The Ruin of the Church of Eik en Duinen near The Hague

1717

Object data

brush and grey wash, over traces of graphite; framing line in black ink

height 195 mm × width 150 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed by the artist, in grey ink: upper right, Eijkenduijnen 8 / 24 . 1717 . (date expressed as a fraction, month over day); next to that, 74
inscribed on verso: lower centre, in graphite, V. Klotz. f
stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2233)

Technical notes

watermark: coat of arms (upper half)

Condition

Some brown stains along the left side of the sheet

Provenance

…; from the dealer J.H. Valk, Amsterdam, together with inv. no. RP-T-1894-A-2888, fl. 16:45:- for both, to the museum (L. 2233), 1894

Object number: RP-T-1894-A-2889

The artist

Valentijn Klotz (c. 1646 - The Hague 1721)

Except for a death certificate in The Hague dated 15 November 1721,¹ no documents relating to his life are known. Klotz may have come from the province of Limburg, where his surname is recorded in the seventeenth century.² Biographical information is therefore based only on his dated drawings: the earliest, from 1667, was mentioned in Kramm, but its whereabouts are unknown³ and the last is in the Rijksmuseum’s collection (inv. no. RP-T-1894-A-2889), from 1718.⁴ In 1670, Klotz resided in Maastricht, where he likely met fellow draughtsman Josua de Grave (1643-1712). Together with Barend Klotz (?-?), his presumed brother or cousin who was an midshipman (adelborst) in the army, the three men accompanied the army of the Dutch States-General under the Stadholder Prince Willem III of Orange (1650-1702) on various campaigns. They might have been hired as individual draughtsmen, tasked to record the landscapes, cities, villages and encampments encountered along the way, including those around Bergen op Zoom (1671-early 1672), cities around the Dutch ‘waterlinie’ (1672) and various regions in the southern Netherlands and present-day Belgium (1674, 1675 and 1676).

Like Josua de Grave, Klotz probably settled in The Hague at some point; several drawings dating between 1673 and 1718 depict the city and its environs, among them two in the Rijksmuseum’s collection (the present sheet and inv. no. RP-T-1894-A-2888).

Although as a draughtsman, he worked in a very similar style and technique to Barend Klotz and Josua de Grave, Valentijn seems to have had a somewhat more spontaneous approach. According to Gordon, Klotz’s subject-matter is also slightly more diverse, focusing more heavily on architectural elements.⁵ Only a few of Valentijn Klotz’s drawings are signed, only occasionally with his full name. He more often provided his drawings with a date and a short description of the location. His handwriting is quite irregular, somewhat sloppy and not very consistent. He did use a very recognizable capital letter ‘B’.⁶ Klotz built up his landscapes with thin brown lines, often on top of an initial quick sketch in graphite or black chalk. Compared to De Grave’s drawings, his pen strokes in brown ink are tighter, and he often used zigzags rather than loops. In a few instances, the drawing is worked out entirely in grey and black rather than brown ink (e.g. inv. no. RP-T-1888-A-1640). His rendering of trees is quite sketchy, using short strokes of the pen to suggest leaves, with grey washes often applied to establish their shape and volume. Some sheets in the Rijksmuseum have watercolour washes, probably applied by a later hand (e.g. inv. nos. RP-T-00-171 and RP-T-00-172).

Carolyn Mensing, 2019

References
R. van Eijnden and A. van der Willigen, ‘Klotz, Valentijn’, in U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XX (1927), pp. 549-50; R.J.G.M. van Hasselt, ‘Drie tekenaars van topografische prenten in Brabant en elders. Valentijn Klotz, Josua de Grave en Constantijn Huygens Jr.’, Jaarboek Oudheidkundige Kring ‘De Ghulden Roos’ 25 (1965), pp. 145-55; M.H. Breitbarth-van der Stok, ‘Josua de Grave, Valentinus Klotz en Bernardus Klotz’, Bulletin Koninklijke Nederlandse Oudheidkundige Bond 68 (1969), pp. 97-99; J.H. van Mosselveld and W.A. van Ham, Tekeningen van Bergen op Zoom. Topografische afbeeldingen van Bergen op Zoom en omgeving uit de zestiende tot en met de achttiende eeuw, exh. cat. Bergen op Zoom (Markiezenhof) 1973-74, pp. 15-18; G. Gordon, ‘Klotz, Valentijn’, in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols., London/New York 1996, XVIII, pp. 140-41

Entry

The small municipality of Eik en Duinen, now part of The Hague, was founded in the thirteenth-century. On 19 July 1234, Floris IV, Count of Holland (1210-1234) died in Picardy during a jousting tournament that he had organized, and he was embalmed and buried in Rijnsburg. To commemorate him closer to home, his son, William II, Count of Holland (1227–1256), founded a chapel in Eik en Duinen in his name. The chapel, built around 1247, was dedicated to the Virgin and probably held a reliquary or a miraculous statue of her: as a result, it became a well-known pilgrimage site. At the end of the fourteenth century, the surrounding grounds also became a burial site. The chapel was destroyed in the sixteenth century, probably by the Spaniards, and the rubble was sold to a knacker (?) in 1580. However, a large part of the tower and some of the walls remained intact and continued to draw visitors. Today, the ruin still stands, and the cemetery is a popular burial site for prominent citizens of The Hague.⁷

There are two other drawings of the ruins of the church of Eik en Duinen in the Rijksmuseum’s collection: one (inv. no. RP-T-1905-150) by Josua de Grave (1643-1712) and another (inv. no. RP-T-1894-A-2888) attributed to Valentijn Klotz (c. 1650-1721). Both artists lived in The Hague in between their travels with the army of Prince Willem III of Orange Nassau (1650-1702) and drew sites around the city on several occasions. The technique of the present sheet, using solely grey ink and wash, is somewhat unusual within the oeuvres of De Grave and Klotz, who predominately used brown ink outlines, which they finished with grey wash. This unusual technique can also be found in a signed sheet by Klotz of Bergen op Zoom (inv. no. RP-T-1888-A-1640 and two anonymous sheets related to a series of drawings of encampments by Josua de Grave (inv. nos. RP-T-1898-A-3770 and RP-T-1898-A-3769). Perhaps the artist occasionally used a different technique. The other drawing of the ruin attributed to Klotz (inv. no. RP-T-1894-A-2888) might have been made on the same batch of paper, as it includes a fragment of the same watermark.

The present sheet is numbered ‘74’ in the upper right corner. Eleven drawings in the Rijksmuseum’s collection include such a number in brown ink in the same corner. These sheets are roughly the same size, c. 95 x 150 mm, and were likely sheets that came out of small sketchbooks.⁸ The present sheet is similarly sized: perhaps it belonged to this group. Alternatively, it could be a copy after a drawing that belonged to this series.

Carolyn Mensing, 2021

Literature

R.J.G.M. van Hasselt, ‘Drie tekenaars van topografische prenten in Brabant en elders. Valentijn Klotz, Josua de Grave en Constantijn Huygens Jr.’, Jaarboek Oudheidkundige Kring ‘De Ghulden Roos’ 25 (1965), pp. 145-92, no. 324 (as Valentijn Klotz)

Citation

C. Mensing, 2021, 'circle of Valentijn Klotz, The Ruin of the Church of Eik en Duinen near The Hague, 1717-08-24', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.54313

(accessed 23 November 2024 17:40:10).