Rijksmuseum

Object data

pen and black and brown ink, over traces of graphite; later additions in grey ink and wash; framing line in brown ink

height 203 mm × width 234 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed and dated by the artist, in brown ink: lower left, binnen den Briel de 3 /19 (date expressed as a fraction, month over day) 1672; upper left, j; centre left, 2; centre right, 4; next to that, 5
inscribed on verso: lower left, in graphite, a.m.r.-; centre, in graphite, J de Grave; left of that, in black ink, 5; next to that, in black ink, 4; above that, in black ink, 3; below that, in black ink, 2
stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: countermark with letters I A (?)

Condition

Some repairs on the left side of the sheet

Provenance

…; ? sale, Abraham de Haas (1767-1823, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (Roos et al.), 8 November 1824, no. 44 (‘Gezigt op de stad Brielle, door Clots’), together with 2 other drawings, fl. 7 for all, to Engelbert Michaël Engelberts (1773-1843), Hoorn and Amsterdam;¹ …; from F. Muller (Amsterdam), together with 16 other drawings, fl. 55:75:- for all, to the museum (L. 2228), 1892

Object number: RP-T-1892-A-2494

The artist

Valentijn Klotz (c. 1646 - The Hague 1721)

Except for a death certificate in The Hague dated 15 November 1721,² no documents relating to his life are known. Klotz may have come from the province of Limburg, where his surname is recorded in the seventeenth century.³ Biographical information is therefore based only on his dated drawings: the earliest, from 1667, was mentioned in Kramm, but its whereabouts are unknown⁴ and the last is in the Rijksmuseum’s collection (inv. no. RP-T-1894-A-2889), from 1718.⁵ In 1670, Klotz resided in Maastricht, where he likely met fellow draughtsman Josua de Grave (1643-1712). Together with Barend Klotz (?-?), his presumed brother or cousin who was an midshipman (adelborst) in the army, the three men accompanied the army of the Dutch States-General under the Stadholder Prince Willem III of Orange (1650-1702) on various campaigns. They were probably hired as individual draughtsmen, tasked to record the landscapes, cities, villages and encampments encountered along the way, including those around 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).

Like Josua de Grave, Klotz probably settled in The Hague at some point; several drawings dating between 1673 and 1718 depict the city and its environs, among them two in the Rijksmuseum’s collection (inv. nos. RP-T-1894-A-2888 and RP-T-1894-A-2889).

Although as a draughtsman, he worked in a very similar style and technique to Barend Klotz and Josua de Grave, Valentijn seems to have had a somewhat more spontaneous approach. According to Gordon, Klotz’s subject-matter is also slightly more diverse, focusing more heavily on architectural elements.⁶ Only a few of Valentijn Klotz’s drawings are signed, only occasionally with his full name. He more often provided his drawings with a date and a short description of the location. His handwriting is quite irregular, somewhat sloppy and not very consistent. He did use a very recognizable capital letter ‘B’.⁷ Klotz built up his landscapes with thin brown lines, often on top of an initial quick sketch in graphite or black chalk. Compared to De Grave’s drawings, his penstrokes in brown ink are tighter, and he often used zigzags rather than loops. In a few instances, the drawing is worked out entirely in grey and black rather than brown ink (e.g. inv. no. RP-T-1888-A-1640). His rendering of trees is quite sketchy, using short strokes of the pen to suggest leaves, with grey washes often applied to establish their shape and volume. Some sheets in the Rijksmuseum have watercolour washes, probably applied by a later hand (e.g. inv. nos. RP-T-00-171 and RP-T-00-172).

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. 97-99; 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, ‘Klotz, Valentijn’, in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols., London/New York 1996, XVIII, pp. 140-41

Entry

Although this drawing of Brielle, a town and seaport in Zuid-Holland, was previously catalogued as by Josua de Grave (1643-1712), it was probably made by Valentijn Klotz on his way back to The Hague – his hometown in between his travels with the Dutch army – after the campaign to Bergen op Zoom (1671-72). He numbered the main buildings in his drawing; there are several drawings by both Klotz and Josua de Grave with such numbers, especially of Bergen op Zoom. The Rijksmuseum’s collection includes a View of the ‘Stadsfontein’ in Bergen op Zoom attributed to De Grave (inv. no. RP-T-1899-A-4236), which is numbered in this way. In the present sheet, the building labelled ‘2’ is the fifteenth-century ‘Grote’ or Sint-Catharijnekerk, the main Catholic church in Brielle. The buildings surrounding the church were probably convents or monasteries. The farmstead on the left could not be identified.

It is likely that the drawing was altered at some point and initially did not include the figures and the tree trunks in the lower right as they deviate from the other elements in the drawing. Furthermore, in several areas, the grey wash looks somewhat patchy and irregular and might also have been enhanced. A drawing of Nieuwenhoorn, now in the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, was made three days prior to the present sheet and includes similarly executed figures and washes.⁸ Perhaps the drawings were part of the same collection at some point.

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. 312 (as Josua de Grave)

Citation

C. Mensing, 2020, 'attributed to Valentijn Klotz, View of Brielle, Zuid-Holland, Brielle, 1672-03-19', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.54221

(accessed 28 December 2024 21:55:21).