Herdsmen by a Campfire at Moonlight

c. 1645 - c. 1652

Object data

black chalk, with various shades of grey wash and opaque white, on blue paper

height 202 mm × width 288 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed on verso: centre, in a seventeenth-century hand (possibly by Willem Schellinks), in brown ink (discoloured), Jan Asselijn; below that, in an eighteenth-century hand, in dark brown ink, of de Laer; lower left, perhaps by the same hand, in dark brown ink, 60 /ao; lower right, in a nineteenth-century hand, in pencil, 15; next to that, in a nineteenth-century hand, in pencil, J. Asselijn
stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

Watermark: None

Provenance

…; ? sale, Maria Hoofman (1776-1845, Haarlem), Haarlem (A. Engesmet), 9 June 1846 sqq., Album A, no. 52 (‘J. Asselyn. Eenige lieden in een Landschap, zich bij een vuur warmende, op blaauw papier met zw. kr. en O.I. inkt’), fl. 1:50:-, to Gérard Leembruggen Jzn (1801-65), Lisse and Hillegom;¹ …; donated by Jonkvrouwe Agnes Henriette Beels van Heemstede-van Loon (1829-1902), Amsterdam, with 273 other drawings, to the museum (L. 2228), 1898

Object number: RP-T-1898-A-3519

Credit line: Gift of Jonkvrouwe Agnes Henriette Beels van Heemstede-van Loon

The artist

Jan Asselijn (Dieppe c. 1614 - Amsterdam 1652)

In 1631 the Huguenot Abraham Asselin (1609-1697), a maker of gold wire, stated that he had been living in Amsterdam for ten years and that his parents were dead. He had three brothers living in the city: the painter Jan, the poet Thomas Asselin (c. 1620-1701) and Steven Asselin (?-?). They were from Dieppe in Normandy and were members of the local Walloon Congregation. Jan’s date of birth is not known, but it must have been around or just before 1614, because his earliest painting is from 1634 and he would not have signed as an independent master before he was twenty.

Nothing is known for certain about his training, but possible teachers were Esaias van de Velde (1587-1630) and Van de Velde’s nephew Jan Martszen II (c. 1609-after 1647), who was living in Amsterdam in 1633. Asselijn followed their example by specializing in cavalry battles, many of them illustrating episodes from the Thirty Years’ War. There are at least five dated works from 1634 and 1635 representing Gustav Adolf at the Battle of Lützen, 16 November 1632, including one from 1634 in the Herzog Anton-Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig (inv. no. GG 348),² one from 1635 in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (inv. no. 1581),³ and another from 1635 that appeared on the Cologne art market in 2016.⁴ Asselijn was still documented in Amsterdam at the end of 1635, but he must have left for Rome shortly afterwards, where he joined the Bentvueghels artists’ society and was nicknamed Crabbetje (‘Little Crab’) because of his deformed hand. According to Baldinucci, he also spent some time in Florence, where he befriended the French artist Jacques Courtois (1621-1676). He was probably in Venice as well, where there were several of his works, according to Von Sandrart.

While in Rome, Asselijn came under the influence of Pieter van Laer (1599-1642), who returned to the Netherlands in 1639, and possibly also that of the brothers Andries Both (1611/12-1642) and Jan Both (1618/22-1652), who lived there until 1641. It is not known when Asselijn returned home, but on the way he certainly paused for a while in Lyon, where he married Antoinette Houwaart [Huaart] (?-after 1652), an Antwerp merchant’s daughter, around 1644-45. Houwaart’s older sister married the Nijmegen painter Nicolaes van Helt Stockade (1614-1699) at around the same time. In 1645 both painters and their wives travelled to Paris, where Asselijn, Herman van Swanevelt (1603/04-1655) and others painted several landscapes for the hôtel particulier of the financier Nicolas Lambert (?-1648) on the Île Saint-Louis, including Asselijn’s three canvases now preserved in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (inv. nos. 984, 985 and 986).⁵ While he was in Paris, Asselijn also made designs for three print suites etched and marketed by Gabriel Perelle (1604-1677), based on first-hand sketches made in Italy.⁶ The Paris interlude did not last long, for in August 1646 Willem Schellinks (1623-1678) and Lambert Doomer (1624-1700) looked for Asselijn and Van Helt Stockade there, only to discover that they and their families already had left for home. The two couples travelled by way of Antwerp, where Van Helt Stockade is documented in the autumn of 1646. Asselijn is first recorded back in Amsterdam on 14 April 1647. From 1650, he adopted a Dutch spelling of his surname, and he became a citizen of the city in 1652. He made his will on 28 September that year and was buried in the Nieuwezijds Kapel five days later.

