Two Travellers in a Subterranean Grotto / recto: Resting Huntsmen in an Italianate Landscape

c. 1636 - c. 1646

Object data

point of brush and dark grey ink, with grey wash and opaque white, over black chalk, on blue paper

height 269 mm × width 403 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed on recto: lower left, in an eighteenth-century hand, in brown ink, Bamboots.; lower right, in pencil, illegible
inscribed: upper right, in a seventeenth-century hand (possibly by Willem Schellinks), in brown ink (partially masked), Jan Asselijn.; lower left, in black chalk, L
stamped: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228); below that, on a piece of white paper (pasted on the drawing), with the mark of Pitcairn Knowles (L. 2643)

Technical notes

watermark: none

Provenance

...; ? collection Abraham van Broyel (?-1759 or before), Amsterdam;¹ his sale, Amsterdam (H. de Leth), 30 October 1759 sqq., no. 678, as Pieter van Laer (‘Een Italiaansche Pleisteir-plaats by een Ruine, zeer fraai op blaauw Papier met zwart kryt en Oost-Indische Ink ten wit gehoogd, hoog 11, breed 16 duim. [275 x 406 mm]’), fl. 18:15:- to Johann Edler Goll von Franckenstein (1722-85), Amsterdam and Velzen;² …; ? collection ‘Rogers’³; …; collection Johann August Gottlieb Weigel (1773-1846), Leipzig;⁴ his sale, Stuttgart (Gutekunst), 15 May 1883 sqq., no. 549 (‘Pieter van Laer. Bergige Landschaft. Im Vordergrunde lagende Jäger und Hunde. Schwarze Kreide und Tusche auf blauem Papier, weiß gehöht. Bezeichnet. Auf der Rückseite eine Felsenstudie mit Wasserfall. Bezeichnet: Jan Asselyn. L. 41, H. 27 cm’), fl. 25, to ‘HG’ [Heinrich Georg Gutekunst];⁵ …; collection William Pitcairn Knowles (1820-94), Rotterdam and Wiesbaden (L. 2643); his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 25 June 1895 sqq., no. 379 (‘Pieter van Laer dit Bamboche, Halte de chasseurs. Très-beau croquis. Au verso, un dessin de Jan Asselyn. Collections Boyers et Weigel. Pierre noire et encre de Chine, sur papier bleu. H. 26, l. 41 cent.’), fl. 5, to the dealer F. Muller for the Vereniging Rembrandt;⁶ from whom, fl. 6, to the museum (L. 2228), 1899

Object number: RP-T-1899-A-4285(V)

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The artist

Jan Asselijn (Dieppe c. 1614 - Amsterdam 1652)

In 1631 the Huguenot Abraham Asselin (1609-1697), a maker of gold wire, stated that he had been living in Amsterdam for ten years and that his parents were dead. He had three brothers living in the city: the painter Jan, the poet Thomas Asselin (c. 1620-1701) and Steven Asselin (?-?). They were from Dieppe in Normandy and were members of the local Walloon Congregation. Jan’s date of birth is not known, but it must have been around or just before 1614, because his earliest painting is from 1634 and he would not have signed as an independent master before he was twenty.

Nothing is known for certain about his training, but possible teachers were Esaias van de Velde (1587-1630) and Van de Velde’s nephew Jan Martszen II (c. 1609-after 1647), who was living in Amsterdam in 1633. Asselijn followed their example by specializing in cavalry battles, many of them illustrating episodes from the Thirty Years’ War. There are at least five dated works from 1634 and 1635 representing Gustav Adolf at the Battle of Lützen, 16 November 1632, including one from 1634 in the Herzog Anton-Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig (inv. no. GG 348),⁷ one from 1635 in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (inv. no. 1581),⁸ and another from 1635 that appeared on the Cologne art market in 2016.⁹ Asselijn was still documented in Amsterdam at the end of 1635, but he must have left for Rome shortly afterwards, where he joined the Bentvueghels artists’ society and was nicknamed Crabbetje (‘Little Crab’) because of his deformed hand. According to Baldinucci, he also spent some time in Florence, where he befriended the French artist Jacques Courtois (1621-1676). He was probably in Venice as well, where there were several of his works, according to Von Sandrart.

