Arcadian Landscape with a Scene of Sacrifice

? Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 1739

Object data

red chalk, over graphite; later additions in pen and brown and some black ink, transparant and opaque watercolour; framing line in black ink

height 235 mm × width 369 mm

Inscriptions

signed on verso: lower left, by Isaac de Moucheron, in brown ink, door Glaúber begonne, door Moúcheron op Gemaeckt 1739-; below that, in an eighteenth-century hand, in pencil, /N° 947.
stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: letters IHS and a name (hardly legible)

Provenance

...; sale, Jeronimus Tonneman (1687-1750, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (H. de Leth), 21 October 1754 sqq., Album M, no. 12 (‘Een Landschap, van Glauber, en overtekend door I. de Moucheron, hoog 9, breet 14 ½ duim [229 x 368 mm]’), with one other drawing, fl. 33 for both, to the dealer H. de Leth, Amsterdam;¹ ...; sale, Michiel Oudaan (c. 1702-66, Rotterdam), Rotterdam (J. Bosch et al.), 3 November 1766 sqq., Album F, no. 73 (‘Een dito [Arkadisch Landschap], door J. Glauber begonnen en door J. Moucheron opgemaakt, uitvoerig geteekend’), fl. 26:10:-, to ‘Kok’;² …; from the dealer F. Muller, Amsterdam, fl. 10, to the museum (L. 2228), 1893

Object number: RP-T-1893-A-2755

The artist

Johannes Glauber (Utrecht 1646 - Schoonhoven c. 1726)

He was the son of Johan Rudolf Glauber (1604-1670) and Helena Cornelisdr (1615-1689). His father was of German origin, but he was baptized in Utrecht on 18 May 1646. Two of his younger siblings, Diana Glauber (1650-c. 1721) and Johann Gottlieb Glauber (1656-1703), became artists. Probably during the second half of the 1660s, Johannes studied for nine months with Nicolaes Berchem (1621/22-1683) in Amsterdam. After his apprenticeship, he copied Italian paintings for the Amsterdam art dealer Gerrit Uylenburgh (c. 1625-1679). His ‘wanderjahre’ led him first to Paris, accompanied by his brother Johann Gottlieb. There, in 1671, he worked for the Flemish art dealer and flower painter Jean-Michel Picart (c. 1600-1682). In 1672-73, he is recorded in Lyon, where he worked for Adriaen van der Kabel (c. 1630/31-1705). He arrived in Rome in 1674 or 1675 and joined the Schildersbent or Bentvueghels (society of Northern artists active in Rome), which gave him the bent-name Polidoor, a reference to his favourite model, Polidoro da Caravaggio (1499-1543). In Italy – where he also lived in Padua (1676-77) and Venice (1677-79) – he was close friends with Karel Dujardin (1626-1678) and Albert Meyering (1645-1714).

Together with Meyering, he travelled from Italy to Hamburg, where he remained from 1679 to 1684. Meyering may also have accompanied him to Copenhagen during that period, when Glauber spent six months painting decorative works at Charlottenburg Castle for the Danish count and military commander Ulrik Frederik Gyldenløve (1638-1704), an illegitimate son of King Frederick III of Denmark and Norway (1609-1670).

By 1684, Glauber was back in Amsterdam. He took up lodgings with his friend Gerard de Lairesse (1641-1711) and became a member of Nil Volentibus Arduum, a literary society founded in 1669 with the aim of promoting French classicism. With Lairesse, Glauber produced wall paintings for Stadholder Willem III (1659-1702) in the palaces of Het Loo and Soestdijk. The pair also decorated patrician houses, such as those of Jacob de Flines (1657-1714) in Amsterdam, and Jacques Meijers (?-1721) and Adriaen Paets I (1631-1686) in Rotterdam. When the Swedish architect Nicodemus Tessin II (1654-1728) visited Amsterdam in 1687, he described Glauber as the best landscape painter then living in the city. Later that same year, Johannes is recorded as a member of the artists' society Confrerie Pictura in The Hague, but it is not known if he was then living there. On 28 March 1704, at the age of fifty-nine and documented as a resident of the Noordse Bos in Amsterdam, he married forty-eight-year-old Susanna Vennekool (1656-1727), sister of the architect Steven Jacobsz Vennekool (c. 1660-1719).³ Meyering was his witness.

