Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 108 cm × width 151.4 cm
Andries Beeckman
c. 1662
oil on canvas
support: height 108 cm × width 151.4 cm
Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been preserved, yet severely damaged. Cusping is visible on all sides, though less so at the bottom.
Preparatory layers The single, thick, off-white ground extends over the tacking edges. It is covered by a thin, transparent, oily layer, possibly an imprimatura, containing some black and earth pigment.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the tacking edges at the bottom and on the left and right, and over the top edge. The composition was built up in a fairly straightforward manner in only one or two layers from the back to the front. The sky was applied in one layer containing what appears to be lead white, glassy transparent bluish pigment particles and a black pigment. The bare earth was executed wet in wet in two layers of ochre-coloured, coarse white pigment particles and a black pigment. A sketchy first lay-in of the architecture was done with fine grey brushstrokes, and the palm trees with transparent brownish paint. The latter is visible along the trunks in areas where the initial lay-in was not precisely followed. In several places contours were altered and covered with the paint of the sky, for example around the tree canopy and along the ridge of the roof on the far right. Highlights and details such as patterns in the clothing were added rather roughly in the final stage.
Erika Smeenk-Metz, 2022
Poor. There are disturbing dark craquelures and many areas of paint loss, both large and small. The signature was placed over the cracks and is intact, while the surrounding area is badly damaged. What is apparently a tear in the canvas above the two palm trees on the right, running some 35 cm to the right, has been filled and retouched. There are numerous discoloured retouchings and overpaints, especially in the sky. The varnish has yellowed and has an uneven gloss.
From the artist, with one other painting, fl. 120, to the Amsterdam chamber of the Dutch East India Company, 1662;1 recorded in East India House, Hoogstraat, Amsterdam, 1663;2 recorded in East India House, 1771;3 ? removed from East India House, 1831;4…; from W.J.M. Engelberts, fl. 50, to the museum, 18595
Object number: SK-A-19
Copyright: Public domain
Andries Beeckman (Hasselt 1628 - Amsterdam 1664)
Andries Beeckman was baptized on 31 August 1628 in the Dutch Reformed church of Hasselt in the province of Overijssel as the youngest son of the German merchant Hendrick Beeckman and his second wife Maria Baudartius, who were both from prominent families. The next reference to the artist comes in 24 August 1651, when a notarized document mentions him as a painter active in Deventer. It is unknown with whom he trained, but his teacher may have been Barend Avercamp, who lived in nearby Zutphen in 1640-49. Beeckman must have entered the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) around 1652, sailing to the East Indies soon afterwards. A drawing of a samurai indicates that he visited the island Deshima in Nagasaki,6 and on 3 January 1657 he is recorded in Batavia, where he signed a promissory note: ‘Andries Beeckman of Zutphen, soldier, presently about to sail home on the Arnhem’. A watercolour of the Dutch fortress at the Cape of Good Hope, which can be dated towards the end of 1657, proves that he was indeed aboard this ship on an arduous return voyage that took twice as long as usual.7
Beeckman must have started working out the sketches he had made in the East Indies once he was back home. Since his only known patrons were from Amsterdam it seems likely he lived there. In the early 1660s he was one of the leading specialists in Asian and African topography, ethnography, flora and fauna. For wealthy collectors he created albums with watercolours of exotic costumes, animals and plants.8 In 1662 the Amsterdam chamber of the VOC paid him 120 guilders for two pictures. One of them is now lost, the other is the View of Batavia in the Rijksmuseum.9 For a long time this was Beeckman’s only known painting, but at the beginning of this century a still life with tropical fruit and a white cockatoo surfaced on the art market.10 The artist lived on Hekelveld near the IJ in Amsterdam when he died in 1664 and was buried 9 August in the Nieuwe Kerk.
Beeckman’s paintings and drawings are clearly no demonstrations of high skills. He knew the basic rules of perspective, but did not have a sense of anatomy or composition. His figures are charming, but also naive and at times clumsy. The documentary value of his works must have been recognized early on, however, for they were copied and used by others on many occasions.
