Landscape with Herdsmen

1652

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 90.8 cm × width 115.7 cm
outer size: depth 8 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature and date, lower right, on a boulder (D and H ligated): G DHondecoeter / 1652

Technical notes

Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been preserved and there is a selvedge on the right.
Preparatory layers The single, beige ground extends over the tacking edges. It contains earth pigments and very small reddish and black pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends over the tacking edges. A cool grey underpainting was used for the foliage on the right. The blue of the sky was applied directly on top of the ground around this grey shape. The leaves were then added in brown and green transparent paints, covering the transition. The tree on the left was executed over the sky. The figures were not reserved, as is clearly illustrated by the fact that the background has become visible through the brown cow, due to locally increased transparency of the paint layers. Infrared photography showed some dark shapes just above the two figures and to the right of the dog, possibly suggesting a change in the composition. A cross-section shows that the blue of the sky consists of white pigment and greyish-blue, coarsely ground, glassy, transparent pigment particles.
Zeph Benders, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

infrared photography: Z. Benders, RMA, 28 February 2008
paint samples: Z. Benders, RMA, nos. SK-A-751/1-3, 28 February 2008
technical report: Z. Benders, RMA, 28 February 2008

Condition

Fair. There is a slight deformation of the canvas in the upper right corner. The thinly painted leaves and branches directly on top of the sky are severely abraded. The varnish has yellowed.

Conservation

H. Plagge, 1964: treated
M. van de Laar, 1999 - 2001: complete restoration

Provenance

…; sale, Willem Gruyter Jr (1817-1880), Amsterdam (C.F. Roos), 24 October 1882 sqq., no. 39, fl. 230, to J.H. Balfoort, for the museum¹

Object number: SK-A-751

The artist

Gijsbert Gillisz de Hondecoeter (Utrecht c. 1602/04 - Utrecht 1653)

Gijsbert Gillisz de Hondecoeter was probably born between 1602 and 1604 in Utrecht, for a document of 29 February 1628 from the Orphans’ Chamber states that he was 25 years old at the time, while the inscription on a portrait by Hendrick Bloemaert gives his age as 30 in 1634.² He was one of the nine children of the artist Gillis Claesz de Hondecoeter, and was a son from the latter’s marriage to Mayke Ghysbrechts. The family moved from Utrecht to Amsterdam in 1610, but Gijsbert returned to his native city in or before 1630, when he registered with the local guild. In 1631 he donated a painting to St Job’s Hospital there, and the following year he married Maria Hulstman.

He probably trained with his father. His younger brother Niclaes was also a painter, and his sister Justina was married to the artist Jan Baptist Weenix. His son Melchior d’Hondecoeter (1636-1695), whose apprenticeship to him was cut short by Gijsbert’s death in 1653, went on to become the best-known member of the family.

Gijsbert de Hondecoeter specialized in landscapes and scenes with birds. Many of the former genre are in his father’s manner, and also recall the paintings of Roelant Savery. However, those artists’ typically Flemish landscape style is usually less evident in his oeuvre. Since both Gillis and his son Gijsbert signed with their initials ‘GDH’ and were active in the 1620s and ’30s it is not always clear which work was produced by whom. The earliest dated picture to be attributed to Gijsbert is from 1626,³ but as it includes a dodo, which was one of his father's specialities, and the style is also more reminiscent of the latter it is more likely that it is in fact by Gillis. The earliest painting bearing the year of execution that was very probably made by Gijsbert is from 1627 and shows poultry and waterfowl.⁴ Since he rarely signed and dated his pictures, it is difficult to trace the chronology and development of his output. There are similarities between Gijsbert’s scenes with aquatic birds and those by Savery and the younger Aelbert Cuyp. His last dated works are from 1652.⁵ Gijsbert de Hondecoeter died in 1653 in Utrecht and was buried there on 29 August.

Marrigje Rikken, 2022

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, III, Amsterdam 1721, pp. 70-71; S. Muller, Schilders-vereenigingen te Utrecht: Bescheiden uit het Gemeente-Archief, Utrecht 1880, p. 157; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, II, Leipzig/Vienna 1910, pp. 703-04; Schneider in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XVII, Leipzig 1924, p. 432; P. Huys Janssen, Schilders in Utrecht 1600-1700, Utrecht 1990, pp. 91-92; A. van der Willigen and F.G. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-Life Painters Working in Oils, 1525-1725, Leiden 2003, p. 111; Seelig in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, LXXIV, Munich/Leipzig 2012, p. 381

Entry

Gijsbert de Hondecoeter’s invariably imaginary scenes are often built up according to the same template, and it is the one he used in this canvas. The landscape extends diagonally across the picture surface, with the right half being given over to sloping, heavily overgrown rock faces and the left to a broad vista with a low horizon and a couple tending their livestock. On the far left there is a tree trunk with rampant secondary growth that cuts across the dominant compositional line. De Hondecoeter’s earliest dated painting with such a diagonal structure is from 1646.⁶

The odd shapes of the boulders with their sharp angles, the fantasy castle at the top of the hill, the herdsman with a few animals, and the markedly chiaroscuro contrast between the foreground and background are recurrent motifs in the artist’s oeuvre.

The trees and foliage in this scene display stylistic similarities to paintings by his father Gillis de Hondecoeter and are thus still in the Flemish landscape tradition, although Gijsbert’s manner is harsher. Huys Janssen also detected the influence of Cornelis van Poelenburch in this picture, although it is not clear on what basis.⁷

Marrigje Rikken, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

C. Lewis, ‘A Note on a Landscape Painting by Hondecoeter at the New York Historical Society’, Marsyas 13 (1966-67), pp. 18-19; P. Huys Janssen, Schilders in Utrecht 1600-1700, Utrecht 1990, p. 92

Collection catalogues

1887, p. 78, no. 656; 1903, p. 130, no. 1216; 1934, p. 132, no. 1216; 1960, p. 139, no. 1216; 1976, p. 282, no. A 751

Citation

Marrigje Rikken, 2022, 'Gijsbert Gillisz. de Hondecoeter, Landscape with Herdsmen, 1652', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8735

(accessed 26 November 2024 09:37:25).