View of Namur and the River Maas, Seen from the South-west

The Hague, Haarlem, in or after 1695

Object data

pen and black ink, with grey wash, over preliminary indications and squaring in graphite; framing line in black ink

height 348 mm × width 492 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed on verso, in pencil: centre, in a nineteenth-century hand, Fred Muller 2936; lower centre, by museum staff, in a nineteenth-century hand, A 2866 (changed to 3027); lower right, in a nineteenth-century hand, Dirk Maes
stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: Strasbourg bend (hardly legible); countermark with letters F I

Condition

Vertical fold in centre

Provenance

...; collection Karel Jan Frederik Cornelis Kneppelhout van Sterkenburg (1818-85), Lord van Sterkenburg en Hoekenburg Driebergen, Kasteel Sterkenburg, near Driebergen, and Utrecht;¹ ? his son, Cornelis Johannes Kneppelhout van Sterkenburg (1856-1938), Kasteel Sterkenburg; ...; from F. Muller, April 1894, with 8 other drawings (inv. nos. RP-T-1894-A-3024 to RP-T-1894-A-3026 and RP-T-1894-A-3028 to RP-T-1894-A-3032), fl. 140 for all, to the museum (L. 2228)

Object number: RP-T-1894-A-3027

The artist

Dirk Maas (Haarlem 1656 - Haarlem 1717)

He was born on 12 September 1656 in Haarlem and was baptized two days later.² He was the oldest son of the Hoorn merchant Carel Dircksz Maas (?-1708) and of his second wife, Geertruyda van Vaerle (?-1674), both well-to-do members of the Protestant Church.³ His uncle Johannes Dircksz Maas (1629-1699) also worked as a painter in Haarlem from 1659 until his death. Another painter in Dirk’s family was his cousin Jan Pietersz Maas (1655-1690), also active in Haarlem.

According to Houbraken, Dirk Maas was taught by Hendrick Mommers (1619/20-1693) and Nicolaes Berchem (1621/22-1683).⁴ On 8 November 1678, Maas became a member of the Haarlem Guild of St Luke, three years after the date of his earliest known work, Cavalry Encounter (1675), now in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (inv. no. ??-2427). He served as warden of the Haarlem guild at some point, though the exact date is unknown owing to the loss of records. On 10 October 1681, while still living in his parents’ house on the Grote Markt, he joined the city’s Dutch Reformed Church.⁵

In 1690, Maas travelled to England as part of the entourage of Stadholder-King William III (1650-1702) and was an eye witness at the Battle of the Boyne (1 July 1690), when William’s troops defeated those of Catholic King James II (1633-1701). Maas commemorated the victory with a drawn panoramic view of the battle, preserved in the British Royal Collection at Windsor Castle (RCIN 916607).⁶ This drawing he used as the basis for a large etching (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-82.799)⁷ and at least two paintings, one commissioned by Hans William Bentinck (1649-1907), 1st Earl of Portland, still in this family’s collection at Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire (inv. no. 523),⁸ the other in the collection of the National Trust at Petworth House, West Sussex (inv. no. 117).⁹

Dirk was back in Haarlem in 1692. On 6 July 1694, he married his full cousin, his mother’s niece Aletta van Vaerle (Varelen) (?-?) in the Walloon Church. Of their seven children, five died prematurely. Dirk must have had considerable financial means, for he bought houses and plots in the years following his marriage.

After Maas’s return to Holland, William III remained his most prominent patron, as he had been before the trip to England. In 1693, Maas painted a Boar Hunt for the Stadholder-King’s palace of Het Loo, Apeldoorn (inv. no. 271),¹⁰ and probably also the unsigned, undated Deer Hunt in that collection (inv. no. 242). The same year, he collaborated with Johannes Glauber (1646-c. 1726) and Albert Meyering (1645-1714) in the decoration of the palace of Soestdijk. Maas’s activities for the court at The Hague probably account for his joining the local painters’ guild, Confrerie Pictura, in 1697, even though he remained a resident of Haarlem.