Although there are drawings by Asselijn on paper with Italian watermarks, presumed to have been executed by him in Italy, there are very few dated paintings from his period in Italy and France (1636-46). He produced little apart from Italianate landscapes after his return, the only exceptions being a couple of animal pieces and a few history scenes, such as the breach of the St Anthony’s Dike near Diemen in March 1651, one depiction of which is in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. SK-A-5030),⁷ and the dike’s rebuilding in 1652, as seen in a painting in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (inv. no. 58.2).⁸ In 1647-49 he collaborated at least once with Jan-Baptist Weenix (1621-1659), with whom he jointly signed the Seaport with a High Tower in the Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna (inv. no. 761).⁹ In 1647-48 Rembrandt (1606-1669) etched Asselijn’s portrait as a gentleman posing at his easel (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-553). Asselijn’s last known works are from 1652: the abovementioned Repair of the St Anthony’s Dike in Berlin; Italianate Landscape with a Horse Drinking from a Spring, whose present whereabouts are unknown;¹⁰ and View of Rome with the Ponte Rotte, whose date was discovered when it appeared on the New York art market in 2010.¹¹ Houbraken says that Frederic de Moucheron I (1633-1686) was apprenticed to Asselijn. No other pupils are known, but he certainly had a great influence, among others, on Nicolaes Berchem (1621/22-1683), as well as on Schellinks, who may have secured drawings and other works from his studio estate.

E. de Groot, 2011

References
J. von Sandrart, Joachim von Sandrarts Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Ku¨nste von 1675: Leben der beru¨hmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, Nuremburg 1675; ed. and commentary by A.R. Peltzer, Munich 1925, pp. 182, 258-60; F. Baldinucci, Notizie dei professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua, 6 vols., Florence 1681-1728; facs. edn. of I-V ed. by F. Ranalli, Florence 1845-47 (reprinted 1974), VI-VII ed. by P. Barocchi, Florence 1975, IV (1686/ed. 1974), p. 331, V (1728/ed. 1974), p. 205; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, II (1719), p. 327, III (1721), pp. 64-65; P. Scheltema, Rembrand: Redevoering over het leven en de verdiensten van Rembrand van Rijn, met eene menigte geschiedkundige bijlagen meerendeels uit echter bronnen geput, Amsterdam 1853, p. 69; A. Bredius, ‘Het schildersregister van Jan Sysmus, stads-doctor van Amsterdam’, Oud Holland 8 (1890), pp. 231-32; H. Gerson, Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Amsterdam 1942, pp. 50-51; A. Blankert, Nederlandse 17e eeuwse Italianiserende landschapschilders, exh. cat. Utrecht (Centraal Museum) 1965 (rev. edn. as Nederlandse 17e eeuwse Italianiserende landschapschilders/Dutch 17th-century Italianate Landscape Painters, Soest 1978), pp. 129-31; M.J.E. Spits-Sanders, ‘Abraham Asselijn’, Maandblad Amstelodamum 63 (1976), pp. 109-11; A.C. Steland-Stief, Jan Asselijn (nach 1610-1652), Amsterdam 1971 (documents); A.C. Steland-Stief, Die Zeichnungen des Jan Asselijn, Fridingen, 1989; A.C. Steland-Stief, ‘Jan Asselijn’, in D.A. Levine and E. Mai et al., I Bamboccianti: Niederländische Malerrebellen im Rom des Barock, exh. cat. Cologne (Wallraf-Richartz-Museum)/Utrecht (Centraal Museum) 1991-92, p. 114; A.C. Steland-Stief, ‘Jan Asselijn’, in A. Beyer et al. (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992-, V (1992), pp. 458-59; A.C. Steland, ‘Jan Asselijn,’ in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, London/New York 1996, II, pp. 614-15 (2003 Grove online edn. at https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T004627); J. Briels, Peintres flamands au berceau du sie`cle d’or hollandaise, 1585-1630, avec biographies en annexe, Antwerp 1997, p. 294

