Five Studies of the Head of a Sheep / verso: Sketch of an Italian Tower next to a City Wall behind Trees with a Ruined Structure and Park

1624 - 1673

Object data

oil on paper; framing line in black chalk

height 174 mm × width 259 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed on verso, in pencil: lower left, in a nineteenth-century hand, J. v. d. Does; below that, N.B.; next to that, possibly in an eighteenth-century hand, verdoes
stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

Watermark: None

Condition

Losses in upper left, right and lower right corners, and in left border

Provenance

…; from the dealer J.H. Balfoort, Utrecht, fl. 20, to the museum (L. 2228), 1885

Object number: RP-T-1885-A-550(R)

The artist

Jacob van der Does I (Amsterdam 1623 - Sloten, near Amsterdam 1673)

He was born on 4 March 1623, the son of Simon van der Does (1589-1648), secretary to the board of insurers in Amsterdam, and Beatrix Anselmo Anthonsdr (1594-?). Jacob studied painting with Claes Moeyaert (1591-1669) in Amsterdam. He is said also to have enrolled in Leiden University in 1644, but this cannot be confirmed by documents.¹

Among his earliest dated works is a painting from 1641, Shepherd with Sheep, Goats and a Cow, formerly on the London art market.² That Van der Does played a leading role in the development of the Italianate pastoral animal piece is suggested by that picture’s stylistic resemblance to works by Paulus Potter (1625-1654), Karel Dujardin (1626-1678) and Adriaen van der Velde (1636-1672) – by none of whom is there a surviving work known from this early period.

According to Houbraken, Van der Does left for France at the age of twenty-one and continued on foot to Italy; this must have been in 1644 or 1645. During the five years he spent in Rome, where he was a member of the Schildersbent or Bentvueghels, he practised drawing and painting, following the example of Pieter van Laer (1599-1642). Because of his short stature and unrealized dream of becoming a soldier, he was given the bent-name ‘Tamboer’ (‘Drummerboy’).

By 1650, he must have returned to the Netherlands, where he is documented as living on the Lelygracht in Amsterdam. In Haarlem on 22 March 1650, he married the amateur artist Margaretha Dirksdr Boortens (1630-1661). Both were members of the Reformed Church. Shortly thereafter, the couple settled in The Hague, where Margaretha had grown up as the daughter of the advocate Dirck Dircksz Boortens (c. 1600-1647). Through her mother, she was related to Jacob van Campen (c. 1608-after 1660), who may have inspired her love of drawing and painting.

In 1656, Van der Does was one of the founding members of the Confrerie Pictura, the artists’ society of The Hague, of which he served as a warden (1656/57, 1658/59) and later as dean (1659/60, 1660/61). According to Houbraken, his wife’s death and the loss of her 700-guilder annuity affected the artist so deeply that he stopped painting and drawing for a four-year period; he suffered from financial difficulties the rest of his life.³ In 1662, he married, as his second wife, Johanna van Geesdorp Gideonsdr (?-?), who died shortly after the birth of their four children. Among the seven children of his first marriage were two sons who became artists, Simon van der Does (1653-after 1718) and Jacob van der Does II (1654-1699); of the children of his second marriage, only Gideon van der Does (?-?) reached adulthood. In 1663, Jacob I returned to Amsterdam and, through the intervention of influential friends, was appointed secretary of Sloten and Sloterdijk. After that, he resumed drawing, his latest works dating from 1672, for instance Two Shepherdesses Resting with their Flock near a Ruin in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem (inv. no. Q+ 002).⁴ He died on 17 November 1673 in Sloten.

Van der Does’s paintings, mainly pastoral landscapes with cattle and sheep, were highly appreciated by his contemporaries, as well as by eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century collectors. He was known as painter of the ‘duizendguldensgeit’ (‘1000 guilder goat’), named after the price that one such painting of a goat fetched. Weyerman nicknamed him the ‘Dutch Castiglione’. Houbraken claimed that ‘nobody surpassed him in the depiction of sheep, naturally in both drawing and painting’.⁵ Despite diverging opinions on painting, Van der Does was close friends with Karel Dujardin, who was appointed guardian to his children after his first wife’s death; Houbraken reported that Dujardin preferred ‘clear’ colours, while Van der Does favoured a ‘brown’ (i.e. dark) manner of painting. Among the artist’s other friends was the diplomat Cornelis de Montigny de Glarges (1599-1683), to whose album amicorum, preserved in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, he contributed a drawing and Latin verses, as did his first wife, Margaretha Boortens, and her sister Maria.⁶ Another famous album amicorum, that of Jacob Heyblocq (1623-1690), director of Amsterdam’s Latin School, also in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, contains two drawings by Van der Does, dated 1666, accompanied by verses in French and Italian.⁷ He made only one etching, Five Sheep, dated 1650.

Besides his sons Simon and Jacob II, Van der Does’s pupils were Marcus de Bye (1638/39-after 1688) in 1658, the same year as the little-known Gamaliel Day (active 1658); Alexander Havelaer (1640/45-1686), who was in the studio in 1659; and Anthony Schinckels (active 1658-60) and Theodorus Bernoille (active 1661), students in 1660 and 1661, respectively.