Maas occasionally appraised paintings, and he is recorded as having had business transactions with the painters Cornelis Dusart (1660-1704) and Jan van der Meer II (1656-1705). In 1709 he carried out restoration work on a militia painting by Dirk Hals (1591-1656), and he added staffage to the paintings by Johannes Glauber, Gerrit Berckheyde (1638-1698) and Adriaen Oudendijck (1677-1704).

Like fellow Mommers pupil Jan van Huchtenburg (1647-1733), with whom he was friends, Dirk Maas specialized in equestrian subjects in the manner of Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668), producing riding schools, hunting and battle scenes, in paintings, drawings and etchings. There are also few still-lifes signed by the artist.

At the age of sixty-one, Dirk died on 25 December 1717 in Haarlem and was buried on 30 December in the Grote or Sint Bavo Kerk.¹¹ His estate was sold on 25 April 1718 by Isaac Vincentsz van der Vinne (1665-1740). His only known pupil was Willem Hugaerts (1683-1727).¹²

Annemarie Stefes, 2019

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, III (1721), p. 362; A. van der Willigen, Geschiedkundige aantekeningen over Haarlemsche schilders, Haarlem 1866, p. 154; J.P. van der Kellen, Le Peintre graveur hollandais et flamand [des XVIe et XVIIe siècles] ou catalogue raisonné des estampes gravées par les peintres de l’école hollandaise et flamande: Ouvrage faisant suite au peintre-graveur de Bartsch, Utrecht 1866, p. 163; A. van der Willigen, Les Artistes de Harlem: Notices historiques avec un précis sur la Gilde de St. Luc, Haarlem/The Hague 1870, p. 205; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, II (1910), pp. 87-88; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXIII (1929), pp. 544-45 (entry by M.D. Henkel); F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, XI (1954), pp. 149-52; H. Miedema, De archiefbescheiden van het St. Lukasgilde te Haarlem, 1497-1789, 2 vols., Alphen aan den Rijn 1980, I, p. 334, II, pp. 680, 933, 941, 1034, 1067; A. Stefes, Nicolaes Pietersz. Berchem: Die Zeichnungen, 3 vols., Bern 1997 (PhD diss., Universität Bern), I, pp. 9, 91-95; III, pp. 451-57; E. Buijsen (ed.), Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw. Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag, 1600-1700, Zwolle 1998, p. 326; A. van der Willigen and F.G. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-life Painters Working in Oils, 1525-1725, Leiden 2003, p. 136; P. Biesboer and N. Köhler (eds.), Painting in Haarlem, 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 226-28 (entry by I. van Thiel-Stroman); 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. 508; A. Beyer et al. (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992-, LXXXVI (2015), p. 85 (entry by P. Biesboer)

Entry

The second Siege of Namur – which took place in the summer of 1695 and which is the subject of the present sheet as well as three other drawings in the collection with the same provenance, inv. nos. RP-T-1894-A-3024, RP-T-1894-A-3025 and RP-T-1894-A-3026 – was the decisive event in the Nine-Years’ War (1688-97) between France and the so-called Grand Alliance, a European coalition of the Holy Roman Empire (led by Austria), the Dutch Republic, Spain, England and the House of Savoy. It changed the course of events in favour of the Alliance.

Situated at the strategically important junction of the rivers Maas and Sambre, Namur (then part of the Spanish Netherlands) had been captured by French troops under the Marquis de Vauban (1633-1707) during the first Siege of Namur in 1692. Three years later, the Dutch Stadtholder-King William III (1650-1702), together with the Electors of Bavaria and Brandenburg, reconquered the town. The siege began on 9 June 1695 and two months later, on 6 August, the city surrendered. It was not, however, until 1 September that the citadel, seen here at upper left atop a steep cliff and considered impregnable, capitulated.¹³ Namur, the object of propaganda by both sides, became a symbol of William III’s most important military victory, extensively reported in newspapers and pamphlets and represented in paintings, drawings and prints.¹⁴

