Polder Landscape

1644

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 22 cm × width 33.2 cm
outer size: depth 5.5 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature and date, lower right: VG 1644

Technical notes

The support is a horizontal oak plank with a vertical grain and is bevelled on all sides. Traces of the whitish ground on all sides indicate that the dimensions have not been altered. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1625. The panel could have been ready for use by 1636, but a date in or after 1642 is more likely. The paint was applied rapidly in opaque layers, with the exception of the foreground, which was painted transparently. Brushstrokes are visible in the sky.

Scientific examination and reports

dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 30 June 1995
X-radiography: RMA, no. 1677, 15 August 1995
technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 6 September 2004

Literature scientific examination and reports

Bauch et al. 1972, p. 488; unpublished entry by Ariane van Suchtelen, RMA, 1995

Condition

Fair. There is some abrasion and the varnish has discoloured slightly.

Conservation

conservator unknown, 1959: revarnished
M. van de Laar, 1987: complete restoration

Provenance

...; sale, F.C. Pawle, Esq. (†) (Northcote, Reigate, Surrey), C.N. Curtis, W.C. Waldron, W. Lawson Peacock [anonymous section], London (Christie et al.), 20 March 1925, no. 131, £ 241.10, to Clark;¹...; donated to the museum by Sir Henri W.A. Deterding (1866-1939), London, 1936

Object number: SK-A-3249

Credit line: Gift of H.W.A. Deterding, London

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 landscape 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 began specializing in panoramic landscapes in the mid-1630s. It had been customary to divide landscapes up into separate planes with the aid of repoussoirs, but Van Goyen started experimenting, reducing and eventually eliminating the tops of dunes and trees in the foreground.² Various authors have cited the influence or Hercules Segers in this process,³ although there are also precedents in the work of Hendrick Goltzius and Esaias van de Velde.⁴ One innovation compared to the compositions of Segers and Goltzius is the towering skies, which can take up as much as four-fifths of the height of Van Goyen’s paintings, as well as the care taken to depict the atmosphere conditions.⁵

This river landscape of 1644 is related to those that Van Goyen drew and painted near Haarlem in the mid-1640s, such as the views of the Haarlemmermeer in New York and Amsterdam.⁶ It has therefore been assumed that this landscape is from the same locality. Van Goyen probably made the preliminary studies for the New York and Amsterdam works from the crossing tower of the St Bavokerk in Haarlem, and Middelkoop has suggested that the artist viewed this landscape from slightly lower down, possibly from the tower of Kasteel Heemstede.⁷ That would make this stretch of water the southern part of the River Spaarne, and the tower on the left that of the Romanesque church in Spaarnwoude.⁸ However, there is one crucial point that Middelkoop did not raise. If Van Goyen did indeed draw from the tower of Kasteel Heemstede there must have been one or more sketches made from that spot. There is no such preliminary study in the album where one would expect to find it, namely the sketchbook containing Van Goyen’s panoramas of the Haarlemmermeer from the same year as this painting. Partly in view of his way of working, it is more likely that he painted this landscape, which may or may not have existed, in his studio, adopting an imaginary, high vantage point.

The wood of the panel has a vertical grain. This is remarkable, not just because it is unusual for a horizontal format, but also because it has been suggested that Van Goyen occasionally allowed the grain to show through the paint. In at least one painting he supposedly used the horizontal grain to accentuate the ripples in the water of a river.⁹ In the composition of this work, with its horizontal structure, a vertical grain serves no visual function at all, so the fact that it is visible does not seem to have been the artist’s intention.

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. 93.

Literature

Dobrzycka 1966, pp. 43, 107, no. 137; Beck II, 1973, p. 441, no. 979; Middelkoop in Perth etc. 1997, pp. 28-29, no. 2

Collection catalogues

1948, p. 41, no. 991 A 2; 1960, p. 115, no. 991 A 2; 1976, p. 246, no. A 3249; 2007, no. 93

Citation

G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Jan van Goyen, Polder Landscape, 1644', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8560

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