Object data
oil on panel
support: height 45.9 cm × width 66.4 cm
outer size: depth 8 cm (support incl. frame)
Jan van Goyen
River View with Sentry Post
1644
Inscriptions
- signature and date, lower centre, on the boat: V.G 1644
Technical notes
The oak support consists of two planks with a horizontal grain. There are bevels on all sides, but the one at the bottom may be of a later date. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1626. The panel could have been ready for use by 1637, but a date in or after 1643 is more likely. The off-white ground layer was applied smoothly and thinly. No underdrawing was detected with infrared reflectography. Paint was applied smoothly, with some impasto in the browns and in the white highlights. Brushstrokes are visible in the sky. The position of the mill and a sail in the background were altered.
Scientific examination and reports
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 30 June 1995
- technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 6 September 2004
Condition
Fair. There are discoloured retouchings and overpainting in the sky and in the boats, and some cupped paint under one of the boats on the right. The varnish layer is very discoloured and uneven.
Provenance
...; donated to the museum by Mr and Mrs D.A.J. Kessler-Hülsmann, Kapelle op den Bosch, near Mechelen, 1940; on loan to the Gemeentemuseum, Arnhem, 1952-64
Object number: SK-A-3308
Credit line: Gift of Mr and Mrs Kessler-Hülsmann, Kapelle op den Bosch
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 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
The motif of the square defensive tower, also known as a redoubt, fascinated Van Goyen for some years. It features in several paintings made between 1640 and 1652, generally with a cannon and a beacon standing in front of it, as in this painting.1
Towers like this stood at various places in the country. They dated from the Eighty Years’ War (1568-1648) and served primarily as sentry or lookout posts, or both.2 Since the fortress of Schenkenschans has been recognized among the buildings in the background of this and several related works with the same subject, it is assumed that the towers depicted by Van Goyen stood in the frontier region along the Rhine.3
The composition of this work displays close similarities to a painting dated 1644 in Boston.4 The date on the Amsterdam version is not very legible, but should probably also be read as 1644.5 The inscription was apparently not always spotted in the earliest publications on the painting.6 The 1644 date accords well with the dendrochronology, which gives 1643 as the most likely year for the panel to have been ready for use.7 It is noteworthy that both planks that make up the support of the present painting are from the same tree as one of the planks of the panel of Van Goyen’s View of Rhenen from the West in Hamburg.8
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. 92.
Literature
Coll. cat. Arnhem 1956, p. 15; Dobrzycka 1966, p. 131, no. 281; Beck II, 1973, p. 342, no. 761, III, 1987, p. 233, no. 761
Collection catalogues
1976, pp. 246-47, no. A 3308 (as dated 1645); 2007, no. 92
Citation
G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Jan van Goyen, River View with Sentry Post, 1644', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8567
(accessed 28 December 2024 16:31:15).