Italian Landscape with Draughtsman

c. 1650 - 1652

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 188.5 cm × width 240.4 cm

Inscriptions

signature, lower right (J and B ligated): JBoth f.

Technical notes

Support The support consists of two pieces of similar plain-weave canvas with a horizontal seam at approx. 89.9 cm from the top, and has been wax-resin lined. The tacking edges have been preserved at the bottom and on the left and right, the one at the top has been removed.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends over the tacking edges at the bottom and on the left and right, and up to the current top edge of the support. The first, reddish layer contains mostly earth pigments and some small black and bright red pigment particles. The second, grey ground consists of mostly white and some black and brown pigment particles.
Underdrawing A very loose underdrawing in a dark, liquid medium is visible with the naked eye, and even more clearly with infrared photography , in the upper right corner 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 over the tacking edges at the bottom and on the left and right, and up to the current top edge of the support. The composition was built up from dark to light. Dark areas were underpainted using a dark brown, very fluid paint. It was applied directly on top of the ground, which shows through in several places due to the fairly open character of the brushwork. The subsequent layers were applied wet in wet. The large areas of colour, such as the sky and the horizon, were filled in with reserves for the foliage being left in the sky. Both the grey ground and the dark underpaint were left uncovered in the dark areas of the foreground. Final details were added throughout using both light and dark colours. In the case of the leaves, a semi-transparent green paint was applied with considerable impasto.
Zeph Benders, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

paint samples: A. Wallert, RMA, nos. R 63/1-2, 19 October 1999
paint samples: Z. Benders, RMA, nos. SK-C-109/1-2, 15 May 2008
technical report: Z. Benders, RMA, 15 May 2008
infrared photography: Z. Benders, RMA, 2 June 2008

Condition

Fair. There are a few paint losses, especially along the edges, as well as slight abrasion in the paint of the sky. The varnish has yellowed.

Conservation

conservator unknown, 1954: cleaned; canvas lined
M. Zeldenrust, 1984: complete restoration

Provenance

…; sale, Quiryn van Biesum (1656-1719, Rotterdam), Rotterdam (auction house not known), 18 October 1719, no. 127 (‘Beelden, Teekenaars, Reizigers, enz. […] h 6v., br. 8 v. [169.9 x 226.5 cm]’), fl. 225;¹…; sale, Richard Pickfatt (†, Rotterdam), Rotterdam (auction house not known), 12 April 1736, no. 57 (‘Beelden, Teekenaars, Reizigers enz. in een Landschap […] h. 6 v. br. 8 v. [169.9 x 226.5 cm]’), fl. 45;²…; collection Mr Way, c. 1770;³ by whom, 600 gns, to Thomas Hamlet, 1820;⁴ his sale, London (Robins), 29 July (1 August) 1833 sqq., no. 201 (‘A Magnificent Landscape. The noble dimensions of this picture, the beauty and grandeur of the composition warmth and truth of the effect of sun, together with the […] manner in which it is painted, render it an undoubted chef d’ouvre [sic] of this […] painter’), bought in at 1,260 gns;⁵ his sale, London (Robins), 24 March 1834, no. 44 (‘A Magnificent Landscape, the beauty and grandeur of the composition, the warmth and truth of the effect of sun, […] render it an undoubted chef d’oeuvre of this […] painter.’), 1,123.10 gns, to the dealer John Smith, London;⁶ from whom, £1,430, to Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), Amsterdam, through the mediation of Albertus Brondgeest, end of April 1834;⁷ by whom bequeathed to the City of Amsterdam, with 223 other paintings, 1854;⁸ from which on loan to the museum since 30 June 1885⁹

Object number: SK-C-109

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest)

The artist

Jan Both (Utrecht c. 1615 - Utrecht 1652)

Not everything reported by Joachim von Sandrart, Jan Both’s first biographer, is backed by the scarce documentary sources about the artist. What is beyond doubt is that Jan was a younger brother of Andries Both and was therefore born in Utrecht as a son of the glass painter Dirk Joriaensz Both. Von Sandrart could have seen the brothers when he was studying with Gerard van Honthorst in Utrecht in 1625-27. According to him they were apprenticed to Abraham Bloemaert in those days. It is far from certain, though, that the tuition fees that their father paid in 1634-37 to an unnamed master for an unnamed child actually related to Jan as Bloemaert’s pupil.

