Landscape with Figures Chopping Wood on the Banks of a River

? Amsterdam, c. 1652

Object data

black chalk, with point of brush and grey and some black ink, and grey wash; framing lines in dark brown ink (upper and left border) and brown ink (lower and right border)

height 96 mm × width 151 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed: lower left, in brown ink, J van aken (the ‘J’ partially effaced)
inscribed on verso: lower centre, possibly by Goll van Franckenstein, in pencil, S.F. - Lr. M. N 53. / Jan van Aken f. omtrent 1652 / LL
stamped on verso: centre (with the sheet turned upside down), with the mark of the museum (L. 2228); lower right, with the mark of Pitcairn Knowles (L. 2643)

Technical notes

watermark: none

Condition

Two spots of abrasion at left

Provenance

…; sale, Abraham Rademaker (1676-1735, Amsterdam and Haarlem), Amsterdam (C. van Essen), 24 October 1735 sqq., fl. 1, to Sybrand Feitama II;¹ collection Sybrand Feitama II (1694-1758), Amsterdam;² his sale, Amsterdam (B. de Bosch et al.), 16 October 1758 sqq., Album M, no. 53 (‘Een duin en Watergezichtje by een Dorpje met Oostind. inkt en Zwart kryt, h. 3 ¾, br. 6 d. [95 x 152 mm]’), with one other drawing, fl. 17, to Johann Edler Goll von Franckenstein (1722-85), Amsterdam and Velzen;³ ...; collection William Pitcairn Knowles (1820-94), Rotterdam and Wiesbaden (L. 2643); his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 25 June 1895 sqq., no. 6, with two other drawings, fl. 5, to the dealer F. Muller for the Vereniging Rembrandt;⁴ from whom, to the museum (L. 2228), 1897

Object number: RP-T-1897-A-3396

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The artist

Jan van Aken (? Amsterdam c. 1614 – Amsterdam 1661)

According to a tradition of unknown origin, he was born in 1614 in Amsterdam. Houbraken described him as a ‘een Paardeschilder, maar in ’t klein’ (‘painter of horses, on a small scale’).⁵ His oeuvre consists of more than forty drawings and twenty-one landscape etchings, including a series of horses after Pieter van Laer (1599-1642)⁶ and four Rhine landscapes after sketches by Herman Saftleven (c. 1609-1685), one of which is dated 1648.⁷ The nature of Van Aken’s relation to both artists remains unexplored.

Among the examples of dated drawings include two from 1652: Valley with Ruined Bridge in the Special Collections, Universiteit Leiden (inv. no. PK-T-AW-3), and Rocky Landscape with Figures on a Road by a Stream in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1836,0811.1).⁸ Only a handful of paintings can be securely associated with the artist, for instance a pair from the early 1650s, Dune Landscape with Travellers and Gypsies (1650) in a private collection,⁹ and Mountainous River Landscape (165(?)) in the Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie, Warsaw (inv. no. M.Ob.437 MNW), previously published as signed and dated 1650.¹⁰

What is generally assumed to be this artist, a certain ‘Jan van Aken’, brother-in-law of a Lammert van den Velden, living at the corner of the Nieuwbrugsteeg, was buried in the Oudezijds Kapel on 25 March 1661.

Annemarie Stefes, 2019

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, III (1721), p. 183; R. van Eijnden and A. van der Willigen, Geschiedenis der vaderlandsche schilderkunst, 4 vols., Haarlem 1816-40, I (1816), pp. 214-15; F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis, 7 vols., Rotterdam 1877-90, V (1882-83), p. 203; A.D. de Vries, ‘Biografische aanteekeningen betreffende voornamelijk Amsterdamsche schilders, plaatsnijders, enz. en hunne verwanten (I)’, Oud-Holland 3 (1885), p. 58; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, I (1906), p. 8; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, I (1907), p. 158 (entry by E.W. Moes); F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, I (1947), pp. 5-9; W.L. Strauss (ed.), The Illustrated Bartsch, New York and elsewhere 1978-, I (1978), pp. 267-79, nos. 1-21; W. Schulz, Herman Saftleven (1609-1685): Leben und Werke, mit einem kritischen Katalog der Gemälde und Zeichnungen, Berlin 1982, pp. 72, 113-14; A. Beyer et al. (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992-, I (1992), p. 700; 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. 57; https://rkd.nl/explore/artists/774

Entry

The present sheet belongs to the same group of works as the museum’s inv. no. RP-T-1889-A-2028, except that in the present case the composition shows a tranquil Dutch scene with a village on the banks of a river rather than a fantasy mountain landscape. As such, Van Aken demonstrated his ability to assimilate the styles of different artists. Whereas his mountain views reflect the influence of Herman Saftleven (1609-1685), in the present sheet he followed in the footsteps of Jan van Goyen (1596-1656) and Allaert van Everdingen (1621-1675). A variant of the composition is preserved in the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh (inv. no. D 1102), where it was previously given to Van Goyen before being reattributed to Van Aken.¹¹ A similar type of Dutch landscape features in a drawing in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1836,0811.786),¹² as well as in Van Aken’s etching of a dune landscape (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-BI-14).¹³

On its verso, the present sheet is annotated with a code that refers to the sale of Sybrand Feitama II (1694-1758), to be deciphered as ‘S[ybrand] F[eitama] – L[etter] M. N[°] 53’. Since Goll von Franckenstein purchased the drawing at that sale, he was most likely the author of the inscription, even though the drawing lacks his characteristic collector’s number. Perhaps he numbered only the companion piece (no. 54 in Feitama’s sale), a drawing of February from a series of the Twelve Months by Van Everdingen in the Amsterdam Museum, which bears the Goll number ‘1141’ (inv. no. TA 10169),¹⁴ As it is found neither in his grandson’s sale in 1833, nor in earlier sales containing parts of Goll’s collection,¹⁵ we may assume that he sold the drawing soon after its purchase. Next to the code, Goll added a date, ‘omtrent 1652’ (‘approximately 1652’), which either recorded a lost note by Feitama on the drawing’s former mount, or was written by Goll on the basis of Feitama’s dating of two large drawings by Van Aken in his collection ‘A° 1652’.¹⁶

Annemarie Stefes, 2019

Literature

K. Andrews, Catalogue of Netherlandish Drawings in the National Gallery of Scotland, 2 vols., coll. cat. Edinburgh 1985, I, p. 1

Citation

A. Stefes, 2019, 'Jan van Aken, Landscape with Figures Chopping Wood on the Banks of a River, Amsterdam, c. 1652', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.27084

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