All works in Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum

Jan Both

Italian Landscape with a View of a Harbour

c. 1645 - c. 1650

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 79.7 cm × width 102.5 cm
outer size: depth 6 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

  • signature, lower left, on a rock (J and B ligated): JBoth

Technical notes

Support The panel consists of two vertically grained, butt-joined oak planks (approx. 18.5 and 60.8 cm), approx. 1 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on the left and right, and is covered with a red-brown paint. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1616. The panel could have been ready for use by 1627, but a date in or after 1633 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, light beige ground extends up to the edges of the support at the top and bottom. It contains mostly earth pigments and some white pigment particles. Strips of bare wood on the left and right (approx. 0.5 cm) indicate that the panel was secured in a frame when the ground and paint were applied.
Underdrawing A very loose underdrawing in a dark, liquid medium is visible with the naked eye, and even more clearly with infrared photography, in areas of sky surrounding branches and leaves which were planned but not executed. Its sole function seems to have been to give a rough indication of their position.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support at the top and bottom, and up to approx. 0.5 cm from the left and right edges. The composition was built up from dark to light. A transparent dark underpaint was applied rather roughly, as illustrated by the clearly visible brushstrokes in the distant rocks left of centre. The larger figures in the left foreground seem to have been reserved, whereas the smaller ones on the right were added over it. The beige ground serves as a mid-tone in many areas on the left and right, for example in the rocks on the left. The paint was applied relatively thinly, with only some impasto in the leaves of the trees.
Zeph Benders, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

  • infrared photography: Z. Benders, RMA, 22 May 2008
  • technical report: Z. Benders, RMA, 22 May 2008
  • paint samples: Z. Benders, RMA, nos. SK-A-49/1-2, 24 June 2008
  • dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 9 September 2008

Condition

Fair. There is a horizontal crack approx. 21 cm long in the upper right corner. Several paint losses have been filled and retouched throughout. Some of these retouchings have become matte, especially in the sky. The varnish has yellowed and is particularly spotty in the sky. It does not cover the edges, since the painting was apparently varnished in its frame.

Conservation

  • W.A. Hopman, 1874: varnish regenerated

Provenance

…; presented by an anonymous woman to Prof. Jan Bleuland (1756-1838), Utrecht, before 1819;1 his sale, Utrecht (H. van Ommeren), 6 May 1839 sqq., no. 20, as Jan and Andries Both (‘op Paneel, h 8 p. 1 d. br. 1 el 3⅓ d. [81 x 103.3 cm] Een Italiaansch bergachtig Landschap, met hoog opgaand geboomte, en gestoffeerd met onderscheiden groepen reizende Personen, zoo te voet, als te Paard en op Muil-Ezels; in het verschiet een meer, aan welks oever eenige visschers met vischvangen bezig zijn, verder de uithoek van een haven, met eenige daarin liggende schepen. […] is bekend onder den naam van de Zalmvangers, wegens de daarvan zijnde plaat.’), fl. 7,000, to Johannes Rombouts (1772-1850), Dordrecht;2 his nephew, Leendert Dupper Willemsz (1799-1870), Dordrecht, 1850;3 by whom bequeathed to the museum, as Jan and Andries Both, with 63 other paintings, 12 April 18704

Object number: SK-A-49

Credit line: Dupper Wzn. Bequest, Dordrecht

Copyright: Public domain

The artist

Entry

This scene with a Mediterranean harbour in the background was considered to be a joint work by Jan and Andries Both in the nineteenth century.9 It was rightly adjusted to Jan alone a little more than a decade after the picture was acquired by the Rijksmuseum. Although it is described as an Italian landscape, there is no reason to believe that the view was painted from life while Both was living in Italy, or even before then, as suggested by Burke.10 Although the dendrochronology shows that the panel was most probably ready for use by 1633, it has to be dated later on stylistic grounds. Like the Italian Landscape with Mule Driver it must be from around 1645 or a little later,11 when Both’s mature style was evolving.12 This is borne out by the refined rendering of the foliage and the luminous background. As far as is known, this is Both’s only landscape to include a view of a harbour. The plentiful staffage combined with the illuminated background, from which the light streams through to the foreground past the stand of trees, make this one of Both’s most interesting works.

The provenance of the painting goes back to 1819, when Sir John Murray described it after seeing it that year in the collection of Prof. Jan Bleuland.13 Van Eynden and Van der Willigen reported in 1840 that Bleuland had received it as a gift from an unnamed ‘grand lady’ in gratitude for him curing her of an illness.14 The catalogue of his posthumous sale in 1839 states that the painting was known from the print Zalmvangers (Salmon catchers). No such eighteenth or early-nineteenth-century copy has been traced.

Richard Harmanni, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

J.D. Burke, Jan Both: Paintings, Drawings and Prints, New York/London 1976, p. 181, no. 2

Collection catalogues

1870, p. 220, no. VIII (as Jan and Andries Both); 1880, p. 66, no. 47 (as Jan and Andries Both); 1887, p. 20, no. 159; 1903, p. 60, no. 592; 1934, p. 59, no. 592; 1960, p. 52, no. 592; 1976, p. 137, no. A 49

Citation

Richard Harmanni, 2022, 'Jan Both, Italian Landscape with a View of a Harbour, c. 1645 - c. 1650', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6194

(accessed 10 November 2024 00:48:21).

Footnotes