All works in Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum

Albert Jansz Klomp

Landscape with Cattle

c. 1665 - 1688

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 27.2 cm × width 35.1 cm
outer size: depth 12 cm (support incl. frame)

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

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 10 November 2024 01:15:59).

Figures

Albert Jansz Klomp, the present Landscape with Cattle (SK-C-161) and the other Landscape with Cattle (SK-C-162)

Footnotes