View of the Ruins of Egmond Castle

Egmond aan den Hoef, c. 1655

Object data

black chalk, with grey and light greyish-brown wash (some of the darker grey wash possibly by a later hand); framing lines in black and brown ink

height 199 mm × width 305 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed: lower left, in brown ink, with the mark of Esdaile, WE (L. 2617)
inscribed on verso: upper left, in an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century hand, in graphite, te Egmont op den Hoeff vanuit […]ten; below that, in graphite, N 500; lower left, by Goll van Franckenstein, in brown ink, 14/56 (the second number changed to 54); lower left, by Esdaile, in brown ink (partially over the Goll von Frankenstein no.), V33 WE 168x Out of Golt Van Falkensteins colln of Amsterdam. Jacob Ruysdael; lower centre, in pencil, 217; next to that, in pencil (effaced), 7654 / Jhf (?)
stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of Pitcairn Knowles (L. 2643); lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

Watermark: None

Condition

Light foxing throughout; small restored loss at the lower right; holes in the paper along the left edge of verso made up

Provenance

…; collection Sybrand Feitama II (1694-1758), Amsterdam, by 1746;¹ his sale, Amsterdam (B. de Bosch), 16 October 1758 sqq., Album H, no. 44 or 45 (‘Nochmaals Van J. Ruisdaal met Zwart kryt en Oostind. inkt. Twee gezichten der Puinhoopen van ‘t Huis te Egmont op den hoef omtrent Ao. 1670. ieder: h. 7½. br. 11d. [190 x 279 mm]’), fl. 62 for both, to Gerard Hoet II (1698-1760), The Hague;² his sale, The Hague (A. Franken and O. van Thol), 25 August 1760 sqq., no. 272 (‘’t Kasteel van Egmond op den Hoef. Met Zwart kryt en O.I. Ink. Door J. Ruisdaal’), fl. 37, to the dealer P. IJver, Amsterdam, or no. 273 (‘Het zelfde van een’ andere Zyde, mede zeer fraai, door den zelfden’), fl. 40, to the dealer P. IJver, Amsterdam;³ …; collection Johann Edler Goll von Franckenstein (1722-85), Amsterdam and Velzen, by 1760;⁴ 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; sale, Jonkheer Johan Goll van Franckenstein, Amsterdam (J. de Vries et al.), 1 July 1833 sqq., Album U, no. 7 (‘Jacob Ruisdaal. Twee stuks, voorstellende de Ruïnen van het Kasteel te Egmond op den hoef, omgeven met geboomte op rijk begroeide gronden. Beide zeer dun en meesterlijk met o.i. inkt.’), with RP-T-1902-A-4560, fl. 125 for both, to the dealer J. de Vries, Amsterdam;⁵ …; collection William Esdaile (1758-1837), London (L. 2617); his sale, London (Christie’s), 18 (24) June 1840 sqq., no. 1092 (‘Ruysdael. Ruins, a pair, in indian ink’), with RP-T-1902-A-4560, £ 2:12:6 for both, to William Benoni White (1803-c. 1878), London;⁶ his sale, London (Christie’s), 29 January 1880 sqq., no. 81, £ 5:15:6, or no. 82, £ 5:5:0;⁷ …; sale, Willem Nicolaas Lantsheer (1826-83, The Hague) and Jeronimo de Vries Jerzn (1808-80, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (F. Muller), 3 June 1884 sqq., no. 284, with RP-T-1902-A-4560, fl. 285 for both, to the dealer A.W. Thibaudeau, London and Paris;⁸ …; sale, Baron Étienne-Edmond Martin de Beurnonville (1825-1906, Paris), Paris (M. Delestre and M. Clement), 16 February 1885 sqq., no. 217, with RP-T-1902-A-4560, frs. 225 for both;⁹ …; collection William Pitcairn Knowles (1820-94), Rotterdam and Wiesbaden (L. 2643); his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 25 June 1895 sqq., no. 563, with RP-T-1902-A-4560, fl. 60 for both, to the dealer F. Muller for the Vereniging Rembrandt;¹⁰ from whom, with RP-T-1902-A-4560, fl. 100 for both, to the museum (L. 2228), 1902

