Object data
oil on panel
support: height 24 cm × width 33 cm
outer size: depth 4 cm (support incl. frame)
Arent Arentsz
A Bird Hunter on a Riverbank
c. 1625 - c. 1630
Inscriptions
- signature, in ligated monogram, at bottom centre on the powder horn: AA
Technical notes
The support is a single horizontally grained oak panel bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1611. The panel could have been ready for use by 1622, but a date in or after 1628 is more likely. The ground is an off-white colour. The paint layers were built up from the back to the front, the figure of the bird hunter being reserved in the background.
Scientific examination and reports
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 18 February 2002
- technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 24 November 2004
Condition
Good. The panel is somewhat damaged and irregular along the right and top edges.
Conservation
- M. Zeldenrust, 1978: complete restoration
Provenance
...; sale, Henrik Jan Antony Raedt van Oldenbarnevelt (1828-1903, The Hague), Amsterdam (F. Muller), 15 April 1902 sqq., no. 2, fl. 330, to Valck, for the museum
Object number: SK-A-1969
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Arent Arentsz (Amsterdam 1585/86 - Amsterdam 1631)
Arent Arentsz, known as Cabel, was born in 1585/86 as the third son of the sailmaker Arent Jansz and Giert Joosten, who lived in a house called ‘De Cabel’ (or ‘Kabel’) in Zeedijk in Amsterdam. On 19 May 1619, at the age of 33, he married Josijntje (or Joosje) Jans in Sloten. The marriage remained childless. On 4 May 1622 he bought a plot of land on Prinsengracht in Amsterdam, facing the Noordermarkt, where he built a house which he called ‘De vergulde Cabel’ (‘The gilt cable’). He was buried in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam on 18 August 1631.
Nothing is known about his artistic training or stylistic development. Most of his paintings bear his monogram AA, but not one of them is dated.1 He specialized in landscape paintings, mostly in an oblong format, with prominent figures of peasants, fishermen and hunters in the foreground, and a river scene, polder or winter landscape in the distance. In his winter landscapes Arentsz’s work is dependent on that of Hendrick Avercamp, with the figures and sometimes the composition being based on Avercamp’s paintings or drawings, or both.2
Jan Piet Filedt Kok, 2007
References
De Roever 1889, pp. 29-30; Moes in Thieme/Becker V, 1911, p. 325; Poensgen 1923; Van Eeghen 1967; Van Suchtelen in Saur V, 1992, p. 28
Entry
This is one of the smallest and most delicate works in Arentsz’s relatively small oeuvre of a few dozen paintings. Typical features of his paintings are the low vantage point, the low horizon and the stocky figures. The latter recur in different combinations in his oeuvre, so he probably worked from a collection of drawn figure studies.
As in other paintings by Arentsz, the foreground here has been painted fairly broadly in quite dark, saturated colours. The treatment of the river landscape behind it, executed with a fine brush in blue-white transparent tints, resembles a watercolour. The way in which the green reeds are indicated with a series of parallel lines is characteristic of the artist, as are the sparing use of white highlights in the vegetation and figures, and the comma-shaped brown brushstrokes in the foreground.
Given the lack of dated paintings in Arentsz’s oeuvre and of a clear stylistic development within it, one has to rely on dendrochronological examination for an approximate date for this and other paintings by the artist. This particular work was probably executed in the second half of the 1620s.3
The hunter, who is about to shoot a heron, is on the bank of a wide river with sailing boats and fishermen. Unfortunately, it has not been possible to pinpoint the location from the spires and windmills, although one suspects that it is somewhere near Amsterdam. The rather long target gun was used for hunting in the 17th century.4
There is a duck hunter in a similar pose in Arent Arentsz’s Winter Landscape with Duck Hunter,5 which in turn is an almost literal repetition of a painting by Hendrick Avercamp.6 The hunter in the Rijksmuseum picture dominates the scene more markedly than in those winter landscapes due to his position parallel to the picture plane. It is likely that this or a similar painting is identical with ‘a piece, being a shooting of a bird’ by Arent Arentsz listed in 1635 in the estate inventory of Arent Pietersz Brughman.7
Jan Piet Filedt Kok, 2007
See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements
This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 3.
Literature
Poensgen 1923-24, pp. 117-19
Collection catalogues
1903, p. 33, no. 375; 1934, p. 31, no. 375; 1960, p. 22, no. 375; 1976, p. 87, no. A 1969; 2007, no. 3
Citation
J.P. Filedt Kok, 2007, 'Arent Arentsz., A Bird Hunter on a Riverbank, c. 1625 - c. 1630', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5812
(accessed 22 November 2024 22:54:12).