Erlend de Groot, 2022
References
A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, I, Leipzig/Vienna 1906, p. 68; Moes in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, III, Leipzig 1909, pp. 162-63; F. de Haan, Oud Batavia: Gedenkboek uitgegeven door het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen naar aanleiding van het driehonderdjarig bestaan der stad in 1919, III, Batavia 1923, nos. J14, L2, L3; J. de Loos-Haaxman, De landsverzameling schilderijen in Batavia: Landvoogdsportretten en compagnieschilders, Leiden 1941, pp. 64-66; Römer in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, VIII, Munich/Leipzig 1994, p. 229; L. Haks and G. Maris, Lexicon of Foreign Artists Who Visualised Indonesia (1600-1950), Utrecht 1995, p. 27; M.-O. Scalliet, ‘Une curiosité oubliée: Le Livre de dessins faits dans un voyage aux Indes par un voyageur hollandaise du marquis de Paulmy’, Archipel 54 (1997), pp. 35-62; M.-O. Scalliet, ‘Twee eeuwen Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie: Europese schilders in Oost-Indië in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw’, in K. van Brakel et al., Indië omlijst: Vier eeuwen schilderkunst in Nederlands-Indië, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Tropenmuseum) 1998-99, pp. 13-38, esp. pp. 25-28; K. Zandvliet, Mapping for Money: Maps, Plans and Topographic Paintings and their Role in Dutch Overseas Expansion during the 16th and 17th Centuries, Amsterdam 1998, pp. 224-26; E. de Groot, ‘The Earliest Eyewitness Depictions of Khoikhoi: Andries Beeckman in Africa’, Itinerario 29 (2005), pp. 17-50; E. de Groot, ‘Tussen Batavia en Amsterdam’, in M. Jonker, E. de Groot and C. de Hart (eds.), Van velerlei pluimage: Zeventiende-eeuwse waterverftekeningen van Andries Beeckman, Nijmegen 2014, pp. 9-26
Four rows of towering coconut palms dominate this unique view of Batavia. In the foreground is the busy marketplace bordered by the Kali Besar river on the right. In the background on the other side is the castle erected by the Dutch East India Company (VOC). A group of officials on horseback has just left and crossed the drawbridge. The white building on the far right is the company’s main storehouse, and in front of it is the headquarters of the Council of Justice. Next to the river is a small shipyard. Andries Beeckman omitted some of the architecture and depicted the Kali Besar considerably smaller than it was in reality in order to provide a better sight of the castle.
The painting’s main point of interest is the portrayal of foreign people and costumes, the models for which can be found in Beeckman’s albums of watercolours (fig. a, fig. b). They give an excellent impression of the various inhabitants of Batavia at the time. Two Chinese merchants are arguing in the left foreground. Behind them, under the overhanging roof, two Javanese farmers are threshing rice as a Chinese artisan approaches. On the corner of the main building the artist drew the sketchy outlines of a tame cockatoo sitting on a perch. Between the first and second row of trees a group of Javanese are playing sepak raga, a form of soccer, watched by a crowd of Dutchmen and natives.11 One of the bare-chested men in the centre has just kicked the ball, which is hovering high above in the air. A well-dressed Dutch official and his Indonesian wife are strolling in the centre foreground, escorted by a boy holding a pajong over their heads. Figures from various nations can be distinguished between the palms behind them, such as a Bengali dressed in white and a Sulawesian warrior.
Further to the right in the foreground, identified by his striped clothes, is a Mardijker, a formerly enslaved Asian man who had converted to Christianity after his liberation (from the Malaysian merdeka, meaning ‘free’). Behind him two female fruit sellers have their goods spread out on the ground. In the distance, near a little hut, a Dutchman has joined some Chinese, possibly for a game of dice. The actual marketplace is between the last row of trees and the river. In the foreground a Chinese with a knife in his mouth is showing a chunk of fish to a Mardijker. To his left is a Japanese man in a blue kimono who is wearing a hat to signify his conversion to Christianity. Behind them other figures are bringing baskets with merchandise to the market. Two boats are transporting people and goods to and from the other areas of town.
Apart from these easily recognizable elements, there are many less conspicuous exotic details. The most remarkable are the camel on the far side of the river, the brush-tailed animal and the Javanese man climbing the coconut palms, and another one precariously balancing on the planks which connect the treetops. Despite the sometimes sketchy and rather clumsy execution, the artist does provide the viewer with a comprehensive impression of seventeenth-century Batavia.
