Object data
oil on panel
support: height 57.4 cm × width 86.9 cm
outer size: depth 5 cm (support incl. frame)
Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot
River View
1650
Inscriptions
- signature and date, in monogram lower left, on the covered haystack (J and C ligated, D and S ligated): JC DS / 1650
Technical notes
The support consists of two oak planks with a horizontal grain and is bevelled on all sides. The wood is visible through the white ground giving it a light red appearance. The landscape was painted first. The outlines of the figures were then drawn in black paint, and subsequently painted in as economically as possible, and in many places not very meticulously.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 6 August 2002
Condition
Fair. Old retouchings are visible and the varnish has discoloured.
Provenance
...; ? sale, L. Cassotti, Vienna (G. Posonyi), 2 October 1893 sqq., no. 112, 225 Krone, to S. Ivany (‘Holländisches Dorf am Canale. Reich staffiert. signiert. Holz. Br. 82, H. 58’);1...; sale, 'various collections in Amsterdam and two foreign collections', Amsterdam (A. Mak), 14 October 1918, no. 19, fl. 1,650, to Ms Brassa, or to the dealer Duits;2;...; bequeathed by August Anton Marie Sträter (1867-1934), Amsterdam, with one other painting, to the museum, 1934
Object number: SK-A-3227
Credit line: A.A.M. Sträter Bequest, Amsterdam
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot (Utrecht c. 1586 - Utrecht 1666)
It is assumed that Droochsloot was born in 1586, the year his parents married, or shortly thereafter and that his place of birth was Utrecht, where his father had settled by 1581. He painted imaginary village scenes, topographical views and history pieces. It is not known with whom he trained, although the resemblance of his peasant figures with those of David Vinckboons indicates that it might have been with the latter. Droochsloot’s first dated painting Village Kermis,3 and his etchings are highly reminiscent of Vinckboons. The influence of Esaias van de Velde and Adriaen van de Venne is also discernable in Droochsloot’s oeuvre, and two of his early paintings include topographical views of The Hague,4 where Van de Velde had settled in 1618 and Van de Venne in 1625. Droochsloot’s first dated work is an etching from 1610.5 Although his first dated painting is from 1615, he did not register as a master-painter in the Utrecht painters’ guild until 1616. Two years later he married Agnietgen van Rijnevelt in the Reformed Church. In 1623, 1641 and 1642 he was elected dean of the painters’ guild. A respected burgher, he also filled other public positions: in 1638 he was elected a lifelong regent of the St Job’s Hospice, in 1642 deacon of the Reformed Church, and in 1650 and 1651 sergeant in the Utrecht militia. Financial success eluded Droochsloot later in his career, and he was forced to take out several mortgages on his house. Beginning in the 1620s, he gave drawing lessons. His pupils included Jacob Duck (c. 1600-67) in 1621, a number of painters about whom nothing else is known (Jan Petersen, Peter van Straesborgh, Steven de Leeuw, and Cornelis Duck), as well as his own son, Cornelis Droochsloot (1630-after 1673), who continued his workshop after his death in 1666.
Jonathan Bikker, 2007
References
Houbraken III, 1721, p. 288; Lilienfeld in Thieme/Becker IX, 1913, pp. 574-75; Van Luttervelt 1947; Bok in San Francisco etc. 1997, pp. 380-81; Luijten in Amsterdam 1997, pp. 113, 171-73, no. 31; Beaujean in Saur XXIX, 2001, p. 489
Entry
Judging from the known dated works, river scenes became part of Droochsloot’s standard repertoire rather late in his career. The earliest examples are dated 1643.6 Invariably, a river extends from the lower (most often right) foreground into the far distance, and is flanked on both sides by buildings, including a church. Often, as in the present painting, a partially seen structure in the left foreground serves as a repoussoir. The willow in the centre foreground of the present painting also appears in another river landscape by Droochsloot.7 The likely model for Droochsloot’s river scenes was Esaias van de Velde’s 1622 Ferry (SK-A-1293), which the Utrecht artist might have seen while residing in The Hague.8 Some of the details in the present painting, such as the fisherman viewed from behind in a boat on the right and the ducks swimming in the foreground, were probably also inspired by Van de Velde’s composition. Droochsloot’s rendering of trees also suggests that artist’s influence. The subdued palette and crude peasant types in such late paintings by Droochsloot led in the past to attributions of his work to David Teniers the Younger; a related river scene carries a Teniers monogram.9 A scene similar to the present painting, showing a village with a river, from 1652 in Utrecht10 has a pendant in the form of a village kermis.11 The possibility exists, therefore, that the present painting also originally had a pendant.
Jonathan Bikker, 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. 59.
Collection catalogues
1934, p. 85, no. 808a; 1976, p. 200, no. A 3227; 2007, no. 59
Citation
J. Bikker, 2007, 'Joost Cornelisz. Droochsloot, River View, 1650', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8328
(accessed 26 December 2024 19:52:53).