Entry

Among the heterogeneous corpus of drawings associated with Jan Asselijn, the present sheet stands out as one of the most pictorial, especially compared with his secure designs for prints (e.g. inv. no. RP-T-1969-14). Yet the handling of the chalk below the fluidly applied wash is as taut (in the rendering of staffage) and vigorous (in the landscape elements) as that of inv. RP-T-1899-A-4285. Equally comparable are individual motifs and details, such as the angular contours of sleeves, the narrow faces of horses or mules and the calligraphically curved tails of the dogs.

For these reasons and in accordance with the old inscription on the verso, probably written by Willem Schellinks (1627-1678), it seems preferable to maintain the traditional attribution to Jan Asselijn rather than to assign it to Schellinks, as was recently proposed orally by Peter Schatborn, Stijn Alsteens and Hans Buijs.¹² Their suggestion was based on stylistic analogies with the drawing of Shepherds by a Campfire in the Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden (inv. no. C 1517).¹³ Although traditionally given to Asselijn (and still catalogued under that name on the museum’s website), the Dresden sheet could well be by Schellinks, who apparently also dated it (Anno 1648).¹⁴ By contrast, the present drawing’s simpler, more mature handling of chalk and brush differ from the agitated execution of the Dresden drawing. A similar calligraphic inscription with Asselijn’s name is found on three stylistically related drawings attributed to him in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (inv. nos. 21642, 21641 and 21643).¹⁵ Schellinks also apparently wrote Asselijn’s name on the unquestionably autograph drawing of Pilgrims Receiving Alms, in the Special Collections, Universiteit Leiden (inv. no. PK-T-AW-1081),¹⁶ which he used as a study for a painting in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (inv. no. KMSst172). Given the degree of Asselijn’s influence on Schellinks (cf. inv. no. RP-T-1890-A-2294), it is likely that Asselijn’s drawings ended up in Schellinks’s possession, or at least passed through his hands. These inscriptions should thus be considered trustworthy.¹⁷

In the present composition, the mature handling of the brush, with simple blots of wash suggesting the shaded forms, is clearly not by an imitator. It betrays a master in command of his means, competent in the treatment of different sources of light and delicately incorporating the mid-tone of the paper. Still, as Schatborn stated, ‘the problem of the attribution of these drawings is an old one’.¹⁸ This is further complicated by a later inscription suggesting Pieter van Laer (1599-1642) as author of the sheet. Drawings on blue paper that are attributed to Van Laer, such as The Shepherd’s Meal in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem (inv. no. P 002),¹⁹ differ from the present sheet in a more precise modelling of figures and animals, but might well have inspired Asselijn’s nocturnal scenes on blue paper.

Like inv. no. RP-T-1899-A-4285, the drawing is not linked to a painting by Asselijn. In all likelihood, it served as a rough compositional sketch or independent exercise. The masterly handling of the brush might suggest a late date, as proposed by Steland, possibly even after the artist’s return from Italy.²⁰

Annemarie Stefes, 2018

Literature

E. Knab, ‘De genio loci’, in H. Miedema et al. (eds.), Miscellanea I.Q. van Regteren Altena: 16-V-1969, Amsterdam 1969, p. 136 (fig. 26); A.C. Steland-Stief, ‘Zum zeichnerischen Werk des Jan Asselijn: Neue Funde und Forschungsperspektiven’, Oud Holland 94 (1980), pp. 236, 250, 254 (figs. 34 and 54); A.C. Steland, Die Zeichnungen des Jan Asselijn, Fridingen 1989, pp. 89-91, 95 (fig. 94); P. Schatborn, with J. Verberne, Drawn to Warmth: 17th-century Dutch Artists in Italy, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001, pp. 109 (fig. J), 174; A. Stefes, Niederländische Zeichnungen, 1450-1800, 3 vols., coll. cat. Hamburg 2011 (Die Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, vol. 2), I, p. 75, under no. 21 (nn. 2-3, as probably by Schellinks)

Citation

A. Stefes, 2018, 'possibly Jan Asselijn, Herdsmen by a Campfire at Moonlight, c. 1645 - 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.27167

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