally assumed to be this artist, a certain ‘Jan van Aken’, brother-in-law of a Lammert van den Velden, living at the corner of the Nieuwbrugsteeg, was buried in the Oudezijds Kapel on 25 March 1661.

Annemarie Stefes, 2019

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, III (1721), p. 183; R. van Eijnden and A. van der Willigen, Geschiedenis der vaderlandsche schilderkunst, 4 vols., Haarlem 1816-40, I (1816), pp. 214-15; F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis, 7 vols., Rotterdam 1877-90, V (1882-83), p. 203; A.D. de Vries, ‘Biografische aanteekeningen betreffende voornamelijk Amsterdamsche schilders, plaatsnijders, enz. en hunne verwanten (I)’, Oud-Holland 3 (1885), p. 58; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, I (1906), p. 8; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, I (1907), p. 158 (entry by E.W. Moes); F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, I (1947), pp. 5-9; W.L. Strauss (ed.), The Illustrated Bartsch, New York and elsewhere 1978-, I (1978), pp. 267-79, nos. 1-21; W. Schulz, Herman Saftleven (1609-1685): Leben und Werke, mit einem kritischen Katalog der Gemälde und Zeichnungen, Berlin 1982, pp. 72, 113-14; A. Beyer et al. (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992-, I (1992), p. 700; 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. 57; https://rkd.nl/explore/artists/774

Entry

Though not pendants, the present sheet and inv. no. RP-T-1897-A-3397 feature the same kind of bizarrely shaped rocks, combined with a view over a distant river valley. This type of landscape echoes works by Herman Saftleven (1609-1685), who must have exerted considerable influence on Van Aken, who made four etchings after him (e.g. inv. nos. RP-P-BI-25, RP-P-1895-A-18807, RP-P-1935-641 and RP-P-BI-29).⁸

The present drawing is the museum’s only example of a monogrammed work by Jan van Aken, the initials ‘IV A’ written with the same ink as was used for the original passages in pen. Other drawings signed with a monogram – indicating that they were probably intended for sale to collectors – include examples in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1895,0915.1090),⁹ and the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (inv. no. 21627),¹⁰

Annemarie Stefes, 2019

Literature

M. Schapelhouman, Het beste bewaard. Een Amsterdamse verzameling en het ontstaan van de Vereniging Rembrandt, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet) 1983, no. 1; M. Schapelhouman and P. Schatborn, Land & water. Hollandse tekeningen uit de 17de eeuw in het Rijksprentenkabinet/Land & Water: Dutch Drawings from the 17th Century in the Rijksmuseum Print Room, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet) 1987, no. 90; A. Stefes, Niederländische Zeichnungen, 1450-1800, 3 vols., coll. cat. Hamburg 2011 (Die Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, vol. 2), I, p. 67, under no. 2

Citation

A. Stefes, 2019, 'Jan van Aken, Imaginary Mountain Landscape, Amsterdam, c. 1652', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.27086

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