Rijksmuseum

Object data

pen and brown ink, over traces of graphite

height 132 mm × width 180 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed by the artist: lower left, in graphite, int leger te Lembeeq: den 3 Augusti: 1675
inscribed on the verso: lower left, possibly by the artist, in brown ink, getekend op gedachten naert leven:; centre, in graphite, T 98164 / H. 132 m.M. / B. 180 m.M.; lower right, in graphite, J de Grave; below that, in black ink, 275
stamped on verso: lower right, with an unidentified collector’s mark; left of that, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: Strasbourg lily (fragment)

Provenance

…; from C.G. Boerner (Leipzig), together with 3 other drawings, fl. 27:72:- for all, to the museum (L. 2228), 1898

Object number: RP-T-1898-A-3663

The artist

Josua de Grave (Amsterdam 1643 - The Hague 1712)

He was the son of the French merchant Claude Pietersz de Grave [Graeff] (c. 1597/98-after 1667) and Sara Bols (?-c. 1655) and was baptized in the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, on 2 July 1643.¹ De Grave had three brothers and two sisters.² He grew up in Haarlem, where the family moved soon after his birth. In 1659, at age sixteen, he entered the Haarlem Guild of St Luke,³ but it is unknown with whom he trained. Based on a drawing dated 1663, depicting a landscape in the vicinity of Paris, now in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (KdZ 2480),⁴ we know that he moved to Paris during or after his training. De Grave lived in Paris until 1668, after which he moved to Maastricht.

In Maastricht he likely met Barend Klotz (?-?) and Valentijn Klotz (c. 1646-1721), two fellow draughtsmen affiliated with the Dutch army.⁵ Until 1670, the trio resided in Maastricht, where they made around sixty drawings of the city and its surroundings. Only a handful of these drawings are signed (e.g. inv. nos. RP-T-1946-63 and RP-T-1911-100).⁶ In the following decades, the three artists accompanied the army of the Dutch States-General under the Stadholder Prince Willem III of Orange Nassau (1650-1702) on their various campaigns: to 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).

On 3 December 1670, De Grave married Jenneton de Bisson (1645-?) in Maastricht.⁷ The newlyweds moved from Maastricht to The Hague, joining De Grave’s sister and his brother, Cornelis, who had moved there already.⁸ After each military campaign, De Grave returned to The Hague, where he settled permanently after the last campaign in 1676 and died in July 1712.⁹ Several drawings dated between the 1670s and the 1710s record sights around the city. In the final years of his career, he also produced paintings and drawings of (Italianate) gardens and fantasy landscapes (e.g. inv. nos. RP-T-00-148 and RP-T-1895-A-3063).

Josua de Grave often signed his work, using his full name or a variation, such as J. de Grave or Josua de Grave fecit. In many instances, he also included a location and a date. His signature is usually followed by a colon, then the year and the day and month (expressed as a fraction). His handwriting is quite distinct, using elegant, curly (capital) letters and a typical old-fashioned letter ‘e’. His drawings were initially quickly sketched in graphite or black chalk, after which he applied brown ink lines to further work out the composition. He seemed to have relied on a certain formula for most of his drawings, placing the horizon in the centre of the sheet and scattering the main elements around it. He often included trees, foliage or figures closer to the foreground, creating a repoussoir. De Grave drew his trees by outlining the trunks and branches, then scribbling in the leaves using cloud-like shapes.¹⁰ In most instances, in addition to the brown ink composition, grey washes are applied sparingly, particularly for the shadows on houses and roofs, foliage and simple cloud formations. Drawings that are more heavily washed are likely to have been worked up by (a) later hand(s).

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. 96-98; 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, ‘Grave, Josua de’, in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols., London/New York 1996, XIII, pp. 323-24

Entry

The present sheet and inv. nos. RP-T-1898-3664 and RP-T-1898-3665 were made by the same artist during the 1675 campaign of the Dutch army under the command of Stadholder Prince Willem III of Orange (1650-1702). Each includes the same brown ink inscription on its verso, stating that the drawing was ‘getekent op gedachten naert leven’ (‘drawn from memory from life’). A total of five drawings in the Rijksmuseum's collection bear such an inscription (see also inv. nos. RP-T-00-139 and RP-T-00-145). It is uncertain whether these inscriptions were added by the artist himself or by a later hand. The same unidentified collector’s mark was found on the verso of all five sheets.

Besides the present sheet, there are two other similar drawings in the Rijksmuseum’s collection where the month ‘August’ is written as ‘augusti’: inv. nos. RP-T-1899-A-4253 and RP-T-1898-A-3664. Although the draughtsmanship of these sheets is comparable to that of De Grave, it is curious that the format of the notation of the date deviates from his standard practice: in all of De Grave’s signed and dated sheets, he expressed the day and month as a numerical fraction, with the month before the day, either preceded by the year or with the split year flanking the fraction. The format of the inscription on the present sheet and inv. no. RP-T-1898-A-3664 follows an unconventional format. The artist identified the location in the Belgian province of Hainaut, ‘Int Leger te Lembeeq’ (‘In the army at Lembeek’), followed by ‘den’ (‘on’) and a fully written out month and day. The second half of this type of inscription can also be found in a group of drawings that came from a sketchbook and are numbered in the upper right corner of the sheet (e.g. inv. nos. RP-T-1900-A-4441 and RP-T-1898-A-3767).

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. 473 (as Josua de Grave)

Citation

C. Mensing, 2020, 'attributed to Josua de Grave, View of an Encampment of the Army of Willem III at Lembeek, Flemish Brabant, Lembeek, 1675-08-03', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.51928

(accessed 1 January 2025 20:18:20).