Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 27.2 cm × width 35.1 cm
outer size: depth 12 cm (support incl. frame)
Albert Jansz Klomp
Landscape with Cattle
c. 1665 - 1688
Inscriptions
- signature, bottom right: A. Klomp
Technical notes
Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been removed. Cusping is vaguely visible at the top and on the left.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends up to current edges of the support. The first, greyish-brown layer consists of brown pigment particles with an addition of white, red and ochre-coloured pigment particles. The second ground is also greyish brown, but is thinner and lighter, and contains a higher amount of white pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the current edges of the support. The composition was laid out with an undermodelling in a translucent greyish-dark brown paint. The sky was then applied wet in wet, leaving the trees in reserve, except for the perimeter of the foliage, which was executed over the sky. The animals were reserved in the landscape and the sky, and were built up from dark to light. The two figures on the left and the one on the right were placed on top of the landscape. Finally the darkest shadows and highlights were added. The paint was loosely applied, sometimes leaving the ground exposed, for example above the back of the standing cow. The paint surface is smooth, with some visible brushwork in the cows’ heads.
Anna Krekeler, 2022
Scientific examination and reports
- paint samples: M. Chavannes, RMA, nos. SK-C-161/1-3, 3 March 2009
- infrared photography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 31 March 2011
- technical report: A. Krekeler, RMA, 6 April 2011
Condition
Good. The varnish has yellowed and saturates moderately.
Conservation
- H.H. Mertens, 1967: cleaned, retouched, revarnished
Provenance
…; ? anonymous sale, Leiden (L.B. Coclers and J. Janson), 4 November 1783, no. 30 (‘Twee Landschapjes met Koeijen, Kalveren, Schapen en Geytjes, breed 13, hoog 10½ duim [34 x 27 cm]’), fl. 47;1…; sale, Dorothea Henriette Marie Louise de Pagnier (1751-1836, Utrecht), dowager of Baron Vincent Maximiliaan van Tuyll van Serooskerken (1747-1794, Utrecht), Utrecht (G.H. Stevens), 28 July 1836, no. 11 (‘Op eenen heuvelachtigen grond ziet men eene leggende en staande koe met eenige schapen, waarbij eene leggende geit die door haar jong wordt gezogen, op den tweeden grond eene boeren-woning tusschen het geboomte; in het verschiet eene rivier en verder stoffagie’), with pendant, no. 12 (‘Op den voorgrond zijn twee leggende melkbeesten en eene staande, met schapen en eene geit, waarbij eene boerenwoning en een melk-meisje, welke huiswaarts gaat […] verder in alles als het voorgaande, waarvan het de pendant uitmaakt’), fl. 276, to Albertus Brondgeest, for Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), Amsterdam;2 by whom bequeathed to the City of Amsterdam, with 223 other paintings, 1854;3 from which on loan to the museum, with pendant SK-C-162, since 30 June 18854
Object number: SK-C-161
Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest)
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Albert Jansz Klomp (Amsterdam 1625 - Amsterdam 1688)
Albert Jansz Klomp was baptized in Amsterdam on 11 March 1625 as the son of the shoemaker Jan Albertsz from Emmen and Trijntje Ede from Harlingen. In 1657 he married Maria du Gardijn, daughter of the painter Guilliam du Gardijn. Notarized documents from 1658, 1663, 1675 and 1679 record his presence in Amsterdam, as well as contacts with the artists Jan Blom and Pieter Laurensz van Ansloo. In 1688, he is mentioned in the books of the Guild of St Luke as a citizen (poorter) of Amsterdam. The following announcement appeared in the Amsterdamse Saturdagsche Courant on 12 February 1689: ‘In Amsterdam on 20 December 1688 a person called Albert Klomp, art painter, aged around 70 years, left his house as evening approached and has not been seen since, which is why he is thought to have met with an accident. Said person is short and stout, is wearing a light worsted coat and a knotted neckcloth.’ His body was eventually recovered and buried on 23 February 1689 in Sint-Antonieskerkhof.
Klomp specialized in scenes of cattle in the manner of Paulus Potter. His earliest dated works are from 1657 and 1662 and still look a little awkward,5 which might indicate that he only started painting in later life. His last dated pictures from 1684 and 1686 show that he was still active at an advanced age.6 Klomp’s subject matter and approach never varied throughout his career. Compositional elements, not infrequently copied from Potter’s oeuvre, were repeated time and again.
Erlend de Groot, 2022
References
A. Bredius, ‘Aanvullingen op Kramm’, Nederlandsche Kunstbode 2 (1880), p. 387; A.D. de Vries, ‘Biografische aanteekeningen betreffende voornamelijk Amsterdamsche schilders, plaatsnijders, enz. en hunne verwanten’, Oud Holland 3 (1885), pp. 55-80, 135-60, 223-40, 303-12, esp. p. 77; H.S. in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XX, Leipzig 1927, pp. 538-39; Wegener in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, LXXX, Munich/Leipzig 2014, p. 507; A. Jager, ‘Galey-schilders’ en ‘dosijnwerck’: De productie, distributie en consumptie van goedkope historiestukken in zeventiende-eeuws Amsterdam, diss., University of Amsterdam 2016, pp. 315-18
Entry
Albert Klomp probably painted this picture as a companion piece to another landscape with cattle (see SK-A-162; also fig. a). Works of his were often referred to as pairs in seventeenth-century Amsterdam probate inventories,7 and as far as is known these two have never been separated. Iconographically, though, there is no reason to hang them beside each other – at most there is a visual relationship.
Clearly inspired by the oeuvre of Paulus Potter, both paintings are of different kinds of cattle with a river (the present one) and a dune background respectively. The compositions have a diagonal structure with an open landscape on one side and dense vegetation on the other. Several elements have been taken from earlier works by both Klomp himself and Potter. The two cows and the solitary sheep on the left in this scene, for example, are found in exactly the same poses in a much larger, undated picture by Klomp.8 The reclining cow with the goat in front of it, which is the central motif of the dune landscape, is derived from Paulus Potter’s Herdsmen with Cattle of 1651.9 There are at least two other versions of the latter, including one in the Rijksmuseum which is now regarded as a copy.10 It is not known which of these variants Klomp used, but it is not inconceivable that he had an image of the Potter in his studio, for the same reclining cow and goat feature in several other works of his.11 The fact that this motif still occurs in cattle scenes in the eighteenth century testifies to its popularity.12
There are only a few clues to establish a chronology for these two pictures, which are clear evidence of Klomp’s mastery of the subject. The cows with their slightly impasted heads are more successful than those in his earliest known works of 1657 and 1662. There is a single dated painting to which they can be related. The goat copied from Potter in the dune scene also features in a Landscape with Cattle and Herdsmen of 1665.13 For the moment that provides no more than a rough origin in the mid-1660s.
Erlend de Groot, 2022
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
Collection catalogues
1887, p. 93, no. 775; 1903, p. 148, no. 1353; 1976, p. 322, no. C 161
Citation
Erlend de Groot, 2022, 'Albert Jansz. Klomp, Landscape with Cattle, c. 1665 - 1688', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.12043
(accessed 26 December 2024 19:20:19).