Elegant Company on a Causeway Leading towards a Country-House

Entry

Having been offered at auction ascribed to David Vinckeboons I (1576-1631/33), the present painting entered the museum with an attribution to Esaias van de Velde (1587-1630). On the basis of a similarity with a picture given to Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne (1589-1662) in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg,² it was then described as by that artist. More recently, it has been thought to be the work of Sebastiaen Vrancx (1573-1647) with the attribution of the Hamburg painting following suit.³ In fact neither work should be considered as by him. In the case of the Rijksmuseum picture the level of execution seems to be no more than competent. Most likely it is the work of a journeyman painter working in the southern Netherlands.⁴

The costumes – the collars in particular – are suggestive of a date in the second decade of the seventeenth century. But the support, following Klein’s calculations, was ready for use only towards the middle of the century. That being the case, the Elegant Company on a Causeway seems likely to be a pastiche.

The Hamburg and Amsterdam landscapes are similar in that both depict an elegant company walking on a tree-lined lane which leads to a country house that has a gabled facade beneath a tower topped by an onion shaped spire. The most obvious difference – apart from the elegant companies – is that the outbuildings are on different sides of the main house, and that the maypole is absent from the Rijksmuseum picture, where the subsidiary staffage differs in other respects. Furthermore, the viewpoints are from opposite angles.

Whether the Rijksmuseum picture depends on that in Hamburg or was conceived independently remains an open question. If the latter is the case the coincidences may seem remarkable, particularly as the dimensions nearly correspond. This might suggest that the two paintings are pendants.

The 1934 museum catalogue records that J. Kalf had identified the view as showing – in reverse – Kasteel Heemskerk in the province of North Holland. The house had its name changed in 1620 at the request of its then owner, Jonkkheer Daniel de Hertaing (d. 1625), to Huis Marquette; it still exists. In 1646-47, Roelant Roghman (1627-1692) drew three views of it of which that in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem,⁵ taken from the east, of the front facade and entrance, is the most relevant here. It only has a very faint resemblance to the building depicted in the present picture, in the placement of the onion shaped tower on the roof above the entrance. But the many differences are enough to invalidate Kalf’s thesis. Notably absent, for instance, is a depiction of the remains of a large circular stone fort to the north-east of the house.⁶

Both the present painting and that in Hamburg should be seen in the context of the country house poem, which gained popularity in the Netherlands from circa 1610.⁷ Indeed, serendipitously, Huis Marquette was to be the subject of one such poem about the middle of the century.⁸

Brown has dismissed the association of the Elegant Company on a Causeway with Avenue at Middelharnis by the Dutch painter Meindert Hobbema (1638-1709) in the National Gallery, London.⁹ Dumas discusses other comparable views, whose relationship is likely to be only fortuitous.¹⁰

Gregory Martin, 2022