Rijksmuseum

Object data

point of brush and different shades of grey and greyish-brown ink, with pen and greyish-brown ink, over black chalk; framing line in dark brown ink

height 102 mm × width 170 mm

Inscriptions

signed: lower centre, in greyish-brown ink, J Glauber
inscribed on verso: left of centre, in a nineteenth- or early twentieth-century hand, in pencil, ½ ./
stamped on verso: left of centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228); lower right, with the mark of Pitcairn Knowles (L. 2643)

Technical notes

Watermark: None

Condition

Some abrasion along left border

Provenance

…; collection William Pitcairn Knowles (1820-94), Rotterdam and Wiesbaden (L. 2643); his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 25 June 1895 sqq., no. 257, fl. 1;¹ ...; donated by Gerardus Murray Bakker (1861-1938), Amsterdam, to the museum (L. 2228), 1912

Object number: RP-T-1912-1

Credit line: Gift of Gerardus Murray Bakker

The artist

Johannes Glauber (Utrecht 1646 - Schoonhoven c. 1726)

He was the son of Johan Rudolf Glauber (1604-1670) and Helena Cornelisdr (1615-1689). His father was of German origin, but he was baptized in Utrecht on 18 May 1646. Two of his younger siblings, Diana Glauber (1650-c. 1721) and Johann Gottlieb Glauber (1656-1703), became artists. Probably during the second half of the 1660s, Johannes studied for nine months with Nicolaes Berchem (1621/22-1683) in Amsterdam. After his apprenticeship, he copied Italian paintings for the Amsterdam art dealer Gerrit Uylenburgh (c. 1625-1679). His ‘wanderjahre’ led him first to Paris, accompanied by his brother Johann Gottlieb. There, in 1671, he worked for the Flemish art dealer and flower painter Jean-Michel Picart (c. 1600-1682). In 1672-73, he is recorded in Lyon, where he worked for Adriaen van der Kabel (c. 1630/31-1705). He arrived in Rome in 1674 or 1675 and joined the Schildersbent or Bentvueghels (society of Northern artists active in Rome), which gave him the bent-name Polidoor, a reference to his favourite model, Polidoro da Caravaggio (1499-1543). In Italy – where he also lived in Padua (1676-77) and Venice (1677-79) – he was close friends with Karel Dujardin (1626-1678) and Albert Meyering (1645-1714).

Together with Meyering, he travelled from Italy to Hamburg, where he remained from 1679 to 1684. Meyering may also have accompanied him to Copenhagen during that period, when Glauber spent six months painting decorative works at Charlottenburg Castle for the military commander Ulrik Frederik Gyldenløve (1638-1704), an illegitimate son of King Frederick III of Denmark and Norway (1609-1670).

By 1684, Glauber was back in Amsterdam. He took up lodgings with his friend Gerard de Lairesse (1641-1711) and became a member of Nil Volentibus Arduum, a literary society founded in 1669 with the aim of promoting French classicism. With Lairesse, Glauber produced wall paintings for Stadholder Willem III (1659-1702) in the palaces of Het Loo and Soestdijk. The pair also decorated patrician houses, such as those of Jacob de Flines (1657-1714) in Amsterdam, and Jacques Meijers (?-1721) and Adriaen Paets I (1631-1686) in Rotterdam. When the Swedish architect Nicodemus Tessin II (1654-1728) visited Amsterdam in 1687, he described Glauber as the best landscape painter then living in the city. Later that same year, Johannes is recorded as a member of the Confrerie Pictura in The Hague, but it is not known if he was then living there. On 28 March 1704, at the age of fifty-nine and documented as a resident of the Noordse Bos in Amsterdam, he married forty-eight-year-old Susanna Vennekool (1656-1727), sister of the architect Steven Jacobsz Vennekool (c. 1660-1719).² Meyering was his witness.

When Glauber drafted a will in Amsterdam on 11 October 1711, he was a resident of Schoonhoven. There, as Houbraken reported, he spent his old age in the Proveniershuis. He is said to have died in 1726. On 17 December 1727, Susanna Vennekool, ‘widow of Johannes Glauber’, was buried in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam.³

Glauber belongs to the third generation of Dutch Italianate painters, producing works in the international classicizing taste promulgated by French artists then active in Rome, Gaspard Dughet (1615-1675) and Claude Lorrain (1604/5-1682). Unfortunately, most of Glauber’s works are undated, making it difficult to establish a chronology throughout his peripatetic career. One painting, Wooded River Landscape with Shepherds, signed and dated 166[…], was on the Vienna art market in 2009,⁴ and another signed and dated painting, Landscape with a Shepherd and Flautist, from 1686, is in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (inv. no. 1301). A sketchy pen-and-wash landscape drawing, signed and dated, Amsterdam A° 1685 den 6 Julij, is preserved in the Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden (inv. no. C 1892-14). All these dated works seem to have been executed in Amsterdam. Glauber often collaborated with other artists, including Lairesse and Dirk Maas (1656-1717). Among Glauber’s etchings are prints after drawings by Meyering and the Monogrammist MVO (active c. 1650-80),⁵ as well as after paintings by Dughet and his friend Lairesse.⁶ His only recorded pupil was Willem Troost I (1684-1752).

