Object data
pen and brown ink, with grey wash, over traces of graphite; framing lines in two shades of brown ink
height 147 mm × width 202 mm
Abraham Rutgers
Winter Landscape with Four Skaters
Vecht, c. 1650 - c. 1699
Inscriptions
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inscribed: lower centre (on the mooring post), in brown ink, E.V.V.
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inscribed on verso, in pencil: centre, Geschenk Beels v. Heem[sted]e / April 1898 ; lower centre, E.V.V; below that, by Hofstede de Groot, T 98.5 / h 140 / b 200
Technical notes
Watermark: Fragment (lower part) of a shield, with the number 4 above three balls
Condition
Some repairs lower left; the upper left corner of the sheet has been reattached; light foxing throughout; upper left, a pink and a brown stain
Provenance
…; donated by Jonkvrouwe Agnes Henriette Beels van Heemstede-van Loon (1829-1902), Amsterdam, as anonymous, to the museum, 1898
Object number: RP-T-1898-A-3503
Credit line: Gift of A.H. Beels van Heemstede-van Loon
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Abraham Rutgers (Amsterdam 1632 - Amsterdam 1699)
He came from a long line of Mennonite textile merchants, who left Antwerp because of religious persecution, settling first in Haarlem and later in Amsterdam.1 Abraham followed in the family profession, working as a silk merchant in Amsterdam. He copied drawings by, and was close friends with, fellow silk merchant and amateur artist Jacob Esselens (1626/28-1687), to whose children he was appointed guardian just before Esselens’s burial on 15 January 1687.2 He also collaborated with Ludolf Bakhuizen (1630-1708), who added figures to at least one of Rutgers’ drawings, a sheet now in the Albertina, Vienna (inv. no. 10015).3
Most of all, however, Rutgers is known for his topographical views along the Vecht, near Utrecht, drawn with distinctive brown ink hatching and strong, diagonally receding compositions. Besides three large albums of his drawings, one in the collection of the Museum Simon van Gijn, Dordrecht (inv. no. SIK 10), and two that in 2018 appeared on the Haarlem art market,4 consisting of drawings described as principale (drawings after life), inventieve (imaginary scenes) and copijen (copies after other artists), another large group was preserved in the Atlas Munnicks van Cleeff, now part of the John and Marine van Vlissingen Art Foundation.
Abraham’s cousin was Agneta Blok (1629-1704), the famous patron, horticulturalist and collector who commissioned artists to record the plants she grew in her garden at Vijverhof, her estate on the Vecht. There were close ties between the two families. Abraham’s father, banker and cloth merchant David Rutgers II (1601-1668), was Agneta’s uncle, and his mother was Susanna de Flines (1607-1677), the aunt of Agneta’s second husband, Sybrand de Flines (1623-1697). Abraham’s grandson Antoni Rutgers the Younger (1695-1778) was a collector and marchand amateur, whose collection of drawings was sold at auction in Amsterdam on 1 December 1778.
Jane Shoaf Turner, 2019
References
U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXIX (1935), p. 239; J.W. Niemeijer, ‘Varia Topografica, IV. Een album met Utrechtse gezichten door Abraham Rutgers’, Oud-Holland 79 (1964), no. 2, pp. 127-34; I.H. van Eeghen, ‘Abraham en Antoni Rutgers. De kunstzin van grootvader en kleinzoon’, Jaarboek Amstelodamum 67 (1975), pp. 174-88; E. Munnig Schmidt, ‘Abraham Rutgers en Ludolf Backhuysen samen op het ijs’, Jaarboekje van het Oudheidkundig Genootschap “Niftarlake”, 2006, pp. 57-58; J. Turner and R.-J. te Rijdt (eds.), Home and Abroad: Dutch and Flemish Landscape Drawings from the John and Marine van Vlissingen Art Foundation, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Paris (Fondation Custodia) 2015-16, p. 132, under nos. 54-56 (text by J. Shoaf Turner)
Entry
As an amateur artist, Rutgers learnt by copying drawings and prints by other artists, such as Allaert van Everdingen (1621-1675), forty-three copies after whose etchings appear in one of the two albums of drawings by Rutgers that appeared on the art market in 2018. The initials E.V.V. inscribed on the mooring post in the centre foreground of the present sheet could imply that another source of inspiration for Rutgers may have been works by Esaias van de Velde (1587-1630), though no specific prototype can be identified. Van de Velde’s monogram was possibly added by a latter collector, for whom the delicate lacy rendering of the trees may have reminded him of that artist’s work. Despite the heavier penwork that is characteristic of Rutgers’s hand, the presence of the monogram and the hybrid mix of stylistic elements may explain why the sheet was classified as anonymous at the time of its acquisition in 1898.
Jane Shoaf Turner, 2019
Citation
J. Shoaf Turner, 2019, 'Abraham Rutgers, Winter Landscape with Four Skaters, Vecht, c. 1650 - c. 1699', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.59744
(accessed 21 September 2024 09:48:14).