It seems unlikely that the brothers travelled to Rome together, as Von Sandrart stated, because Jan is not recorded in the city until 12 June 1638, when he attended a meeting of the Accademia di San Luca. The two of them were registered as living in a house in Strada Vittoria in 1639 and 1641. It was around this time that Jan received a commission from King Philip IV of Spain for six large landscapes to be installed in one or more galleries in Buen Retiro palace in Madrid.¹⁰ Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin, Gaspar Dughet, Herman van Swanevelt and Jean Lemaire were also involved in this, the largest landscape painting project in seventeenth-century Europe. The prestigious contract suggests that Jan Both was probably older than 20, which would place his year of birth around 1615.

He was still in Rome on 29 April 1642, when Cardinal Antonio Barberini paid him 60 scudi for two paintings. He returned to Utrecht soon afterwards, where he took on pupils like Hendrick Verschuring (1627-1690) and the virtually unknown Barend Bispinck (c. 1625-after 1658). He was certainly in Utrecht in 1644, when he executed the background in a portrait of the Utrecht collector Baron Willem Vincent van Wyttenhorst.¹¹ Cornelis van Poelenburch, Jacob Duck and Bartholomeus van der Helst also worked on it. Van Poelenburch painted Jan Both’s likeness in 1648 and presented it to the baron.¹² In 1649 Jan was one of the senior officials of the Guild of St Luke in Utrecht. He died in the city on 9 August 1652, still a bachelor, and was buried in the Buurkerk.

Jan Both specialized in Italianate landscapes. His only dated picture is the Landscape with Mercury and Argus of 1650.¹³ Only a few of his paintings contain mythological staffage, which was added by other artists like Cornelis van Poelenburch. His street scenes with genre-like figures mainly date from his time in Rome and shortly afterwards. He only developed his characteristic Italianate style after returning to Utrecht. His landscapes were so popular during his lifetime that they gave rise to copies and works done in his style, or ‘in the Bothian manner’ as it was put at the time.

Richard Harmanni, 2022

References
C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edel vrij schilder const, inhoudende den lof vande vermarste schilders, architecte, beldthowers ende plaetsnijders van deze eeuw, Antwerp 1662, pp. 156-58; J. von Sandrart, Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von 1675: Leben der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. A.R. Peltzer, Munich 1925 (ed. princ. Nuremberg 1675), pp. 184-85; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, I, Amsterdam 1718, p. 114; 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.], II, Rotterdam 1879-80, p. 82; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, I, Leipzig/Vienna 1906, pp. 156-57; Moes in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, IV, Leipzig 1910, pp. 410-11; G.J. Hoogewerff, Bescheiden in Italië omtrent Nederlandsche kunstenaars en geleerden, II, The Hague 1913, p. 53; G.J. Hoogewerff, Nederlandsche kunstenaars te Rome (1600-1725): Uittreksels uit de parochiale archieven, The Hague 1942, pp. 108, 110; L. de Bruyn, ‘Het geboortejaar van Jan Both’, Oud Holland 67 (1952), pp. 110-12; M.R. Waddingham, ‘Andries and Jan Both in France and Italy’, Paragone, no. 171 (1964), pp. 13-43, esp. pp. 13-16, 25-28; Blankert in A. Blankert, H.J. de Smedt and M.E. Houtzager, Nederlandse 17e eeuwse Italianiserende landschapschilders, exh. cat. Utrecht (Centraal Museum) 1965, pp. 112-15; M.A. Lavin, Seventeenth-Century Barberini Documents and Inventories of Art, New York 1975, p. 8; J.D. Burke, Jan Both: Paintings, Drawings and Prints, New York/London 1976, pp. 34-39; Chong in P.C. Sutton et al., Masters of 17th-Century Dutch Landscape Painting, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Boston (Museum of Fine Arts)/Philadelphia (Philadelphia Museum of Art) 1987-88, pp. 276-77; Blankert in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XIII, Munich/Leipzig 1996, pp. 241-42; Bok in J.A. Spicer and L.F. Orr (eds.), Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht during the Golden Age, exh. cat. San Francisco (Fine Arts Museum)/Baltimore (The Walters Art Gallery)/London (The National Gallery) 1997-98, pp. 377-78

