Landscape with Fisherman with a Square Net

Joris van der Haagen (Arnhem or Dordrecht c. 1615 - The Hague 1669)

No record has yet been found of the baptism of Joris van der Haagen, who was a son of the painter Abraham van der Haagen and Sophia Ottendr van der Laen. It is assumed that he was born between 1613 and 1617, which were the dates of birth of two other children. The family moved from Dordrecht to Arnhem in that period, probably with a brief stop along the way.

It seems likely that Van der Haagen trained first with his father, none of whose works has survived. After the latter’s death Joris and his mother went to The Hague, and in 1640 he built a house there on Amsterdamse Veerkade. In 1642 he married the widow Magdalena Thijmandr de Heer. The following year he paid 18 guilders to enrol in the Guild of St Luke; he was charged the highest fee because neither he nor his wife were born in The Hague. Van der Haagen acquired his burgess rights in 1644. He was made a warden of the guild in 1652-53, so was evidently a respected member of the city’s artistic community. In 1656 he became one of the founders of the Confrerie Pictura artists’ society but was never one of its officials. In 1660 he was teaching one Jan Jansz Schmidt, about whom nothing further is known.

Van der Haagen rarely dated his pictures, so it is difficult to follow his stylistic development. His earliest work bearing the year of execution is a drawing made in The Hague woods in 1644 or 1647.⁵ The first known dated painting is from 1649: a panorama outside the Rijnpoort near Arnhem.⁶ His last two commissions are from 1669, not long before he died. These consisted of an overmantel in the offices of the Schiedam water board, in collaboration with Ludolf de Jongh,⁷ and a likeness of an unidentified woman, the present whereabouts of which are unknown.⁸ The only other portrait he made was of himself in a trompe-l’oeil niche with a landscape in the background.⁹ His remaining oeuvre, both drawn and painted, comprises landscapes, city views, panoramas and other topographical works. Many of the latter are set in The Hague and Arnhem. Amsterdam is one of the few places where his activities are recorded in notarized documents from 1650 and 1657. His trips abroad were mainly to the German border region, especially the area around Cleves.

Van der Haagen regularly asked others to paint the figures in his landscapes and urban scenes. In addition to Ludolf de Jongh, signatures show that he worked together with Nicolaes Berchem and Dirck Wijntrack.¹⁰ Other suspected collaborations are based on attribution of the staffage, not always reliably, to artists like Paulus Potter, Adriaen van de Velde, Pieter de Hooch, Johan le Ducq and Cornelis van Poelenburch.

Van der Haagen fell on hard times in the last ten years of his life, even though he kept on painting into old age. In 1658 he was threatened with the attachment of his house because he was in arrears in settling a debt, and in order to thwart his creditors his mother made his children her heirs. He nevertheless carried on living in his own home until his death on 20 May 1669. He still must have gone through a difficult period, because a few months before he died he was excused duty in the civic guard because of ‘indisposition’. Van der Haagen was buried in the Kloosterkerk in The Hague.

Richard Harmanni, 2022

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, III, Amsterdam 1721, p. 203; J. Immerzeel Jr, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters: Van het begin der vijftiende eeuw tot heden, II, Amsterdam 1843, p. 8; C. Kramm, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters: Van den vroegsten tot op onzen tijd, II, Amsterdam 1858, pp. 616-17; F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis: Verzameling van meerendeels onuitgegeven berichten en mededeelingen betreffende Nederlandsche schilders, plaatsnijders, beeldhouwers, bouwmeesters, juweliers, goud- en zilverdrijvers [enz.], IV, Rotterdam 1881-82, pp. 59, 82, 129; ibid., V, 1882-83, passim; A. Bredius, ‘Het schildersregister van Jan Sysmus, Stads-Doctor van Amsterdam’, Oud Holland 12 (1894), pp. 160-71, esp. pp. 168-70; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, I, Leipzig/Vienna 1906, p. 633; F.J. van der Haagen, ‘Joris van der Haagen, kunstschilder: Hoofdman v/h St. Lucasgilde te ’s-Gravenhage, Bijdragen en Mededeelingen der Vereeniging Gelre 18 (1915), pp. 129-45, esp. pp. 129-36; A. Bredius, ‘Korte mededeelingen, VI: Hoe Joris van der Hagen betaald werd’, Oud Holland 35 (1917), p. 128; M.J.F.W. van der Haagen, ‘De samenwerking van Joris van der Haagen en Dirck Wijntrack’, Oud Holland 35 (1917), pp. 43-48; Schneider in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XV, Leipzig 1922, pp. 463-64; J.K. van der Haagen, De schilders van der Haagen en hun werk: Met catalogus van de schilderijen en teekeningen van Joris van der Haagen, Voorburg 1932, pp. 16-52; Gordon in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, XIII, New York 1996, p. 892; Buijsen in E. Buijsen et al., Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw: Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag 1600-1700, exh. cat. The Hague (Haags Historisch Museum) 1998-99, pp. 146-49; E. Löffler, ‘Illustrated Index on Painters Active in The Hague between 1600-1700’, in ibid., pp. 281-362, esp. p. 311; Pijl in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, LXVII, Munich/Leipzig 2010, p. 425