Shepherdess Crowning a Shepherd with a Laurel Wreath

? Haarlem, c. 1665 - c. 1670

Object data

black chalk; framing line in black ink

height 290 mm × width 349 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed: lower right, in grey ink, 80 (the ‘8’ correcting a ‘9’)
inscribed on verso: centre, probably in an eighteenth-century hand, in black chalk or graphite (effaced) 141 (?) / C (?) (...) nh; lower left, in an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century hand, in red chalk, A: v: Tempel; below that, by Johann Edler Goll von Franckenstein, in brown ink, N 981 (L. 2987)
stamped on verso: centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: Strasbourg lily, above letters WR; similar to Laurentius, I, no. 435 (1612) or 439 (1631)

Condition

Loss at lower left corner; tear along lower left edge

Provenance

…; collection Johann Edler Goll von Franckenstein (1722-85), Amsterdam and Velzen (L. 2987); ? his son, Jonkheer Johan Goll van Franckenstein (1756-1821), Amsterdam and Velzen; ? his son, Jonkheer Pieter Hendrik Goll van Franckenstein (1787-1832), Amsterdam and Velzen;¹ …; sale, Georg Carl Valentin Schöffer (1841-1915, Amsterdam and Scheveningen), Amsterdam (F. Muller), 30 May 1893 sqq., no. 383, fl. 17.50, to ‘m’;² ...; sale, Abraham Nicolaas Godefroy (1822-99, Amsterdam) and Georg Carl Valentin Schöffer (1841-1915, Amsterdam and Scheveningen), Amsterdam (R.W.P. de Vries), 8 May 1900 sqq., no. 274, fl. 5.50, to the museum (L. 2228)

Object number: RP-T-1900-A-4427

The artist

Casper Casteleyn (Haarlem c. 1625 – place unknown, after 1661)

Casper (or Jasper) Casteleyn was the fifth child of the Haarlem-born Mennonite printer and bookseller of Flemish origin, Vincent Casteleyn (1587-1658), and his wife, Maycke Jaspers (?-1661). Of Casper’s eight siblings, four followed their father’s footsteps: Johannes Casteleyn (1612-c. 1653) was a bookseller and paper merchant in Amsterdam; Pieter Casteleyn (1618-1676) was the editor from 1651 to 1676 of the Hollantse Mercurius; Jacob Casteleyn (?-?) was a member of the Guild of booksellers in 1650; and Abraham Casteleyn (1628-1682) was the founder of the Oprechte Haarlemse Courant in 1656. Two of his brothers were trained as painters. The eldest, Vincent Casteleyn II (1609-1659), first studied medicine, then was apprenticed to Pieter de Grebber (1595/1605-c. 1600), entered the Haarlem Guild of St Luke in 1636, moved to Amsterdam two years later and to Rotterdam in 1647. The other artist brother was the publisher Pieter Casteleyn, who was taught in 1635 by Willem de Poorter (1608-in or after 1649/51) and also by Pieter de Grebber.

Casper Casteleyn was himself admitted as a painter to the Haarlem Guild of St Luke on 6 May 1653. His earliest work dates from the previous year, his design in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1852,1211.23), for the engraved and etched Portrait of Dirck Raphaelsz Camphuysen, etched by Salomon Savery (1593/94-1683) in 1652 (e.g. RP-P-OB-5582).³ The following year Casper designed the title-page of an anatomy book (inv. no. RP-T-1890-A-2395). The designs by Casper for the pages of his brother’s Hollantse Mercurius were engraved by Savery, as well as by Cornelis Visscher (1628/29-1658).

Although not so well known today, in the seventeenth century Casteleyn was apparently regarded as a renowned painter. Cornelis de Bie, in his Gulden cabinet (1662), mentions a ‘Casteleyn’, usually likened with Casper, who was inclined to art since his youth and who was still active in 1662.⁴ Only a few paintings can now be securely given to the artist, including Granida and Daifilo (1652) in the State Hermitage, St Petersburg (inv. no. ??-7647). His latest dated painting is Minerva Visiting a Prisoner (1659) in the Muzeum Kolekcij im. Jana Pawla II, Warsaw (inv. no. unknown).⁵ History paintings by him are mentioned in seventeenth-century inventories, and according to a sale catalogue of 1893, he might have been active until circa 1670.⁶ Only a few signed drawings by the artist are known, and the boundary between his oeuvre and that of his elder brothers Vincent II and Pieter is not always clear.