In 1662 the Amsterdam chamber of the VOC paid Beeckman 120 guilders for two pictures, one of which must have been this View of Batavia.12 In 1663 it hung in East India House in Amsterdam’s Hoogstraat, and is mentioned in Olfert Dapper’s description of the city of that year: ‘Chinese and Japanese paintings hang on display in the hall where the governors meet and discuss their trade. Hanging there too is the large city of Batavia with its terrifying and invincible castle’.13 More than a century later Beeckman’s View of Batavia was still the showpiece of the building, as can be gauged from a 1771 drawing by Simon Fokke,14 which shows it mounted above the fireplace in the conference room of the Lords XVII, surrounded by lesser scenes of other Asian towns.
Beeckman’s material was eagerly copied. His figures, including those in the Rijksmuseum picture, recur in several seventeenth-century travelogues and books on Asia.15 As early as 1688 the Saxon Elector Johan George III asked the Amsterdam chamber of the VOC for permission to have the present work replicated.16 That very probably resulted in the View of Batavia signed ‘J.F.F.’ now in the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam.17 According to De Haan that second version was by Beeckman as well and represented the return of the Dutch captain Arnoud de Vlamingh to Batavia on 14 August 1656 after his victory in the Ambonese war.18 In his opinion De Vlamingh probably commissioned it and had himself depicted in the foreground, as the Dutchman with his Indonesian wife. The Rijksmuseum canvas, De Haan believed, was also ordered by De Vlamingh and was thus incorrectly dated around 1662. Although Beeckman must have made his preparatory drawings some time between early 1653 and early 1657, the period he presumably spent in the Indies, neither painting predates December 1658, when he was back in Amsterdam. While the Rijksmuseum picture was paid for in April 1662, and was thus most likely executed around then, the one in the Tropenmuseum has to be dated much later, presumably in or around 1688. It cannot be attributed to Beeckman on stylistic grounds, and there is no reason to doubt the signature ‘J.F.F.’. As some of the figures do correspond with those in the present canvas, the copyist either used another View of Batavia by Beeckman as his model or had original drawings by the artist at his disposal. Much later works that were clearly inspired by Beeckman’s painting are the 1864 View of Batavia by Contadyn Cunaeus, which was in the former Museum Nusantara in Delft,19 and a copy in the Nasional Museum in Jakarta.20
Erlend de Groot, 2022
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
F. de Haan, Oud Batavia: Gedenkboek uitgegeven door het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen naar aanleiding van het driehonderdjarig bestaan der stad in 1919, III, Batavia 1923, no. L2; J. de Loos-Haaxman, De landsverzameling schilderijen in Batavia: Landvoogdsportretten en compagnieschilders, Leiden 1941, pp. 64-66; M.-O. Scalliet, ‘Twee eeuwen Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie: Europese schilders in Oost-Indië in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw’, in K. van Brakel et al., Indië omlijst: Vier eeuwen schilderkunst in Nederlands-Indië, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Tropenmuseum) 1998-99, pp. 13-38, esp. pp. 25-28; K. Zandvliet, Mapping for Money: Maps, Plans and Topographic Paintings and their Role in Dutch Overseas Expansion during the 16th and 17th Centuries, Amsterdam 1998, pp. 224-26; E.M. Jacobs, ‘Beeckman’s Batavia’, in S. de Meer et al. (eds.), Schatkamer: Veertien opstellen over maritiem-historische onderwerpen aangeboden aan Leo M. Akveld bij zijn afscheid van het Maritiem Museum Rotterdam, Franeker 2002, pp. 102-13; N. Bergervoet, ‘Wat de Chinezen en Japanners ons vertellen’, in M. Jonker, E. de Groot and C. de Hart (eds.), Van velerlei pluimage: Zeventiende-eeuwse waterverftekeningen van Andries Beeckman, Nijmegen 2014, pp. 51-58, esp. p. 54; E. de Groot, ‘Tussen Batavia en Amsterdam’, in ibid., pp. 9-26, esp. p. 9; T. Mostert and J. van Campen, Silk Thread: China and the Netherlands from 1600, Nijmegen 2015, pp. 129, 131
1880, pp. 40-41, no. 16; 1887, p. 10, no. 69 (16); 1903, p. 42, no. 445; 1934, p. 42, no. 445; 1960, p. 33, no. 445; 1976, p. 105, no. A 19
Erlend de Groot, 2022, 'Andries Beeckman, View of Batavia, c. 1662', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5949
(accessed 12 November 2024 21:07:34).