Mountain Landscape with Travellers on a Road

? Amsterdam, c. 1652

Object data

point of brush and grey ink, with grey wash and some pen and grey ink, over black chalk and graphite; framing line in brown ink

height 177 mm × width 289 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed on verso: centre left, in a nineteenth-century hand, in pencil (with the sheet turned 90°), F.; centre right, in a nineteenth-century hand, in pencil, J. van Aken; below that, probably in a nineteenth-century hand, in pencil, 198. 1039; lower left, possibly by Josi, in graphite, M iii l 2 p.s R ε. au. jvii (L. 2925bis); below that, in a nineteenth-century hand, in black chalk, Nº. 923.; next to that, in a nineteenth-century hand, in black chalk, N 2
stamped on verso: centre (with the sheet turned upside down), with the mark of the museum (L. 2228); lower left, with the mark of Pitcairn Knowles (L. 2643)

Technical notes

watermark: none

Condition

Foxing; abrasions along left edge

Provenance

...; ? collection Christiaan Josi (1768-1828), Amsterdam and London (L. 2925bis); ...; collection Dirk Vis Blokhuyzen (1799-1869), Rotterdam;¹ his sale, Rotterdam (D. Lamme), 23 October 1871 sqq., no. 5, fl. 4.17, to Ignatius Franciscus Ellinckhuysen (1814-97, Rotterdam);² his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller et al.), 19 November 1878 sqq., no. 3, fl. 9, to A.G. de Visser (?-?), The Hague;³ his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 16 May 1881 sqq., no. 2, fl. 11.50, to the dealer F. Muller;⁴ ...; collection William Pitcairn Knowles (1820-94), Rotterdam and Wiesbaden (L. 2643); his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 25 June 1895 sqq., no. 5, fl. 5, to the dealer F. Muller;⁵ for the Vereniging Rembrandt;⁶ from whom, to the museum (L. 2228), 1897

Object number: RP-T-1897-A-3397

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’).⁷ His oeuvre consists of more than forty drawings and twenty-one landscape etchings, including a series of horses after Pieter van Laer (1599-1642)⁸ and four Rhine landscapes after sketches by Herman Saftleven (c. 1609-1685), one of which is dated 1648.⁹ 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).¹⁰ 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,¹¹ and Mountainous River Landscape (165(?)) in the Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie, Warsaw (inv. no. M.Ob.437 MNW), previously published as signed and dated 1650.¹²

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

While they should not be considered as a pair, the present sheet and inv. no. RP-T-1889-A-2029 feature the same type of mountainous landscapes, with bizarrely shaped rocks flanking a distant river valley. In the companion sheet, the immediate foreground is inaccessible, blocked by the rocky ground, whereas here a broad roadway leads into the composition, animated by a traveller with his dog and the dismounted horseman in the immediate foreground. This kind of landscape appears to have been inspired by Herman Saftleven (1609-1685), as can be seen in an etching by Van Aken (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-BI-25),¹³ in reverse, after Saftleven’s drawing (1648) in the Dutuit collection, Petit Palais, Paris (inv. no. DDUT1121).¹⁴

Unlike inv. no. RP-T-1889-A-2029, here the preliminary sketch in black chalk (and some graphite, visible in a third traveller at the end of the road, partially hidden by the latter) has been overworked mainly with the point of the brush, the pen used only for some details such as the figures. Moreover, the artist avoided a two-toned (grey-brown) effect, using merely grey ink.

Similar drawings in the same format are preserved in the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich (inv. no. 1890);¹⁵ the Teylers Museum, Haarlem (inv. nos. P+ 013 and P+ 014);¹⁶ the British Museum, London (inv. nos. 1836,0811.2 and 1836,0811.4;¹⁷ and the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels (inv. no. 4060/60).¹⁸ The latter is dated 1652, suggesting that the present sheet and the other drawings originated from the same period. Most likely, Jan van Aken drew such landscapes in series for the art market.

On its verso, the present drawing bears an inscription in graphite that might be related to codes used by the dealer and collector Christian Josi (1768-1828). Although it lacks Josi’s unique circular symbols, the precise manner of handwriting comes close to samples of his inscriptions.

Annemarie Stefes, 2019

Citation

A. Stefes, 2019, 'Jan van Aken, Mountain Landscape with Travellers on a Road, 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.27097

(accessed 10 November 2024 09:07:08).