Annemarie Stefes, 2018

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, II (1719), pp. 105-08; J.C. Weyerman, De levens-beschryvingen der Nederlandsche konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen, 4 vols., The Hague/Dordrecht 1729-69, IV (1769), p. 38; P. Terwesten, Register off aanteekeninge zo van de Deekens, Hoofdluiden en Secretarissen der Kunst-Confrerie Kamer van Pictura, The Hague 1776 (unpublished manuscript, Archive of Confrerie Pictura, Gemeentearchief, The Hauge), p. 6; J. Immerzeel, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1842-43, I (1842), pp. 186-87; A. Bredius in F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis, 7 vols., Rotterdam 1877-90, IV (1881-82), pp. 55, 57-61, 64, 76-79, 81-82, 100, 118, 125, 134, 148; V (1882-83), pp. 84, 110, 130, 144-46, 153; VII (1888-90), p. 192; A.D. de Vries, ‘Biografische aanteekeningen betreffende voornamelijk Amsterdamsche Schilders, Plaatsnijders, enz. en hunne verwanten (I)’, Oud Holland 3 (1885), p. 68; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, IX (1913), pp. 374-75 (entry by H. Wichmann); A. Bredius (ed.), Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der holländischen Kunst des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts, 8 vols., The Hague 1915-22, III (1917), pp. 854-55; VI (1919), pp. 1986, 2037; P.C. Molhuysen et al. (eds.), Nieuw Nederlandsch biografisch woordenboek, 10 vols., Leiden 1911-37, VI (1924), p. 423; F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols, Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, V (1951), pp. 248-49; C. Boschma (ed.), Meesterlijk vee. Nederlandse veeschilders, 1600-1900, exh. cat. Dordrecht (Dordrechts Museum)/Leeuwarden (Fries Museum) 1988-89, pp. 423-24; E. Buijsen (ed.), Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw. Het Hoogsteder lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag, 1600-1700, Zwolle 1998, p. 300; P. Schatborn, with J. Verberne, Drawn to Warmth: 17th-century Dutch Artists in Italy, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001, pp. 132-37; A. Beyer et al. (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992-, XXVIII (2001), p. 261 (entry by C. Kemmer); P. Groenendijk, Beknopt biografisch lexicon van Zuid- en Noord-Nederlandse schilders, graveurs, glasschilders, tapijtwevers et cetera van ca. 1350 tot ca. 1720, Utrecht 2008, p. 268

Entry

It was a widespread practice for animal painters literally to make ‘field studies’ of their grazing models, occasionally in oil on paper. Rarely signed, the attribution of these presumed exercises is based mostly on stylistic grounds or old inscriptions. Such is the case with the present drawing, whose traditional association with Jacob van der Does depends on the annotation ‘Verdoes’ on the verso. There is indeed some affinity with painted animals by the artist, such as those in one of his earliest works, a picture dated 1641, Shepherd with Sheep, Goats and a Cow formerly on the London art market.⁸ However, no related oil painting by Jacob van der Does is known, only pen-and-wash sketches of rams’ heads, such as one in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1836,0811.116),⁹ and another formerly on the Munich art market.¹⁰ Casting further doubt on the attribution to Jacob van der Does is the remarkable similarity of an oil on paper of Five Studies of the Head of a Sheep, formerly in the Van Regteren Altena collection, which is similarly inscribed simply Van Der Does but in this case was catalogued as by Jacob’s son, Simon van der Does (1653-after 1718).¹¹

The other verso inscription, with the letters ‘N.B.’, might refer to Nicolaes Berchem (c. 1621/22-1683), famous for his depiction of sheep. However, his fluid and elegant brushstroke has nothing in common with the present sheet. Closer in style are oil sketches on paper traditionally attributed to Karel Dujardin (1626-1678), such as the Study of Four Heads of Goats and the Study of Six Heads of Sheep, both in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (inv. nos. 1316 and 1349),¹² and the Study of Five Heads of Sheep, which in 1988 was with Hoogsteder Gallery, The Hague.¹³ Possibly belonging to the same group is the Study of Ten Heads of Sheep in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (inv. no. Berchem 3), formerly attributed to Nicolaes Berchem.¹⁴ Similar short brushstrokes were used by Dujardin to render sheep in his paintings, as can be seen in two examples in the Rijksmuseum, Italianate Landscape with a Girl Milking a Goat (1652) and Landscape with a Mule Driver (circa 1652), both of which feature a brown-spotted sheep (inv. nos. SK-A-192 and SK-C-158).¹⁵

For the present oil sketch, the artist made use of a support on which he had apparently already made a sketch in graphite on the verso, showing a group of buildings of decidedly Southern character. The paper has now discoloured because of the penetration of the oil colours from the recto, making the details difficult to discern. The subject seems to consist of a square-based tower with vaulted windows, its roof crowned with at least three chimneys, attached to a wall with two vaulted openings leading to a gate or an aqueduct. To this complex also belong a ruin and a house, all girded by a row of trees. Further buildings to the right, unfortunately, are almost completely effaced, so that the faintly visible graphite drawing escapes further identification. There is a certain stylistic affinity with Dujardin’s Piazza S. Maria Maggiore in Rome (1653) in the Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris (inv. no. 2778),¹⁶ whereas the subject-matter resembles that of an anonymous drawing in the British Museum, View of Italian Buildings on a Slope above a River (View over the Tiber to Mount Aventine with St. Sabina and Parco Savello?) (inv. no. 1871,1209.6312),¹⁷ erroneously attributed to Jan Baptist Weenix (1621-1659) by A.C. Steland.¹⁸ In any event, its Southern motif narrows the attribution of the recto drawing to an artist of the Italianate school, tipping the balance in favour of the elder Van der Does, who, unlike his son Simon, did travel to Italy.

Annemarie Stefes, 2018

Citation

A. Stefes, 2018, 'Jacob van der (I) Does, Five Studies of the Head of a Sheep / verso: Sketch of an Italian Tower next to a City Wall behind Trees with a Ruined Structure and Park, 1624 - 1673', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.33807

(accessed 10 November 2024 20:37:39).