View of Kasteel Honingen near Rotterdam

Rotterdam, c. 1648 - c. 1652

Object data

pen and brown ink, with brown and grey wash and some red chalk, heightened with opaque white, on paper toned with light brown wash; framing line in black ink

height 142 mm × width 162 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed: upper left, by Van Alkemade or Van der Schelling, in brown ink, Honingen
inscribed on verso: upper left, in brown ink, t Slot Honinge; centre (with the sheet oriented upside down), in pencil, N° 66 Z; below this, in pencil, 66 Z
stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of Van Isendoorn à Blois (L. 1407); lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

Watermark: Foolscap

Provenance

...; ? collection Kornelis van Alkemade (1654-1737), Rotterdam;¹ his son-in-law, Pieter van der Schelling (1691-1751), Rotterdam;² his heirs, Johanna van den Hoek-van der Schelling (1692-?), Hendrik van der Schelling (1694-1772) and Geertruida Stiermans-van der Schelling (?-1774), Rotterdam;³…; collection Frederik Carel Theodoor, Baron van Isendoorn à Blois, Heer van Feluy en Cannenburgh (1784-1865), Kasteel De Cannenburgh, Vaassen, Gelderland (L. 1407); his sale, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos), 19 Augustus 1879, no. 134, as Rembrandt, fl. 51, to the dealer A.G. de Visser, The Hague;⁴ his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 16 (17) May 1881 sqq., no. 339, as Rembrandt, fl. 82, to the dealer J. de Vries for the museum (L. 2228);⁵

Object number: RP-T-1888-A-1768

The artist

Jan Ruyscher (Franeker c. 1625 – after 1675)

He was presumably the son of Johann Rauscher II (?-1632), a portrait painter who worked at the court of Johann George I, Elector of Saxony (1585-1656) in Dresden.⁶ The earliest documentary mention of Ruyscher is the record of his marriage to Cornelia Sasbout (1629-?) in 1649 in Dordrecht, in which he was cited as being born in Franeker, Friesland. Nothing is known about his earlier life and education. Based on his drawing style, it is assumed that Ruyscher was a pupil of Rembrandt (1606-1669) in the mid-1640s. There is, however, no documentary evidence of his apprenticeship to the master. His work, especially his etchings, was also greatly influenced by Hercules Segers (1589/90-c. 1640), which explains his contemporary nickname, ‘The Young Hercules’.

In Amsterdam, Ruyscher presumably met his future wife, Cornelia Sasbout, a daughter of the Amsterdam doctor Sasbout Cornelisz Souburgh (c. 1597-1653). A year after their marriage, a daughter, Willemina (1650-1713), was born. In 1651 they moved back to Amsterdam, where another daughter, Lea (1652-?), was baptized in the Zuiderkerk. Later in his career, Ruyscher worked in Germany in the Duchy of Cleve (1652-57) and at the courts of Brandenburg (1657-61) and Saxony (1662-75). It seems likely that he regularly travelled back and forth between the Netherlands and the German courts in the 1650s, since another daughter, Rebecca (1657-?), was born in Dordrecht. By 1675 Ruyscher had left Dresden, apparently abandoning his wife and children in ‘Elende und höchster Armuth’ (‘misery and profound poverty’). We know this from a letter in which Cornelia requests Johann George II, Elector of Saxony (1631-1680), to pay back her husband’s salary in order for her and her children to pursue her husband. Ruyscher’s trail is then lost.

Marleen Ram, 2019

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, III (1721), pp. 41, 349; A. Welcker, ‘Johannes Ruyscher alias Jonge Hercules, I’, Oud Holland 49 (1932), pp. 241-57; A. Welcker, ‘Johannes Ruyscher alias Jonge Hercules, II’, Oud Holland 50 (1933), pp. 12-34; A. Welcker, ‘Johannes Ruyscher alias Jonge Hercules, III’, Oud Holland 50 (1933), pp. 118-31; A. Welcker, ‘Johannes Ruyscher alias Jonge Hercules, IV’, Oud Holland 51 (1934), pp. 73-96; A. Welcker, ‘Johannes Ruyscher alias Jonge Hercules, V’, Oud-Holland 53 (1936), pp. 161-81; P.C. Molhuysen et al. (eds.), Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek, 10 vols., Leiden 1911-37, X (1937), pp. 858-59; W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-92, X (1992), p. 5193, with additional earlier literature; I.M. Veldman, ‘Ruijscher’, in A. Beyer et al. (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992-, C (2018), p. 114

