View of the Valkhof in Nijmegen

c. 1650

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 25.4 cm × width 30.5 cm
outer size: depth 6.7 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature, lower left (falsely): J van Goyen

Technical notes

The support is a relatively thick (0.8 cm) oak panel consisting of two planks with a horizontal grain. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1630. The panel could have been ready for use by 1641, but a date in or after 1647 is more likely. The top plank is 21.1 cm wide and the bottom plank 4.3 cm. The panel is bevelled on all sides, but only the bottom edge is original. The colour of the wood and the horizontal grain are prominently visible through the extremely thin, off-white or transparent ground layer and paint. The paint was applied with broad brushstrokes, thinly in dark passages and thickly in light passages, such as the sky.

Scientific examination and reports

dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 14 February 2002
technical report: I. Verslype / M. Chavannes, RMA, 15 March 2003

Condition

Poor. The reduction of the panel severely distorted the picture. The level of the panel joins is uneven. There are several discoloured retouchings, particularly along the panel join, and a discoloured layer of varnish covering remnants of old varnish.

Conservation

conservator unknown, 1902: repaired

Provenance

...; sale, The Hague (A.G. de Visscher), 30 January 1878, no. 10, as J. van Gooijen (‘Ville forte sur le bord de l’eau. L. 30H. 23 Bois.’), fl. 10,¹ fl. 10.50,² to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague (inv. no. 4230); transferred to the museum, as Frans de Momper, 1885

Object number: SK-A-952

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 land-scape 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

Upon examination in 2003 it was discovered that this View of the Valkhof in Nijmegen is a mutilated fragment of a larger composition. Prior to 1878, when the painting was sold with its present dimensions, the horizontally joined planks were separated, and a horizontal strip approximately 6 cm wide was removed from the top of the lower plank. The sides and the top were also cut down, resulting in a severely damaged painting. The Valkhof, which in reality stands on a hill, has been brought down to the waterside, while the city wall, which served to keep back the river, and much of the bastion in the foreground, the Stratemakerstoren, look as if they are being swallowed up by the waters of the Waal.³

The Valkhof in Nijmegen was one of the favorite subjects of Jan van Goyen and his followers (cf. SK-A-122 and SK-C-519).⁴ This painting, too, was executed under the influence of Van Goyen. It is not just the subject that is similar; so are the monochrome use of colour, the loose brushwork, and the technique with the thin, whitish or transparent ground. The panel has a false Van Goyen signature,⁵ and after its purchase was added to the museum’s inventory as a work by Frans de Momper. However, there is no firm ground for an attribution to De Momper.

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. 101.

Collection catalogues

1886, p. 54, no. 238a (as Frans de Momper); 1887, p. 116, no. 976 (as Frans de Momper); 1903, p. 181, no. 1640 (as Frans de Momper); 1934, p. 195, no. 1640 (as Frans de Momper); 1976, p. 247, no. A 952; 2007, no. 101

Citation

G. Wuestman, 2007, 'manner of Jan van Goyen, View of the Valkhof in Nijmegen, 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.8568

(accessed 25 November 2024 15:46:31).