None of the Rijksmuseum’s four drawings of the Siege of Namur is signed, but they all bear nineteenth-century inscriptions crediting Dirk Maas as their author. Two are enhanced with watercolour; the other two, including this sheet, are rendered in a slightly different, bolder monochromatic style. Maas is traditionally considered to have been responsible for several other drawings of Namur during the siege, comparable in size and format, such as those in the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva (inv. nos. Maa.1 and Maa.2);¹⁵ the Musée de Groesbeeck-de Croix, Namur (inv. nos. K6 and 11/7); and the Musée Provincial des Arts Anciens du Namurois, Namur (Collection SAN, inv. no. unknown).¹⁶

Whereas the two Rijksmuseum watercolours and the drawings from other collections cited above are mainly topographical renderings of the setting of the siege, the focus of the present drawing and inv. no. RP-T-1894-A-3026 is more on the soldiers within this context. Here, Namur is seen from upstream the River Maas, with the town in the distance on the left. Depicted in the foreground are three terraces, each holding a cannon aimed at the citadel. This battery’s position can be identified in the extensive legend on a large map of the Siege of Namur from 1695 (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-AO-19-83), etched by Gilliam van der Gouwen (?-1720/40) and Daniël Stopendaal (1672-1726) after a drawing by Ottmar Elliger II (1666-1732) and published by Nicolaes Visscher III (1649-1702).¹⁷ To the right is the Pont de Jambe, an arched stone bridge leading to the village of Jambe, whose church, according to the map’s legend, was burnt by French troops on 19 July 1695. In this case – and unlike the depiction in inv. no. RP-T-1894-A-3024 – the bridge still has eight stone arches intact. According to the caption for the bridge detail on the map, ‘Maas Brug van zeven steene bogen, waar van de Francen de voorste houte Brug hadden afgebroken’ (‘Maas Bridge of seven stone arches, of which the French broke up the front wooden bridge’). Here only the first stone arch is missing, replaced by a makeshift solution, perhaps indicating that this drawing was based on a sketch made earlier in the ongoing siege.

The two monochromatic drawings – present sheet and inv. no. RP-T-1894-A-3026 – were done on slightly different paper than inv. nos. RP-T-1894-A-3024 and RP-T-1894-A-3025. All four supports, however, feature a Strasbourg bend watermark, which is typical of English paper of the early 1690s – the kind of paper that Maas might have brought back with him from his time in England with William III in 1690. There are also differences in execution. The drawings start with the same working method as the two watercolours, beginning with a sketch in black chalk or graphite over a squared grid in graphite, which was then finished in pen and black ink and various shades grey wash, but this time without colour. Although there are similar pentimenti in graphite (e.g. in the citadel’s buildings at upper left), the underlying auxiliary lines are sparser. The wash and contrasts are certainly bolder and uncharacteristic of Maas’s known oeuvre, but if one looks closely, the accurate rendering of the buildings, with sharply defined contours filled in with paler shades of wash, is identical to that of inv. nos. RP-T-1894-A-3025 and RP-T-1894-A-3024. Moreover, even if the figures are rather stiff, the loosely sketched passages, for instance the shrubbery in the middle ground, is reminiscent of some of the sketches of horsemen by Maas in the British Museum, London (e.g. inv. no. 1836,0811.349).¹⁸ Maas could well have made the two monochromatic compositions later, perhaps on commission, for instance from the mayor of Namur or a collector of history plates. For the moment, it seems best to leave the drawings under the name with which they have traditionally been associated.

Originally, the museum’s holdings of drawn views of Namur under siege contained five additional sheets with the same provenance, which can no longer be found (inv. nos. RP-T-1894-A-3028 to RP-T-1894-A-3032).¹⁹

Annemarie Stefes, 2019/Jane Shoaf Turner, 2020

Literature

F. Muller, De Nederlandsche geschiedenis in platen. Beredeneerde beschrijving van Nederlandsche historieplaten, zinneprenten en historische kaarten, 4 vols., Amsterdam 1863-82, I (1863-70), p. 448, no. 2936; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXIII (1929), p. 545 (entry by M.D. Henkel)

Citation

A. Stefes, 2019/J. Shoaf Turner, 2020, 'possibly Dirk Maas, View of Namur and the River Maas, Seen from the South-west, The Hague, in or after 1695', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.54799

(accessed 14 November 2024 18:15:01).