Entry

Kasteel Honingen in Kralingen, near Rotterdam, was built in the Middle Ages. After being heavily damaged in 1574, the castle was pulled down with the arrival of the French in 1672. It was a favourite subject for numerous artists; see, for example, a drawing by Jan van de Velde (1593-1641) in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (inv. no. JvdV 1 (PK)), and another one by Roelant Roghman (1627-1691) in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. RP-T-1888-A-1436). The present drawing depicts two of the towers, the water surrounding the ruin and on the right the flat landscape and houses in the distance. It was sketched on paper toned with light brown wash and extensively washed with the brush. Parts of the ruin have been accented in red chalk, and the illuminated areas have been heightened with opaque white. The pen lines have been carefully drawn, describing the forms of the building in some detail. The horizontal hatching has been somewhat weakened by the addition of wash. The distant background and the clump of grass in front of the tower have been rendered in a sketchy and open fashion.

At the top right, the drawing is inscribed, Honingen, by either the Rotterdam collector of medals, autographs, original documents and especially (topographical) manuscripts, Kornelis van Alkemade (1654-1737) or his son-in-law, Pieter van der Schelling (1691-1751). The same inscription appears on two other drawings of Honingen in a similar style and technique, one in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (inv. no. WA1855.19, formerly P I, 194),⁷ and one in the Gemeentearchief, Rotterdam (inv. no. 4080_XXIX-29).⁸ For the sheets in Oxford and Amsterdam, the names of Abraham Furnerius (1628-1654)⁹ and Pieter de With (c. 1635-after 1689)¹⁰ have been suggested, but their drawings are not sufficiently similar. An attribution to Jan Ruyscher, who was probably a pupil of Rembrandt (1606-1669) in the mid-1640s, is more likely. The same materials and techniques used for the three views of Kasteel Honingen were also employed for Ruyscher’s Landscape with the City of Naarden in the Distance in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. RP-T-1891-A-2425). In that drawing, the clouds were indicated with opaque white, and red chalk was used as well. The way in which the clumps of grass were drawn and the houses were shaded suggests that both drawings were made by the same artist. The views of Honingen in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Oxford would be quite unusual for Ruyscher since most of his drawings are of spacious, panoramic landscapes, but the similarities in style and technique make the attribution plausible. By 1649 Ruyscher was living in Dordrecht, from whence he could have easily visited the castle (now part of metropolitan Rotterdam), before he was appointed as a landscape artist at the court of Cleves in 1652.

Peter Schatborn, 1985/Marleen Ram, 2019

Literature

M.D. Henkel, Teekeningen van Rembrandt en zijn school, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1942 (Catalogus van de Nederlandsche teekeningen in het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam, vol. 1), no. 123 (as Pieter de With?); P. Schatborn, Tekeningen van Rembrandt, zijn onbekende leerlingen en navolgers/Drawings by Rembrandt, his Anonymous Pupils and Followers, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1985 (Catalogus van de Nederlandse tekeningen in het Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, vol. 4), no. 114 (as anonymous, with a tentative attribution to Ruyscher), with earlier literature; W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-92, X (1992), p. 5424, under no. 2394 (as school of Rembrandt, c. 1650); M.C. Plomp, The Dutch Drawings in the Teyler Museum, II: Artists Born between 1575 and 1630, coll. cat. Haarlem 1997, p. 162, under no. 159 (as attributed to Jan Ruyscher by Schatborn)

Citation

P. Schatborn, 1985/M. Ram, 2019, 'attributed to Jan Ruyscher, View of Kasteel Honingen near Rotterdam, Rotterdam, c. 1648 - c. 1652', in J. Shoaf Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28636

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