Object number: RP-T-1902-A-4561

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The artist

Jacob Isaacksz van Ruisdael (Haarlem 1628/29 - Amsterdam 1682)

He was the only son of the Mennonite framemaker, art dealer and landscape painter Isaack Jacobsz Ruisdael (1599-1677). As stated in Jacob’s will of 27 May 1667, he was born in Haarlem. A notarized document of 9 June 1661, in which he declares himself to be thirty-two years old, puts his birthdate at 1628 or 1629. Although there is no documentary evidence, it is likely that Jacob trained with his father and, possibly, with his uncle Salomon van Ruysdael (c. 1600/03-1670). Be that as it may, the refined landscapes of Cornelis Hendriksz Vroom (c. 1590/92-1661) had a far more profound impact on Jacob’s early work, the earliest dated examples of which are from 1646. According to the records of the Haarlem painters’ guild, Jacob was enrolled in 1648. Houbraken claimed that Jacob also practiced medicine. In fact, a ‘Jacobus Ruijsdael’ appears on a list of Amsterdam doctors in the Amsterdam Stadsarchief, stating that a medical degree was conferred on him at the university of Caen, northern France, on 15 October 1676. This, however, is unlikely to be the artist. Houbraken was probably correct when he wrote that Nicolaes Berchem (1621/22-1683) and Ruisdael were good friends. It is generally assumed they travelled together to Bentheim in Westphalia just across the border around 1650. It is likely that Ruisdael settled in Amsterdam circa 1655, when Meindert Hobbema (1638-1709) became his pupil there, according to a notarized document of 8 July 1660. A Mennonite just like his father, Jacob had himself baptized on 17 June 1657 in Ankeveen, a village near Utrecht. At this time he was living in Amsterdam in a house called ‘In de Silvere Trompete’ on the Rokin from the Dam to the Kromme Elleboogsteeg. On 15 January 1659, Jacob became a citizen of Amsterdam. When the artist drew up his will in 1667, he was living on the Kalverstraat, but from 1670 he was a subtenant of the third house on the south side of the Dam, seen from the Rokin, living above the book and art shop ‘De Wackeren Hond’, owned by the publisher Hieronymus Sweerts (1629-1696). Members of the wealthy Amsterdam patrician family De Graeff were clients of Jacob, as is attested by various archival sources. The Arrival of Cornelis de Graeff and his Family at his Country Estate Soestdijk, in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin (inv. no. NGI.287),¹¹ which was painted in collaboration with Thomas de Keyser (1596-1667), for instance, was certainly one such commission. Although Ruisdael’s paintings were given modest valuations in the few inventories made during his lifetime, his financial situation seems to have been stable enough throughout his career for him to be able, for instance in 1678, to lend 400 guilders to the Amsterdam doctor Johannes Baptist van Lamsweerde (active 1677-78). In 1674, Jacob’s assets were estimated, for tax purposes, at 2,000 guilders. He died a lifelong bachelor in 1682 and was buried on 14 March in the Grote Kerk, Haarlem, the city to which he presumably had returned shortly before his death.

Ruisdael left an impressive oeuvre of some 800 paintings, around 140 drawings and a tiny corpus of 13 etchings. Dated works are rather unevenly distributed over his career, creating uncertainty over his precise development. His last five dated paintings are from the 1660s, but in every case the last digit is illegible. Ruisdael was, no doubt, the most versatile landscapist of the Dutch Golden Age. His oeuvre includes city- and seascapes, coastal and panoramic scenes, wooded and winter landscapes, grain fields, Scandinavian landscapes and landscape views centring on an array of motifs such as hills, mountains, bridges, ruined structures, water and wind mills, cemeteries, castles, cottages, sluices, torrents and waterfalls. Ruisdael frequently employed colleagues to add staffage to his landscape views, among them Berchem, Johannes Lingelbach (1622-1674), Gerrit Lundens (1622-1686), Adriaen van de Velde (1636-1672) and Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668). Besides Vroom, the only other artist who exerted a recognizable and sustained influence over Ruisdael was Allaert van Everdingen (1621-1675). In turn, Ruisdael himself had a decisive impact on a host of landscape specialists, including Hobbema, Roelof Jansz van Vries (c. 1630/31-after 1681), Cornelis Gerritsz Decker (?-1678), Klaes Molenaer (c. 1626/29-1676) and Jan van Kessel (1641-1680), to mention just a few.