Annemarie Stefes, 2017

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, III (1721), pp. 66, 210, 216-19; J.C. Weyerman, De levens-beschryvingen der Nederlandsche konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen, 4 vols., The Hague/Dordrecht 1729-69, III (1729), p. 55; A.J. Dézallier d'Argenville, Abrégé de la vie des plus fameux peintres, 3 vols., Paris 1745-52, III (1752), p. 173; C. Kramm, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters van den vroegsten tot op onzen tijd, 7 vols., Amsterdam 1857-64, II (1858), pp. 575-76; F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis, 7 vols., Rotterdam 1877-90, IV (1881-82), pp. 109, 156, 211; G. Upmark, ‘Ein Besuch in Holland 1687 aus den Reiseschilderungen des schwedischen Architekten Nicodemus Tessin’, Oud Holland 18 (1900), no. 4, p. 125; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, I (1906), p. 587; A. Bredius (ed.), Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der holländischen Kunst des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts, 8 vols., The Hague 1915-22, I (1915), p. 345; III (1917), p. 987; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XIV (1921), pp. 243-44 (entry by W. von Dirksen); H. Gerson, Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Amsterdam 1942, pp. 59-60, 167, 186, 216, 470; G.J. Hoogewerff, De Bentvueghels, The Hague 1952, pp. 117, 136; B.J.A. Renckens, ‘Een Portret van Jacob Vennecool. Notities over hem, zijn familie en Johannes Glauber’, Oud Holland 73 (1958), no. 1, pp. 177, 179; W.L. Strauss (ed.), The Illustrated Bartsch, New York and elsewhere 1978-, VII (1978), pp. 195-220, nos. 1-26; D.P. Snoep, ‘Gerard de Lairesse als plafond- en kamerschilder’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 18 (1970), no. 4, pp. 193-98; A. Zwollo, Hollandse en Vlaamse veduteschilders te Rome, 1675-1725, Assen 1973, pp. 5, 10-20, 38, 195, 198; F.W.H. Hollstein et al., German Engravings, Etchings and Woodcuts, c. 1400-1700, 85 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1954-, X (1975), pp. 65-130; C. Kämmerer, Die klassisch-heroische Landschaft in der niederländischen Landschaftsmalerei, 1675-1750, Berlin 1975 (PhD diss., Freie Universität Berlin), pp. 41, 45-47, 49, 52-53, 81-100; A. Roy, Gérard de Lairesse 1640-1711, Paris 1992, pp. 51, 69, 79, 81, 94, 135, 159, 187, 205, 212, 249, 250, 310, 320, 331, 332, 337, 339, 341, 352-53, 363, 366, 405-9, 492, 514-15, 535; E. Buijsen (ed.), Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw. Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag, 1600-1700, Zwolle 1998, pp. 307-08; A.W. Vliegenthart, Het Loo, een paleis als museum. Journaal van een restauratie, Apeldoorn 1999, pp. 69, 168; F. Lammertse and J. van der Veen, Uylenburgh & Son: Art and Commerce from Rembrandt to De Lairesse, 1625-1675, exh. cat. London (Dulwich Picture Gallery)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2006, pp. 224, 226-27, 231, 287; A. Beyer et al. (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992-, LVI (2007), pp. 69-71 (entry by E. Schavemaker); 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. 354; H. Gebelein et al. (eds.), Johann Rudolph Glauber: Alchemistische Denkweise, neue Forschungsergebnisse und Spuren in Kitzingen, Kitzingen am Main 2011 (Schriftenreihe des Städtischen Museums Kitzingen, vol. 4), pp. 121-27; T. Žakula, ‘Reforming Dutch Art: Gerard de Lairesse on Beauty, Morals and Class’, Simiolus 37 (2013-14), pp. 59, 65-66, 72-78, 80, 127 (n. 649), 129

Entry

This signed drawing by Johannes Glauber is done in a miniaturist way, using the point of the brush and different shades of grey and greyish-brown wash. The cooler, more blueish tints in the foreground and the warmer tones in the background successfully evoke the contrast between a shaded area beneath the trees and the sunlit landscape beyond. Clearly structured by horizontal layers and vertical accents, the peaceful and balanced composition met the criteria demanded from landscape painters by Glauber’s close friend Gerard de Lairesse (1641-1711): ‘A landscape, adorned with sound and straight grown trees, round bodied and finely leafed, spacious and even grounds, with gentle ups and downs, clear and still rivers, delightful vistas [...] All these, I say, may claim the title of painter-like.’⁷

With compositions like the present one, Glauber moved beyond his earlier influences, such as that of Adriaen van der Kabel (c. 1630/31-1705), as can be seen in another example by Glauber in the collection (inv. no. RP-T-1905-24), with its S-shaped trees. A larger drawing executed in a similar manner, preserved in the Albertina, Vienna (inv. no. 10217), is signed ‘Polidooer’, referring to Glauber’s bent-name. Other drawings of this type are in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig (inv. nos Z 467 and Z 468) and the Teylers Museum, Haarlem (inv. no. R+ 017). Such washed pen drawings were clearly made for the market, their pictorial quality appealing to a general taste for finished works of art on paper.

Whereas some of Glauber’s staffage alludes to classicizing subject-matter, others depict pastoral scenes of no particular content. The present sheet apparently belongs to the latter category. The figures, although decoratively silhouetted against the water, are engaged in some undefined action (fishing? laundry?). It looks as if the standing figure had one surplus leg. Perhaps the artist altered the pose and forgot to erase the rejected version. Or maybe he is holding a long net or satchel from which he has extracted what is being offered to his kneeling female companion.

Annemarie Stefes, 2018

Citation

A. Stefes, 2018, 'Johannes Glauber, Arcadian Landscape with Figures by a Lake, Amsterdam, after 1684', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.49139

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