Object data
oil on panel
support: height 55.1 cm × width 111.7 cm
outer size: depth 4.5 cm (support incl. frame)
Adam van Breen
Winter Landscape with Skaters
c. 1615 - c. 1620
Inscriptions
- signature, in monogram, on the left on the front of the boat: AB
Technical notes
The original support (54.6 x 111.6 cm) was probably an oak panel consisting of two horizontally grained planks planed down to a few millimetres and transferred to a modern multiplex support. There is a beige ground, a grey under painting for the ice and a blue one for the sky. There is an underdrawing, possibly in black chalk. The painting was executed from the back to the front, without reserves.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: G. Tauber, RMA, 16 January 2005
Condition
Fair. The painting was transferred to a modern panel and is very flat. There is a great deal of abrasion in the sky, and there are discoloured retouchings in the sky, the ice and along the former joins. The yellowed varnish is rather matte and scratched.
Provenance
...; donated to the museum by R.H.A. Verspyck, Chateauneuf, and Mrs I.A. Uitenhage de Mist-Verspyck, Aerdenhout, from the bequest of Mrs E.F. Verspyck-Laan, Aerdenhout, 1999
Object number: SK-A-4951
Credit line: E.F. Verspyck-Laan Bequest, Aerdenhout
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Adam van Breen (? Amsterdam c. 1585 - ? Kristiania in or after 1642)
Adam van Breen was probably born in Amsterdam around 1585. Nothing is known about his training with certainty, but it is thought that he was a pupil of Hendrick Avercamp (1585-1634) or David Vinckboons (1576-1630/33), or both. On 13 February 1612 he gave notice of his intended marriage to the widow Maria Gelle in The Hague, on which occasion he was registered as ‘bachelor from Amsterdam’. He joined the Guild of St Luke in The Hague in 1612 or 1614. On 28 June 1617 he received 100 pounds from the States-General for his designs for the 62 engravings in Die Nassausche Wapenhandelinge, which he published in The Hague in 1618 as a supplement to Jacques de Gheyn’s Wapenhandelinghe of 1608. He must have left The Hague in 1621 and moved to Amsterdam, where he was declared bankrupt in March 1622. From 1624 he was active in Kristiania (now Oslo), where he painted 25 paintings for the decoration of Akershus Castle, which had been commissioned by Christopher Urne. He returned to Amsterdam in 1628, where he presented a bankruptcy petition, but was back in Norway in 1636, where he is recorded in 1636, 1639 and 1640 in connection with decorations for castle Akershus, which had burned down for the second time in 1632. From his Norway period there is a painting of a Piece of Silver Ore signed and dated 1632, and a Portrait of Ole Bose, Bishop of Akershus dated 1642, attributed to the artist. In his Hague period he painted winter landscapes and genre scenes. His winter landscapes are similar to the early paintings of Hendrick Avercamp, and he was also influenced by David Vinckboons.
Jan Piet Filedt Kok, 2007
References
Moes and Aubert in Thieme/Becker IV, 1910, pp. 564-65; De Kinkelder in Saur XIV, 1996, pp. 64-65; Dumas in coll. cat. The Hague 1991b, p. 131; De Kinkelder in The Hague 1998, pp. 104-08
Entry
This painting, which has never before been described or reproduced in the literature, is a typical but not very well preserved winter landscape by Adam van Breen, as is confirmed by the monogram AB on the front of the icebound boat in the foreground. The panel, which has unfortunately been transferred to a modern support, is larger than most of Van Breen’s winter landscapes, but the composition and the figures recall those of his Ice Scene with Windmill and Icebound Boat in a private collection, which is dated 1611,1 and of his ice scene in Paris.2 The rather broad and loose execution of the figures, which is quite characteristic of Van Breen, is decidedly inferior to the unerring, delicate and transparent handling of paint in the works by Hendrick Avercamp that inspired him. This painting should very probably be dated prior to Van Breen’s departure for Kristiania in 1624.
Jan Piet Filedt Kok, 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. 33.
Collection catalogues
2007, no. 33
Citation
J.P. Filedt Kok, 2007, 'Adam van Breen, Winter Landscape with Skaters, c. 1615 - c. 1620', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.358159
(accessed 20 September 2024 00:35:18).