Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 107.5 cm × width 148.7 cm × thickness 5.4 cm (support incl. backboard)
outersize: depth 8.9 cm (support incl. SK-L-6173)
Salomon van Ruysdael
River View near Deventer
1645
Inscriptions
- signature and date, lower left, on the boat (V and R ligated): S·VR 1645
Technical notes
Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been removed. Cusping is visible on all sides.
Preparatory layers The triple ground extends up to the current edges of the support. The first, brown layer consists of predominantly black and some umber-coloured pigment particles with a small addition of finely ground orange pigment particles. The second, medium rich brown layer contains some finely ground white pigment particles, red pigment and some coarse umber-coloured pigment particles. The third, warm brown layer is composed of white, finely ground orange and some black pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the current edges of the support. The sky and water were executed first, leaving a general reserve for the houses and landscape in the lower right corner. In this area the ground serves as a midtone, showing through the semi-transparent dark brown used to define the landscape. The boats, figures and church tower were added over the background with more opaque paints. The trees and shrubbery were partly applied on top of the ground and partly over the sky. Their foliage consists of a rhythmic pattern of rather routinely placed wet-in-wet brushstrokes, and extensive impasto. The architecture on the right was worked out with quite a lot of detail, while the figures in the foreground and the background were rather sketchily rendered, with dabs of light-coloured paint to model them. Brushwork is visible throughout, especially in the sky.
Ige Verslype, 2023
Scientific examination and reports
- infrared photography: I. Verslype, RMA, 2008
- paint samples: I. Verslype, RMA, nos. SK-A-3259/1-2, 1 October 2008
- technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 1 October 2008
Condition
Poor. An old repaired tear is visible in the lower right corner. The paint is abraded throughout, especially in the foreground at bottom right, exposing the ground. Discoloured retouchings are visible throughout the sky. The varnish is discoloured.
Provenance
…; sale, Marczell de Nemes (Budapest), Amsterdam (F. Muller), 13 November 1928 sqq., no. 64, fl. 35,000, to the dealer Nicolaas Beets;…; donated by Sir Henri W.A. Deterding (1866-1939), London, to the museum, with 17 other paintings, 1936
Object number: SK-A-3259
Credit line: Gift of H.W.A. Deterding, London
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Salomon van Ruysdael (Naarden 1600/03 - Haarlem 1670)
Salomon van Ruysdael was born in Naarden, presumably between 1600 and 1603, because when he enrolled as a master in Haarlem’s Guild of St Luke in 1623 he must have been at least 20 years old. He was a son, probably the youngest one, of the prosperous Mennonite cabinetmaker Jacob Jansz de Gooyer. After the latter’s death in 1616 the artist and his brothers adopted the surname derived from the Ruysdael or Ruisschendael country estate near Blaricum, where their father had been born.
Van Ruysdael settled in Haarlem, and is first mentioned in the St Luke archives there in 1623, when he presented the guild with a landscape he had painted. Shortly before 1627 he married Maycke Willemsdr Buyse, the daughter of a wealthy Mennonite bleacher, and it was through her family that he became involved in that trade, dealing in the blue agent used in the city’s famous bleacheries. That explains why he also became a member of the local drapers’ guild in 1658. By 1657 he also owned a share in a tanning mill in Gorinchem, a town east of Rotterdam. As a Mennonite he was not allowed to bear arms, so each year he had to buy off his obligations to the Haarlem civic guard.
Van Ruysdael’s earliest known paintings are from 1626: The Valkenburg Horse Fair and Dune Landscape with a Horseman Riding a Grey.1 In 1628 Samuel Ampzing praised both him and Gerrit Bleker as landscapists in his Beschryvinge of Haarlem. His work started appearing on the market as early as 17 November 1631, when two of his pictures were sold from the collection of Hendrick Willemsz den Apt, the landlord of the Coningh van Vranckrijck inn. Van Ruysdael took an active part in organizing lotteries and sales in Haarlem, and in 1642 he vainly tried to persuade the authorities not to ban auctions of paintings.
On 6 October 1637 Van Ruysdael paid St Luke’s for an apprenticeship for Hendrik Pietersz de Hondt (dates unknown). Cornelis Decker (1618-1678) is mentioned as a pupil in 1649, and others whom he taught were his son Jacob (1629/30-1681) and his nephew Jacob Isaacksz van Ruisdael (1628/29-1682). He served the guild as warden in 1647, 1663-64 and 1669-70, and as dean in 1648. Van Ruysdael’s last dated works are from 1669: Winter Landscape with Skaters and View of Alkmaar with a Maypole.2 He was buried in the high choir of the Grote Kerk in Haarlem on 3 November 1670. Although he was reasonably well-off, his finances had suffered in a recession.
