Object data
oil on panel
support: height 32.3 cm × width 40.4 cm
outer size: depth 7 cm (support incl. frame)
Jan van Goyen (manner of)
View of the Rhine and the Elterberg
after 1645
Technical notes
The oak support is a singular horizontally grained plank. All the edges have been bevelled, except for the lower one, where the panel was already thinner. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1632. The panel could have been ready for use by 1643, but a date in or after 1649 is more likely. The grain and the colour of the wood give the thin ground, which is white or transparent, a pinkish glow. The paint was applied thinly and smoothly, except for the sky which was executed with broad brushstrokes.
Scientific examination and reports
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 25 February 2002
- technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 3 March 2003
Condition
Fair. There is a 17 cm horizontal crack at center left. The varnish is discoloured.
Provenance
...; collection Cornelis Hoogendijk (1866-1911), The Hague;1 from whom on loan to the museum, 1907-11; his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 14 May 1912, no. 24, as Jan van Goyen, fl. 3,500;2...; bequeathed to the museum by Dr S. van der Horst, Haarlem, as Herman Saftleven, 1925; on loan to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs 1929-40
Object number: SK-A-3029
Credit line: S. van der Horst Bequest, Haarlem
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Jan van Goyen (Leiden 1596 - The Hague 1656)
Jan van Goyen, the son of a cobbler, was born in Leiden on 13 January 1596. According to the Leiden chronicler Jan Jansz Orlers, from 1606 onward he was a pupil successively of the Leiden painters Coenraet van Schilperoort, Isaac Claesz van Swanenburg (1537/38-1614) and Jan Adriansz de Man, a glass-painter named Clock and Willem Gerritsz in Hoorn. After spending a year in France, he trained in 1617-18 with the land-scape painter Esaias van de Velde in Haarlem. Van Goyen subsequently returned to his birthplace, where he married Anna Willemsdr van Raelst on 5 August 1618. He is recorded several times in Leiden archives between 1625 and 1631. In 1632, Van Goyen settled in The Hague, where he acquired citizenship two years later. In 1634, he worked for some time in Isaack van Ruisdael’s workshop in Haarlem. Van Goyen was head man of the Hague guild in 1638 and 1640. In 1651, he was commissioned to paint a panoramic view of The Hague for the burgomaster’s room in the Hague Town Hall, for which he received 650 guilders. Documents reveal that throughout his life Van Goyen had speculated with little success in various businesses, including property and tulips. Van Goyen died at the age of 60 in The Hague on 27 April 1656, leaving debts of at least 18,000 guilders.
Van Goyen was among the most prolific and innovative of all 17th-century Dutch artists. He painted landscapes and seascapes, river scenes and town views. His oeuvre comprises more than 1,200 paintings and about 1,500 drawings, several hundred of which are still in the original sketchbooks. Many of his works are dated, ranging from 1620 to 1656. His early landscapes are polychrome, and closely resemble those by his teacher Esaias van de Velde. From c. 1626 he moved away from this example. With Salomon van Ruysdael, Pieter de Molijn and Jan Porcellis, he was a pioneer of the ‘tonal’ style that introduced a new standard of naturalism to landscape painting. His dune and river landscapes from the 1630s are executed in a palette of browns and greens. In the early 1640s he painted townscapes and panoramic landscapes that are dominated by a brown tonality. Around 1645, here turned to a more natural colour range. Van Goyen was a highly influential painter. He had many followers and imitators, among them Wouter Knijf, Anthonie Jansz van der Croos and Maerten Fransz van der Hulst. One of his pupils was Jan Steen (c. 1625/26-79). According to Houbraken, others were Nicolaes Berchem (1620-83) and Arent Arentsz, called Cabel (1585/86-1631).
Gerdien Wuestman, 2007
References
Orlers 1641, pp. 373-74; Van Hoogstraeten 1678, p. 237; Houbraken I, 1718, pp. 166-68, 170-71, II, 1719, pp. 110, 111, 235, III, 1721, p. 13; Bredius 1896 (documents); Bredius 1916; Bredius 1919; Beck I, 1972, ‘Einführung’, pp. 15-22, 29-38 (documents), pp. 39-66; Beck in Turner 1996, pp. 255-58
Entry
Van Goyen, Aelbert Cuyp, Herman Saftleven, Joris van der Haagen and scores of other artists made drawings and paintings of the 82-metre high Elterberg.3 In the Rijksmuseum painting the hill is seen from the Tolhuis (Toll House) on the left bank of the Rhine. By the water’s edge on the left is the village of Niederelten, and on the hill itself stands Hochelten with its monastery. This unsigned work has been given to both Van Goyen and Herman Saftleven, but Beck discovered that it is a copy after the right half of a painting which is possibly an autograph Van Goyen.4
Comparable views of the Elterberg by Van Goyen are dated from the mid-1640s on.5 This old copy, which in any event is after a work related to that of Van Goyen, can therefore also be dated after 1645.
Gerdien Wuestman, 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. 100.
Literature
Hofstede de Groot 1923, p. 30, no. 103 (as Van Goyen); Dattenberg 1967, p. 288, no. 318 (as Herman Saftleven); Beck II, 1973, p. 159, no. 323 a I (as copy, possibly after Van Goyen)
Collection catalogues
1911, p. 152, no. 993 a (as Van Goyen); 1976, p. 494, no. A 3029 (as Herman Saftleven); 1992, p. 55, no. A 3029; 2007, no. 100
Citation
G. Wuestman, 2007, 'manner of Jan van Goyen, View of the Rhine and the Elterberg, after 1645', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5358
(accessed 24 November 2024 01:46:10).