Eddy Schavemaker, 2019

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, III (1721), pp. 65-66; H.F. Wijnman, ‘Het leven der Ruysdaels’, Oud Holland 49 (1932), pp. 49-60; K.E. Simon, ‘Jacob Isaackzoon van Ruisdael’, in U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXIX (1935), pp. 190-93; 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); J. Giltaij, ‘De tekeningen van Jacob van Ruisdael’, Oud Holland 94 (1980), nos. 2/3, pp. 141-208; S. Slive, Jacob van Ruisdael: A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings, Drawings and Etchings, New Haven 2001, with earlier literature; I. van Thiel-Stroman, ‘Biographies 15th-17th century’, in P.N. Köhler (ed.), Painting in Haarlem 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 281-86; J.P. Hinrichs, ‘Nogmaals over een oud raadsel. Jacob van Ruisdael, Arnold Houbraken en de Amsterdamse naamlijst van geneesheren’, Oud Holland 126 (2013), no. 1, pp. 58-62; T. van der Molen, ‘Ruisdael, Jacob van’, in A. Beyer et al. (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992-, C (2018), p. 116

Entry

Ruisdael made drawings on several occasions of different parts of the ruins of Egmond Castle, also known as the ‘Slot op den Hoef’,¹² including this drawing and another sheet in the Rijksmuseum with which it has long been paired (inv. no. RP-T-1902-A-4560). Egmond Castle was built to protect the famous abbey of Egmond, in the province of Noord-Holland, where the Counts of Holland and Counts of Egmond were buried. Following the Spanish occupation in 1573-1574 during the conflict with the southern Netherlands, William of Orange (1533-1584) instructed his troops on 7 June 1575 to set the castle on fire so that it could never again be used as a base by Spanish troops. The main motif of the present sheet is the ruin of the southwestern corner tower of the outer structure, while the other sheet shows the ruins of the interior of the southwestern corner of the castle’s main building after it was ordered to be destroyed, with the same corner tower in the distance on the right.

That both views were recorded in bright sunlight is suggested by the distinct shadows and, above all, in the present sheet by the oval-shaped area of blank paper at lower right, just to the left of the figures. This seems virtually absent of any chalk or washes and thus would have been an ideal area for the later addition of figures.

The two drawings have been together since at least the mid-eighteenth century, when they featured in the collection of Sybrand Feitama II (1694-1758). According to his inventory of 1747, one of the pair entered his collection as early as 1715 from the collection of Simon Schijnvoet (1653-1727), but it is uncertain which one. In addition to this pair, Broos noted that Feitama owned four other drawings of the castle’s ruins by Ruisdael.¹³ These might be identifiable among the five examples that are known today: one sheet in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (inv. no. KdZ 14726);¹⁴ one in the Kunsthalle, Bremen (inv. no. 917 Z);¹⁵ another in the collection of Dr H.G. Schmidt Dräger, Cologne;¹⁶ one in the Groninger Museum, Groningen (inv. no. 1931-217);¹⁷ and the last in the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart (inv. no. C 1964/1329).¹⁸ These five sheets show common stylistic features and have similar dimensions (c. 200 x 300 mm), and at least one other sheet, the one in Groningen, has the same watermark with the letters PD.¹⁹ It is well known that Feitama commissioned contemporary artists to embellish drawings in his collection, especially those by Ruisdael. Whether or not this is the case with the figures, the darker passages of foliage in the foreground and the wall along the right edge of the sheet is debatable.

Renaud emphasized the role that Ruisdael’s drawings of Egmond Castle play in providing historical information about the interior organization of the ruined structure,²⁰ as they are among the oldest and most important seventeenth-century sources on the subject.²¹ They were probably executed on site, with the exception of two smaller sheets in the Hermitage State Museum, St Petersburg (inv. nos. 5530 and 5533).²²