His oeuvre consists largely of landscapes, many with views of rivers and some featuring an inn, as well as a number of seascapes and winter scenes. He also began painting still lifes in 1659.
Richard Harmanni, 2023
References
S. Ampzing, Beschryvinge ende lof der stad Haerlem in Holland, Haarlem 1628 (reprint Amsterdam 1974), p. 372; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, III, Amsterdam 1721, p. 66; J. Immerzeel Jr, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters: Van het begin der vijftiende eeuw tot heden, II, Amsterdam 1843, p. 41; A. van der Willigen, Geschiedkundige aanteekeningen over Haarlemsche schilders en andere beoefenaren van de beeldende kunsten, voorafgegaan door eene korte geschiedenis van het schilders- of St. Lucas Gild aldaar, Haarlem 1866, pp. 183-84; A. van der Willigen, Les artistes de Harlem: Notices historiques avec un précis sur la Gilde de St. Luc, Haarlem/The Hague 1870, pp. 254-55; P. Scheltema, Aemstel’s oudheid of gedenkwaardigheden van Amsterdam, VI, Amsterdam 1872, pp. 99-100; H.F. Wijnman, ‘Het leven der Ruysdaels’, Oud Holland 49 (1932), pp. 49-60, 173-81, 258-75, esp. pp. 52, 56, 272-73; Simon in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXIX, Leipzig 1935, pp. 189-90; W. Stechow, Salomon van Ruysdael: Eine Einführung in seine Kunst, Berlin 1975 (ed. princ. 1938), pp. 11-14; H. Miedema, De archiefbescheiden van het St. Lucasgilde te Haarlem, 1497-1798, 2 vols., Alphen aan den Rijn 1980; I. van Thiel-Stroman, ‘Biographies 15th-17th Century’, in P. Biesboer et al., Painting in Haarlem 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 99-363, esp. pp. 289-90; Van der Molen in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, C, Munich/Leipzig 2018, pp. 203-04
Entry
This landscape is one of the kind that Salomon van Ruysdael depicted regularly from the early 1640s to the early 1650s: a diagonal composition with a bank on the right and a river on the left, with a scene in the foreground centring around a rowing or a fishing boat, or a ferry.3 On the land there is always a group of trees and a building or village to the right of it, and the left background invariably includes a town, castle or meadows. In this case the settlement in the far distance can be identified as Deventer, as Stechow was the first to note in 1938.4 The most prominent reference points are the two spires of the Bergkerk and the tower of the Lebuinuskerk. The relative positions of the churches and the city’s location to the right of the water identify this as a sight from the south. Despite the topographical elements, however, the landscape is not realistic. A look at a map shows that the village on the right should be Colmschate, were it not for the fact that in reality it does not lie by the river and never had a church spire like the one shown here.5
Van Ruysdael’s oeuvre comprises three other river scenes that contain elements from this panorama of Deventer. He first recorded it in 1641, from roughly the same vantage point.6 A later landscape with a ferry has a similar view,7 and a 1657 painting of Deventer seen from the north shows the city on the left bank with the Lebuinuskerk prominent in the centre.8
The yellow glow on the horizon in the present picture suggests that the sun is low in the sky, either in the morning or evening. It is difficult to make out what is happening on the right bank of the river, for the three figures by the large tree, one of whom is repairing a fishing net, are difficult to distinguish from each other. This passage has become very monochrome through wear.9 There would have been less contrast in the original scene, and the sunlit roofs in the village would not have stood out so much. The painting dates from a time when Van Ruysdael was changing to a more colourful palette, as can be seen from the blue sky and the clouds tinged pink by the sun. The only bright accent in the foreground is the red coat of the man in the boat.
Richard Harmanni, 2023
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
Literature
W. Stechow, Salomon van Ruysdael: Eine Einführung in seine Kunst, Berlin 1975 (ed. princ. 1938), p. 139, no. 458; Z.G.M. Kolks and M.J. Niermeyer, Oost-Nederland model: Landschappen, stads- en dorpsgezichten 17de-19de eeuw, exh. cat. Enschede (Rijksmuseum Twenthe) 1980, pp. 74-75
Collection catalogues
1937, p. 44, no. 2084b; 1976, p. 489, no. A 3259
Citation
Richard Harmanni, 2023, 'Salomon van Ruysdael, River View near Deventer, 1645', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5340
(accessed 22 November 2024 15:10:46).