When Glauber drafted a will in Amsterdam on 11 October 1711, he was a resident of Schoonhoven. There, as Houbraken reported, he spent his old age in the Proveniershuis. He is said to have died in 1726. On 17 December 1727, Susanna Vennekool, ‘widow of Johannes Glauber’, was buried in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam.⁴

Glauber belongs to the third generation of Dutch Italianate painters, producing works in the international classicizing taste promulgated by French artists then active in Rome, Gaspard Dughet (1615-1675) and Claude Lorrain (1604/05-1682). Unfortunately, most of Glauber’s works are undated, making it difficult to establish a chronology throughout his peripatetic career. One painting, Wooded River Landscape with Shepherds, signed and dated 166[…], was on the Vienna art market in 2009,⁵ and another signed and dated painting, Landscape with a Shepherd and Flautist, from 1686, is in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (inv. no. 1301). A sketchy pen-and-wash landscape drawing, signed and dated, Amsterdam A° 1685 den 6 Julij, is preserved in the Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden (inv. no. C 1892-14). All these dated works seem to have been executed in Amsterdam. Glauber often collaborated with other artists, including Lairesse and Dirk Maas (1656-1717). Among Glauber’s etchings are prints after drawings by Meyering and the Monogrammist MVO (active c. 1650-80),⁶ as well as after paintings by Dughet and his friend Lairesse.⁷ His only recorded pupil was Willem Troost I (1684-1752).

Annemarie Stefes, 2017

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, III (1721), pp. 66, 210, 216-19; J.C. Weyerman, De levens-beschryvingen der Nederlandsche konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen, 4 vols., The Hague/Dordrecht 1729-69, III (1729), p. 55; A.J. Dézallier d'Argenville, Abrégé de la vie des plus fameux peintres, 3 vols., Paris 1745-52, III (1752), p. 173; C. Kramm, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters van den vroegsten tot op onzen tijd, 7 vols., Amsterdam 1857-64, II (1858), pp. 575-76; F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis, 7 vols., Rotterdam 1877-90, IV (1881-82), pp. 109, 156, 211; G. Upmark, ‘Ein Besuch in Holland 1687 aus den Reiseschilderungen des schwedischen Architekten Nicodemus Tessin’, Oud Holland 18 (1900), no. 4, p. 125; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, I (1906), p. 587; A. Bredius (ed.), Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der holländischen Kunst des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts, 8 vols., The Hague 1915-22, I (1915), p. 345, III (1917), p. 987; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XIV (1921), pp. 243-44 (entry by W. von Dirksen); H. Gerson, Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Amsterdam 1942, pp. 59-60, 167, 186, 216, 470; G.J. Hoogewerff, De Bentvueghels, The Hague 1952, pp. 117, 136; B.J.A. Renckens, ‘Een Portret van Jacob Vennecool. Notities over hem, zijn familie en Johannes Glauber’, Oud Holland 73 (1958), no. 1, pp. 177, 179; W.L. Strauss (ed.), The Illustrated Bartsch, New York and elsewhere 1978-, VII (1978), pp. 195-220, nos. 1-26; D.P. Snoep, ‘Gerard de Lairesse als plafond- en kamerschilder’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 18 (1970), no. 4, pp. 193-98; A. Zwollo, Hollandse en Vlaamse veduteschilders te Rome, 1675-1725, Assen 1973, pp. 5, 10-20, 38, 195, 198; F.W.H. Hollstein et al., German Engravings, Etchings and Woodcuts, c. 1400-1700, 85 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1954-, X (1975), pp. 65-130; C. Kämmerer, Die klassisch-heroische Landschaft in der niederländischen Landschaftsmalerei, 1675-1750, Berlin 1975 (PhD diss., Freie Universität Berlin), pp. 41, 45-47, 49, 52-53, 81-100; A. Roy, Gérard de Lairesse 1640-1711, Paris 1992, pp. 51, 69, 79, 81, 94, 135, 159, 187, 205, 212, 249, 250, 310, 320, 331-332, 337, 339, 341, 352-53, 363, 366, 405-09, 492, 514-15, 535; E. Buijsen (ed.), Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw. Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag, 1600-1700, Zwolle 1998, pp. 307-08; A.W. Vliegenthart, Het Loo, een paleis als museum. Journaal van een restauratie, Apeldoorn 1999, pp. 69, 168; F. Lammertse and J. van der Veen, Uylenburgh & Son: Art and Commerce from Rembrandt to De Lairesse, 1625-1675, exh. cat. London (Dulwich Picture Gallery)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2006, pp. 224, 226-27, 231, 287; A. Beyer et al. (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992-, LVI (2007), pp. 69-71 (entry by E. Schavemaker); 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. 354; H. Gebelein et al. (eds.), Johann Rudolph Glauber: Alchemistische Denkweise, neue Forschungsergebnisse und Spuren in Kitzingen, Kitzingen am Main 2011 (Schriftenreihe des Städtischen Museums Kitzingen, vol. 4), pp. 121-27; T. Žakula, ‘Reforming Dutch Art: Gerard de Lairesse on Beauty, Morals and Class’, Simiolus 37 (2013-14), pp. 59, 65-66, 72-78, 80, 127 (n. 649), 129