Giltaij argued that the group of drawings can be dated around 1655,²³ based on the fact that the drawing of the ruin in Stuttgart is similar to a motif in the background of Ruisdael’s Wooded Landscape with a View of the Jewish Cemetery in Oudekerk in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden (inv. no. 1502), a painting generally dated to the mid-1650s.²⁴ In the background of another painting of the Jewish cemetery by Ruisdael, preserved in the Detroit Institute of Arts (inv. no. 26.3),²⁵ is another detail of the ruined castle, though seen from a different angle (and for which no surviving sketch is known). The ruins also feature as the main motif (rather than as a background detail) in a painting in the Art Institute of Chicago (inv. no. 47.475),²⁶ which also cannot be directly connected to any of the surviving drawings. There is, however, some resemblance between the present work and a painting by Ruisdael in the collection of the Earl of Northbrook.²⁷

Ingrid Oud, 2000/Jane Shoaf Turner, 2019

Literature

S. Feitama, Notitie der teekeningen, uit de oudste en latere aanteekeningen, sedert de jaren 1685 en 1690, tot 1746, s.l. [1746], p. 45; J. Rosenberg, Jacob van Ruisdael, Berlin 1928, no. 3; K.E. Simon, Jacob van Ruisdael: Eine Darstellung seiner Entwicklung, Berlin 1930, p. 85 (as not authentic); K.E. Simon, ‘Jacob Isaackzoon van Ruisdael’, in U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXIX, 1935, p. 192 (as probably by Dirk Dalens II); Hollandsche Teekenkunst in de Gouden Eeuw, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet) 1935, no. 129; E. Goldschmidt and F. Schmidt-Degener, Catalogue de l’exposition de Jérôme Bosch à Rembrandt: Dessins hollandais du XVIe au XVIIe siècle, exh. cat. Brussels (Palais des Beaux-Arts) 1937-38, p. 121, under no. 131; J.G.N. Renaud, ‘De iconografie van het slot te Egmond’, Maandblad voor beeldende kunsten 17 (1940), p. 339 (n. 1); J. Bruyn et al., Le paysage Hollandais au XVIIe siècle, exh. cat. Paris (Orangerie des Tuileries) 1950-51, p. 64, under no. 158; K.G. Boon and L.C.J. Frerichs, Hollandse tekeningen uit de Gouden Eeuw. Keuze uit openbare en particuliere Nederlandse verzamelingen, exh. cat. Brussels (Koninklijke Bibliotheek Albert I)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Hamburg (Hamburger Kunsthalle) 1961, p. 121, under no. 123; L.C.J. Frerichs, with I.Q. van Regteren Altena, Selected Drawings from the Printroom, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1965, p. 52, under no. 66; J. Bolten, Dutch Drawings from the Collection of Dr C. Hofstede de Groot, Utrecht 1967, p. 115, under no. 89; W. Schulz, Lambert Doomer: Sämtliche Zeichnungen, Berlin/New York 1974, p. 74, under no. 161; J. Giltaij, ‘De tekeningen van Jacob van Ruisdael’, Oud Holland 94 (1980), nos. 2/3, pp. 151, 188, no. 2; H.-U. Beck, ‘Anmerkungen zu den Zeichnungssammlungen von Valerius Röver und Goll van Franckenstein’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 32 (1981), p. 122; S. Slive et al., Jacob van Ruisdael, exh. cat. The Hague (Mauritshuis)/Cambridge (MA) (Fogg Art Museum) 1981-82, p. 199, under no. 78, p. 203, under no. 80; B.P.J. Broos, ‘“Notitie der Teekeningen van Sybrand Feitama”, II: “verkocht, verhandeld, verëerd, geruild en overgedaan”’, Oud Holland 99 (1985), no. 2, pp. 118, 129 (nn. 74-75); G.R. Goldner et al., European Drawings, I: Catalogue of the Collections, coll. cat. Los Angeles (J. Paul Getty Museum) 1988, p. 272, under no. 122; S. Slive, ‘Additions to Jacob van Ruisdael’, The Burlington Magazine 133 (1991), p. 598 (n. 2); A.I. Davies, Jan van Kessel (1641-1680), Doornspijk 1992, pp. 41, 237, 255-56, under nos. d17, d52, d53; S. Slive, Jacob van Ruisdael: A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings, Drawings and Etchings, New Haven 2001, no. D4

Citation

I. Oud, 2000/L. Nonner'Jacob Isaacksz van Ruisdael, View of the Ruins of Egmond Castle, Egmond aan den Hoef, c. 1655', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.59760

(accessed 26 November 2024 09:45:38).