Annemarie Stefes 2019

References
C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edel vry schilder-const, Antwerp 1661-62, p. 384; A. van der Willigen, Les Artistes de Harlem: Notices historiques avec un précis sur la Gilde de St. Luc, Haarlem/The Hague 1870, pp. 30, 106; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, I (1906), p. 248; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, VI (1912), pp. 140-41 (entry by E.W. Moes); A. Bredius (ed.), Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der holländischen Kunst des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts, 8 vols., The Hague 1915-22, VI (1919), pp. 1985, 1993-99, 2036; VII (1921), pp. 22, 138; P.C. Molhuysen et al. (eds.), Nieuw Nederlandsch biografisch woordenboek, 10 vols., Leiden 1911-37, IX (1933), col. 134-35; A. Beyer et al. (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992-, XVII (1997), p. 167; 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. 183; G. Verhoeven and S. van der Veen, De Hollandse Mercurius. Een Haarlems jaarboek uit de zeventiende eeuw, Haarlem 2011, pp. 21-27

Entry

A couple is seated in a pastoral landscape setting under a canopy. There are no sheep, the only animal being a dog snoozing behind the man’s back. The young man holds a flute, and his companion adjusts a wreath of leaves on his head. Like the Rijksmuseum’s inv. no. RP-T-1881-A-101 by Casteleyn, the scene features iconographical links with a painting of Paris and Oenone (1610) by Pieter Lastman (1583-1633) in the High Museum of Art, Atlanta (inv. no. 1990.57).⁷ The absence, however, of specific details, such as Oenone’s name carved in a tree, suggests that this was simply intended as a general illustration of pastoral courtship. It may have been made as prima idea for an untraced painting. From the evidence of old sale catalogues, it appears that Casteleyn’s painted oeuvre was once larger than is recognized today.⁸

The drawing was acquired in 1900 as a work by Abraham van den Tempel (1622/23-1672), but this attribution was justifiably rejected by De Witt.⁹ It cannot be identified among the drawings by named artists in the 1833 Goll van Franckenstein sale, and an inscription on the verso, written in a calligraphic, possibly eighteenth-century hand and perhaps alluding to the drawing’s maker, is mostly illegible. An annotation by Marijn Schapelhouman on the present mount, ‘W of H Casteleyn?’, possibly documenting an inscription on a no longer extant earlier mount,¹⁰ is misleading. Willem Casteleyn (?-?), documented from 1611 to 1616,¹¹ was not one of Casper’s six brothers and not necessarily a painter, and there is no known ‘H Casteleyn’.

Similar facial types and handling are to be seen in Casper Casteleyn’s signed Shepherd and Shepherdess Seated in a Landscape (inv. no. RP-T-1881-A-101). The present shepherd’s somewhat naïve expression, with round eyes set wide apart, is also comparable to the drawings of cavaliers traditionally given to the same artist in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (KdZ 13030 and KdZ 1400).¹² Yet the contours of the present drawing are softer, less angular, possibly suggesting a different date. The woman’s hairstyle with its curls framing the face reflects the fashions of the late 1660s.

Annemarie Stefes, 2019

Literature

D. de Witt, ‘Abraham van den Tempel (1622/3-1672) as a Draughtsman’, Oud Holland 119 (2006), no. 4, p. 192, no. R1 (not by Van den Tempel); A. Stefes, Niederländische Zeichnungen, 1450-1800, 3 vols., coll. cat. Hamburg 2011 (Die Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, vol. 2), I, pp. 161-62, under no. 200 (as probably by C. Casteleyn)

Citation

A. Stefes, 2019, 'attributed to Casper Casteleyn, Shepherdess Crowning a Shepherd with a Laurel Wreath, Haarlem, c. 1665 - 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.60779

(accessed 28 December 2024 07:31:14).