Entry

This scene with a draughtsman and other figures is the largest painting that Jan Both ever made. The monumental nature of the landscape is due not only to its size but also to the composition itself. The viewer’s eye is led from the relatively dark foreground with its tall trees through an ingenious series of vistas to the golden light of the evening sun in the distance. Travellers with pack mules are crossing a wooden bridge over a foaming stream tumbling downwards and dividing the wooded, mountain area from the more open countryside. The relatively small scale of the figures accentuate the grandeur of the scene. The subtly lit sections in the front make it appear that the golden light suffuses the entire picture. The refined and highly differentiated foliage and detailed plants in the foreground identify this as a landscape from Both’s mature period, around 1650.¹⁴

The most eye-catching part of the scene is the group of four men in the foreground, one of whom is drawing, judging by the sheet of paper before him. Passing travellers with cattle or pack animals and walkers taking their ease are common elements in the staffage of Italianate landscapes. Although draughtsmen working out of doors are stock elements in seventeenth-century drawings,¹⁵ they are far less frequent in Dutch painting of the period.¹⁶ However, they do feature with some regularity in Both’s oeuvre, including a canvas with a waterfall in Cincinnati (fig. a) and another in Los Angeles.¹⁷ In those two landscapes and the present scene the figure is not drawing in a small sketchbook but on a sheet of paper which may be resting on a board. Although the depiction of draughtsmen in the open air never really caught on in seventeenth-century painting, Jan Both did have several followers who employed the motif.¹⁸

Leaving aside Both’s six large vertical landscapes in Madrid, those in Boston (167 x 218.5 cm), Cambridge (146.7 x 206 cm) and Copenhagen (149 x 209 cm) best approach the size of the Amsterdam canvas.¹⁹ All of them can be dated to the same period on stylistic grounds. The unusual height of the Rijksmuseum painting led Van Thiel to suggest that it might have been let into wainscoting as part of the decoration of a room.²⁰ If that was the case it would have been one of the earliest examples of a landscape scene covering a wall in the Dutch Republic, for until now it has been assumed that Adam Pijnacker was the first to produce such works in the 1660s.²¹

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. 180, no. 1; A. Pollmer, ‘Catalogus van de schilderijen in de verzameling van Adriaan van der Hoop’, in E. Bergvelt et al., De Hollandse meesters van een Amsterdamse bankier: De verzameling van Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), exh. cat. Amsterdam (Amsterdams Historisch Museum; Rijksmuseum) 2004-05, pp. 135-95, esp. p. 141, no. 21, with earlier literature

Collection catalogues

1885, p. 90, no. 22; 1887, p. 21, no. 163; 1903, p. 60, no. 591; 1934, p. 59, no. 591; 1960, p. 52, no. 591; 1976, p. 137, no. C 109

Citation

Richard Harmanni, 2022, 'Jan Both, Italian Landscape with Draughtsman, c. 1650 - 1652', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6193

(accessed 19 September 2024 02:18:36).

Figures

fig. a Jan Both, *Italian Landscape with an Artist Sketching from Nature*, c. 1645-50. Oil on canvas, 74.5 x 89.7 cm. Cincinnati, Cincinnati Art Museum, Mr and Mrs Harry S. Leyman, Endowment. Photo: Bridgeman Images