Skaters on the River Vecht, near Maarssen, with the Estates of Daelwijck and Vechthoven in the Distance

Entry

A drawing by Abraham Rutgers from the Atlas Munnicks van Cleeff (inv. no. MCS/856) – formerly in the Dutch Royal Collection and since 2012 in the John and Marine van Vlissingen Art Foundation⁷ – is a summer view of roughly the same scene on the River Vecht, north of Utrecht. The vantage was located further south along the Zandpad from Rutgers’ own country house on the river, Hoogevecht (destr. 1830; for which see inv. no. RP-T-1888-A-1430x(R)). Based on the similarity of the ex-Munnicks van Cleeff drawing to a black chalk drawing by Rutgers inscribed bijt Swarte Varken aen de Vegt, of which a reproduction is in the Utrechts Archief (inv. no. 202337), the present writer identified the scene in it as a View of the Vecht, near Maarssen, with Vechthoven in the Distance.⁸ This inscription alludes to an inn called the Zwarte Varken (“Black Pig”), located on a bend in the Vecht, near Maarssen. A small portion of the inn is visible at the far left of the present sheet. To its right, above the small, raised canal bridge over the Diependaalse Dijk, is Daelwijck, another property on the banks of the river. In 1682, the same year that Rutgers bought Hoogevecht, Barta van Steenbergen (?-?), the widow of Johanes Teeckman (?-1682), sold Daelwijk to Willem van der Sturck (?-?); four years later, he was forced to flee to England following a scandal with a servant (by whom he had a daughter), and the estate was taken over by his son, also called Willem (?-?), who in 1687 married the Maria Barta Teeckman (?-?), the daughter of the earlier owners.⁹

At far centre of both the Munnicks van Cleeff and Rijksmuseum drawings is the pavilion-roofed teahouse (theekoepel) of Vechthoven, with its low, curved wall between the house and the river. Vechthoven was sold in 1675 to Isaac Walijns (?-?) by Joan Huydecoper van Maarsseveen II (1625-1704),¹⁰ whose family had owned and developed most of the property along that stretch of the river.¹¹ Other views of the teahouse and wall of Vechthoven are preserved in drawings by Rutgers in the album in the Museum Simon van Gijn, Dordrecht (inv. no. SIK 10, fols. 45-46).¹² The same stretch of the river, with the teahouse and low wall of Vechthoven in the distance, can also be seen in other drawings by Rutgers, including another sheet in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. RP-T-1901-A-4536) and one, with figures by Ludolf Bakhuizen (1630-1708), in the Albertina, Vienna (inv. no. 10015).¹³

All three properties on the banks of the river – the Zwarte Varken, Daelwijck and Vechthoven – are represented in a row in the engraving by Daniël Stoopendaal (1672-1726), no. 5, of 98 views published in De zegepraalende Vecht, vertoonende verscheidene Gesichten van Lustplaatsen, Heeren huysen en dorpen, Beginnende van Uitrecht en met Muyden besluytende (Amsterdam, 1719).¹⁴

Depicted in the foreground of the present work are the kind of wooden seats that were located along the banks of the Vecht and used both as piers for fishermen and as docking stations for tow-boats. The wooden beams over the seats guided the lines with which the boats were towed. Another, larger such dock can be seen in inv. no. RP-T-1901-A-4536, a view only a few hundred meters further along the river. Traces of graphite along the path to the left of the seats in the present work indicate that Rutgers initially drew two more figures (now effaced under a slightly darker passage of brown wash).

Like the Rijksmuseum’s Landscape with Two Fishermen alongside a Road (inv. no. RP-T-1888-A-1430x), this drawing was acquired as a work by Johannes Leupenius (1643-1693).

Jane Shoaf Turner, 2019