While in Rome, Asselijn came under the influence of Pieter van Laer (1599-1642), who returned to the Netherlands in 1639, and possibly also that of the brothers Andries Both (1611/12-1642) and Jan Both (1618/22-1652), who lived there until 1641. It is not known when Asselijn returned home, but on the way he certainly paused for a while in Lyon, where he married Antoinette Houwaart [Huaart] (?-after 1652), an Antwerp merchant’s daughter, around 1644-45. Houwaart’s older sister married the Nijmegen painter Nicolaes van Helt Stockade (1614-1699) at around the same time. In 1645 both painters and their wives travelled to Paris, where Asselijn, Herman van Swanevelt (1603/04-1655) and others painted several landscapes for the hôtel particulier of the financier Nicolas Lambert (?-1648) on the Île Saint-Louis, including Asselijn’s three canvases now preserved in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (inv. nos. 984, 985 and 986).¹⁰ While he was in Paris, Asselijn also made designs for three print suites etched and marketed by Gabriel Perelle (1604-1677), based on first-hand sketches made in Italy.¹¹ The Paris interlude did not last long, for in August 1646 Willem Schellinks (1623-1678) and Lambert Doomer (1624-1700) looked for Asselijn and Van Helt Stockade there, only to discover that they and their families had already left for home. The two couples travelled by way of Antwerp, where Van Helt Stockade is documented in the autumn of 1646. Asselijn is first recorded back in Amsterdam on 14 April 1647. From 1650, he adopted a Dutch spelling of his surname, and he became a citizen of the city in 1652. He made his will on 28 September that year and was buried in the Nieuwezijds Kapel five days later.

Although there are drawings by Asselijn on paper with Italian watermarks, presumed to have been executed by him in Italy, there are very few dated paintings from his period in Italy and France (1636-46). He produced little apart from Italianate landscapes after his return, the only exceptions being a couple of animal pieces and a few history scenes, such as the breach of the St Anthony’s Dike near Diemen in March 1651, one depiction of which is in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. SK-A-5030),¹² and the dike’s rebuilding in 1652, as seen in a painting in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (inv. no. 58.2).¹³ In 1647-49 he collaborated at least once with Jan-Baptist Weenix (1621-1659), with whom he jointly signed the Seaport with a High Tower in the Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna (inv. no. 761).¹⁴ In 1647-48 Rembrandt (1606-1669) etched Asselijn’s portrait as a gentleman posing at his easel (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-553). Asselijn’s last known works are from 1652: the abovementioned Repair of the St Anthony’s Dike in Berlin; Italianate Landscape with a Horse Drinking from a Spring, whose present whereabouts are unknown;¹⁵ and View of Rome with the Ponte Rotte, whose date was discovered when it appeared on the New York art market in 2010.¹⁶ Houbraken says that Frederic de Moucheron I (1633-1686) was apprenticed to Asselijn. No other pupils are known, but he certainly had a great influence, among others, on Nicolaes Berchem (1621/22-1683), as well as on Schellinks, who may have secured drawings and other works from his studio estate.

E. de Groot, 2011

References
J. von Sandrart, Joachim von Sandrarts Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Ku¨nste von 1675: Leben der beru¨hmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, Nuremburg 1675 (ed. and commentary by A.R. Peltzer) Munich 1925 (orig. edn. 1675), pp. 182, 258-60; F. Baldinucci, Notizie dei professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua, 6 vols., Florence 1681-1728; facs. edn. of I-V ed. by F. Ranalli, Florence 1845-47 (reprinted 1974), VI-VII, ed. by P. Barocchi, Florence 1975, IV (1686/ed. 1974), p. 331, V (1728/ed. 1974), p. 205; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, II (1719), p. 327, III (1721), pp. 64-65; P. Scheltema, Rembrandt. Redevoering over het leven en de verdiensten van Rembrand van Rijn, met eene menigte geschiedkundige bijlagen meerendeels uit echter bronnen geput, Amsterdam 1853, p. 69; A. Bredius, ‘Het schildersregister van Jan Sysmus, stads-doctor van Amsterdam’, Oud Holland 8 (1890), pp. 231-32; H. Gerson, Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Amsterdam 1942, pp. 50-51; A. Blankert, Nederlandse 17e eeuwse Italianiserende landschapschilders, exh. cat. Utrecht (Centraal Museum) 1965 (rev. edn. as Nederlandse 17e eeuwse Italianiserende landschapschilders/Dutch 17th-century Italianate Landscape Painters, Soest 1978), pp. 129-31; M.J.E. Spits-Sanders, ‘Abraham Asselijn’, Maandblad Amstelodamum 63 (1976), pp. 109-11; A.C. Steland-Stief, Jan Asselijn (nach 1610-1652), Amsterdam 1971 (documents); A.C. Steland-Stief, Die Zeichnungen des Jan Asselijn, Fridingen, 1989; A.C. Steland-Stief, ‘Jan Asselijn’, in D.A. Levine and E. Mai et al., I Bamboccianti: Niederländische Malerrebellen im Rom des Barock, exh. cat. Cologne (Wallraf-Richartz-Museum)/Utrecht (Centraal Museum) 1991-92, p. 114; A.C. Steland-Stief, ‘Jan Asselijn’, in A. Beyer et al. (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992-, V (1992), pp. 458-59; A.C. Steland, ‘Jan Asselijn,’ in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, London/New York 1996, II, pp. 614-15 (2003 Grove online edn. at https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T004627); J. Briels, Peintres flamands au berceau du sie`cle d’or hollandaise, 1585-1630, avec biographies en annexe, Antwerp 1997, p. 294

