Rijksmuseum

Object data

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

height 152 mm × width 232 mm

Inscriptions

signed: lower centre, in black ink (partially trimmed), Roghman
inscribed on verso: lower left, in an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century hand, in graphite or pencil (partially trimmed), […] hcvo
stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Provenance

…; from the dealer A.W.M. Mensing (1866-1936), Amsterdam, fl. 15, to the museum (L. 2228), 1896

Object number: RP-T-1896-A-3165

The artist

Roelant Roghman (Amsterdam 1627 - Amsterdam 1692)

He was the son of Hendrick Lambertsz Roghman (1602-1647/57) and Maria Saverij and was baptized on 25 March 1627 in Amsterdam’s Nieuwe Kerk. His father worked as an engraver,¹ as did two of his five siblings: his sisters Geertruyt (1625-c. 1651/57) and Magdalena (1632²-after 1669).³ Through his mother, Roelant was a grandson of Jacob Savery I (1566-1603) and a great-nephew of Roelant Savery (1576-1639), after whom he was named. It is not known under whom he trained, but it is likely that he was influenced by the example of his grandfather and great-uncle. Although sometimes grouped with the pupils of Rembrandt (1606-1669), Roghman never actually studied with him. They were friends, however, and according to Houbraken, Rembrandt refused to accept Jan Griffier (1645/52-1718) as an apprentice because he was already studying with his friend Roghman.

Roghman was a prolific draughtsman, whose earliest dated works are two drawn views of tollhouses on the River IJ, both dated 1645, in the Van Eeghen collection, Stadsarchief, Amsterdam (inv. nos. 10055/28) and 10055/29).⁴ Among the works possibly made even earlier is a pen-and-wash drawing in the Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden (inv. nos. C 1798), clearly influenced by Roelant Savery.⁵

In 1646/47, Roghman embarked on his most ambitious project, the series of some 250 castle drawings, of which the Rijksmuseum owns 49 individual sheets. Besides travelling through the Dutch provinces to make castle drawings and topographical views, he also visited Brussels and the region around Cleves.⁶ A number of alpine landscapes – including one in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (inv. no. MB 221), dated 1654⁷ – suggest that he must have travelled to the Alps that year,⁸ presumably passing through France. A trip further south may be documented by a View of San Giacomo a Rialto in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (KdZ 2617), traditionally attributed to the artist,⁹ and a signed drawing in the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Sailing Boat at a Moorage, could have well been made in Venice.¹⁰ In 1657, Roghman stayed in Augsburg, where he had a set of six etched alpine landscapes published by Melchior Küsel (1626-1684)¹¹ and contributed a drawing to an album amicorum (inv. no. RP-T-1898-A-3991). No later than 1658, he was back in Amsterdam, where he is documented during the 1660s. In 1672, his opinion was sought on the authenticity of a group of Italian paintings in a legal dispute between Gerrit Uylenburgh (c. 1625-1679) and Friedrich Wilhelm, Elector of Brandenburg (1620-1688).

Roghman’s rare paintings feature mostly mountain scenes and were probably done after his trip to the Alps. Of his circa fifty etchings, mostly landscapes, one depicts the Breach of the St Anthony’s Dike,¹² a famous incident in 1651 that was also recorded by Jan Asselijn (c. 1610-1652), for example in his painting in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. SK-A-5030), Willem Schellinks (1627-1678) and Jacob Esselens (1626-1687).

Roghman apparently never married and from 1686 lived in Amsterdam’s Oudemannenhuis (Old Men’s Home). His last dated drawing is from 1657, but according to Houbraken, he continued to produce art well into his old age. He died on 3 January 1692 and was buried in the St Anthonis Kerkhof, Amsterdam.

Annemarie Stefes, 2018

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, I (1718), pp. 173-74; III (1721), p. 358; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, II (1910), p. 464; R. Juynboll, ‘Roelant Roghman’, in U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXVIII (1934), p. 518, with earlier literature; W.T. Kloek, ‘Een berglandschap door Roelant Roghman’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 23 (1975), no. 2, pp. 100-01; F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols, Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, XX (1978), pp. 67-93; H. Gerson and B.W. Meijer (eds.), Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der Holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Amsterdam 1983 (rev. ed.; orig. ed. 1942), pp. 27, 49, 130, 186, 293, 307, 356, 403; W. Kloek and J.W. Niemeijer, De kasteeltekeningen van Roelant Roghman II, Alphen aan den Rijn 1990, pp. 1-14; W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-92, X (1992), pp. 4989-5174; 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. 642

Entry

In Roghman’s drawn oeuvre, the second largest group after the castle series, numbering more than seventy examples, consists of what Kloek has christened his ‘monumental landscapes’, all boldly executed in pen and brown ink, with heavy grey and brown washes, and most of them signed.¹³ Of these imaginary landscapes, done on sheets of more or less uniform format of circa 160 x 230 mm, the Rijksprentenkabinet owns four other sheets, all acquired at the same time: inv. nos. RP-T-1901-A-4533, RP-T-1901-A-4534, RP-T-1901-A-4535 and RP-T-1901-A-4537. Despite the fact that the five sheets are of only average format, the term ‘monumental’ seems appropriate given their impressive mountainous scenery, dramatically staged with strong contrasts of light and shade.

The Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden, preserves a particularly good group of such bold, fluent sketches, which are particularly pleasing in their abstract formal qualities. While most such ‘monumental landscapes’ are signed (including all five examples in the Rijksmuseum), only one such sheet is dated, the Mountain Landscape with Ruins and a Land Bridge of 1655, in the Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig (inv. no. N.I. 471).¹⁴ Like a pair of paler examples in Dresden (e.g. inv. nos. C 1797 and C 1795), the Leipzig sketch may have been drawn on the spot during Roghman’s presumed journey to the south (1654-1657). However, most of the boldest ‘monumental landscapes’ – even those with ‘southern’ motifs – appear to have been drawn from the artist’s imagination, perhaps a decade or more after his alpine trip.¹⁵ Such a dating coincides with the sheets’ various watermarks, all dating from the 1660s, and also with Kloek’s proposed dating of paintings of related subject-matter to the 1660s.¹⁶ The ‘monumental landscape’ drawings often had their pictorial effects (and signatures) strengthened by the artist. This may have been the case with the present sheet, in which the dark grey passages might have been added for emphasis in a second reprise.

Annemarie Stefes, 2018

Citation

A. Stefes, 2018, 'Roelant Roghman, Mountainous Coastal Landscape with Steep Cliffs on the Right, c. 1660 - c. 1670', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.59895

(accessed 15 November 2024 04:01:05).