Entry

The clue to understanding the evolution of this drawing is written on the verso: ‘door Glauber begonne, door Moucheron op Gemaeckt’ (‘started by Glauber, retouched by Moucheron’). The date given, 1739, indicates that the artist who retouched the drawing and wrote the inscription was Isaac de Moucheron (1667-1744), not his father Frederik de Moucheron (1633-1686). Apparently, he – or the collector who owned the drawing and asked him to do the embellishments – considered the drawing to be unfinished, merely begun by Glauber. Glauber’s part consisted of a sketchy red chalk drawing, though probably not a counterproof, as in some other instances.⁸ The red chalk hatching of the clouds runs from lower left to upper right (the natural orientation for a right-handed draughtsman), and the strokes, best visible in the bust of Pan, appear too fine and precise to be a counterproof (where lines tend to be slightly blurred).

Nevertheless, Glauber most likely had pulled a counterproof from the present sheet before it was ‘improved’ by Moucheron. (Indeed, this process may well have compromised the surface of the sheet, making the red chalk fainter and prompting the reworking.) Glauber’s lost counterproof, presumably indented for transfer, would have been used by him for his undated etching from a series of twelve, which is in the same sense as the present reworked drawing (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-52.758).⁹ As would otherwise be expected, Glauber’s designs for prints are usually in reverse to his etchings, such as examples in the Hamburger Kunsthalle (inv. no. 30718)¹⁰ and the Special Collections, Universiteit Leiden (inv. no. PK-T-AW-0533).

Annemarie Stefes, 2018

Literature

L.C.J. Frerichs, Berchem en de Bentgenoten in Italië, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet) 1970, no. 143; A. Zwollo, Hollandse en Vlaamse veduteschilders te Rome, 1675-1725, Assen 1973, pp. 16-17 (fig. 17); C. Kämmerer, Die klassisch-heroische Landschaft in der niederländischen Landschaftsmalerei, 1675-1750, Berlin 1975 (PhD diss., Freie Universität), p. 140; B. Broos, ‘Improving and Finishing Old Masters: An Art in itself’, Hoogsteder-Naumann Mercury 8 (1989), p. 40 (figs. 10a, 10b); N. Wedde, Isaac de Moucheron (1667-1744): His Life and Works with a Catalogue Raisonné of his Drawings, Watercolours, Paintings and Etchings, 2 vols., Frankfurt-am-Main 1996 (PhD diss., Université de Genève), I, pp. 72, 285, no. D 138, II, pl. 64; A. Stefes, Niederländische Zeichnungen, 1450-1800, 3 vols., coll. cat. Hamburg 2011 (Die Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, vol. 2), pp. 238-39, under no. 358

Citation

A. Stefes, 2018, 'Johannes Glauber, Arcadian Landscape with a Scene of Sacrifice, Amsterdam, after 1684', in J. Turner (ed.), (under construction) Drawings 2, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.45120

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