Entry

In 1980 and again in 1989, Steland catalogued a large number of chalk sketches on blue paper under the name of Jan Asselijn. Although this group is by no means stylistically coherent,¹⁷ a nucleus of drawings is certainly autograph, among them the present drawing and inv. no. RP-T-1898-A-3519). Both bear the name of the artist written in a calligraphic seventeenth-century hand on the verso, in all likelihood that of fellow artist Willem Schellinks (1627-1678). A similar inscription is found on three stylistically related drawings attributed to Asselijn in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (inv. nos. 21642, 21641 and 21643).¹⁸ Schellinks also apparently wrote Asselijn’s name on the unquestionably autograph drawing of Pilgrims Receiving Alms, in the Special Collections, Universiteit Leiden (inv. no. PK-T-AW-1081),¹⁹ which Schellinks used as a study for a painting in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (inv. no. KMSst172).²⁰ Given the degree of Asselijn’s influence on Schellinks (cf. inv. no. RP-T-1890-A-2294), it is likely that Asselijn’s drawings ended up in Schellinks’s possession, or at least passed through his hands. These inscriptions should thus be considered trustworthy.²¹

The fluid brushwork of the verso sketch, representing a subterranean grotto with two men looking at a waterfall, long accepted as by Asselijn,²² is reminiscent of the contrasting handling of light and the staffage in the most secure drawings in Asselijn’s drawn oeuvre, namely the Italian views etched by Gabriel Perelle (1604-1677) – such as the Ruins of the Nympheum Acqua Julia, also in the Hamburger Kunsthalle (inv. no. 1963-115),²³ or the Waterfall at Tivoli with the Temple of the Tiburtine Sibyl (Temple of Vesta) in the Istituto Centrale per la Grafica, Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe, Rome (inv. no. FN 503).²⁴ The recto, on the other hand, with hunters resting and a falconer approaching on horseback, was associated with Pieter van Laer (1599-after 1641) in an eighteenth-century inscription (Bamboots). In nineteenth-century auctions, this even lead to the assumption that the two sides were executed by different hands, a charming idea in view of Von Sandrart’s report of Van Laer’s influence on Asselijn after the latter’s arrival in Rome.²⁵ However, both the subject-matter and the style are so close to similarly inscribed drawings in Hamburg that there is no reason to doubt Asselijn’s hand for both sides. As Steland pointed out,²⁶ the angled contours of the figures can be seen in Asselijn’s signed and dated painting of a Cavalry Attack at Sunset of 1646, also in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. SK-A-5), which features similarly formed rocks in the background. Another drawing formerly classified as Pieter van Laer, now recognized as an early work by Asselijn, is the Resting Hunters in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels (inv. no. 4060/2104),²⁷ which is related in subject-matter and includes an almost identical horse.

There are no known paintings related to the sketches on either the recto or the verso, and both should probably be considered quick ‘prime idee’.

Annemarie Stefes, 2018

Literature

G.J. Hoogewerff, ‘Pieter van Laer en zijn vrienden III’, Oud Holland 50 (1933), pp. 113-15 (fig. 30, as Van Laer); G.J. Hoogewerff, De Bentvueghels, The Hague 1952 (fig. 28, as Van Laer); C. von Heusinger, Handzeichnungen I: Die Niederländer des 16. bis 18. Jahrhunderts, coll. cat. Hannover 1960 (Bildkataloge des Kestner-Museums Hannover, vol. 3), p. 44 (as Van Laer); J.Q. van Regteren Altena, Vereeuwigde Stad. Rome door Nederlanders getekend, 1500-1900, Amsterdam 1964, no. 4 (fig. 37); L.C.J. Frerichs, Berchem en de Bentgenoten in Italië, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet) 1970, no. 36; A.C. Steland-Stief, ‘Zum zeichnerischen Werk des Jan Asselijn: Neue Funde und Forschungsperspektiven’, Oud Holland 94 (1980), pp. 236, 248-49, 252, 254 (figs. 33, 51); A.C. Steland, Die Zeichnungen des Jan Asselijn, Fridingen 1989, pp. 92-95, 209, no. 7 (figs. 97-98); A. Stefes, Niederländische Zeichnungen, 1450-1800, 3 vols., coll. cat. Hamburg 2011 (Die Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, vol. 2), I, p. 75 (n. 2)

Citation

A. Stefes, 2018, 'Jan Asselijn, Two Travellers in a Subterranean Grotto / recto: Resting Huntsmen in an Italianate Landscape, c. 1636 - c. 1646', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.27455

(accessed 22 November 2024 15:06:21).