Rijksmuseum

Object data

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

height 128 mm × width 177 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed on verso: lower left, in a nineteenth-century hand, in pencil (partially trimmed), [2?] 200 /(replacing an earlier inscription, in pencil, […] 6)
stamped on verso: centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

Watermark: None

Provenance

…; 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-3736

Credit line: Gift of A.H. Beels van Heemstede-van Loon

The artist

Roelant Roghman (Amsterdam 1627 - Amsterdam 1692)

He was the son of Hendrick Lambertsz Roghman (1602-1647/57) and Maria Saverij and was baptized on 25 March 1627 in Amsterdam’s Nieuwe Kerk. His father worked as an engraver,¹ as did two of his five siblings: his sisters Geertruyt (1625-c. 1651/57) and Magdalena (1632²-after 1669).³ Through his mother, Roelant was a grandson of Jacob Savery I (1566-1603) and a great-nephew of Roelant Savery (1576-1639), after whom he was named. It is not known under whom he trained, but it is likely that he was influenced by the example of his grandfather and great-uncle. Although sometimes grouped with the pupils of Rembrandt (1606-1669), Roghman never actually studied with him. They were friends, however, and according to Houbraken, Rembrandt refused to accept Jan Griffier (1645/52-1718) as an apprentice because he was already studying with his friend Roghman.

Roghman was a prolific draughtsman, whose earliest dated works are two drawn views of tollhouses on the River IJ, both dated 1645, in the Van Eeghen collection, Stadsarchief, Amsterdam (inv. nos. 10055/28) and 10055/29).⁴ Among the works possibly made even earlier is a pen-and-wash drawing in the Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden (inv. nos. C 1798), clearly influenced by Roelant Savery.⁵

In 1646/47, Roghman embarked on his most ambitious project, the series of some 250 castle drawings, of which the Rijksmuseum owns 49 individual sheets. Besides travelling through the Dutch provinces to make castle drawings and topographical views, he also visited Brussels and the region around Cleves.⁶ A number of alpine landscapes – including one in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (inv. no. MB 221), dated 1654⁷ – suggest that he must have travelled to the Alps that year,⁸ presumably passing through France. A trip further south may be documented by a View of San Giacomo a Rialto in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (KdZ 2617), traditionally attributed to the artist,⁹ and a signed drawing in the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Sailing Boat at a Moorage, could have well been made in Venice.¹⁰ In 1657, Roghman stayed in Augsburg, where he had a set of six etched alpine landscapes published by Melchior Küsel (1626-1684)¹¹ and contributed a drawing to an album amicorum (inv. no. RP-T-1898-A-3991). No later than 1658, he was back in Amsterdam, where he is documented during the 1660s. In 1672, his opinion was sought on the authenticity of a group of Italian paintings in a legal dispute between Gerrit Uylenburgh (c. 1625-1679) and Friedrich Wilhelm, Elector of Brandenburg (1620-1688).

Roghman’s rare paintings feature mostly mountain scenes and were probably done after his trip to the Alps. Of his circa fifty etchings, mostly landscapes, one depicts the Breach of the St Anthony’s Dike,¹² a famous incident in 1651 that was also recorded by Jan Asselijn (c. 1610-1652), for example in his painting in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. SK-A-5030), Willem Schellinks (1627-1678) and Jacob Esselens (1626-1687).

Roghman apparently never married and from 1686 lived in Amsterdam’s Oudemannenhuis (Old Men’s Home). His last dated drawing is from 1657, but according to Houbraken, he continued to produce art well into his old age. He died on 3 January 1692 and was buried in the St Anthonis Kerkhof, Amsterdam.

Annemarie Stefes, 2018

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, I (1718), pp. 173-74; III (1721), p. 358; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, II (1910), p. 464; R. Juynboll, ‘Roelant Roghman’, in U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXVIII (1934), p. 518, with earlier literature; W.T. Kloek, ‘Een berglandschap door Roelant Roghman’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 23 (1975), no. 2, pp. 100-01; F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols, Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, XX (1978), pp. 67-93; H. Gerson and B.W. Meijer (eds.), Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der Holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Amsterdam 1983 (rev. ed.; orig. ed. 1942), pp. 27, 49, 130, 186, 293, 307, 356, 403; W. Kloek and J.W. Niemeijer, De kasteeltekeningen van Roelant Roghman II, Alphen aan den Rijn 1990, pp. 1-14; W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-92, X (1992), pp. 4989-5174; 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. 642

Entry

Next to the series of drawings of castles of 1646-1647 and the ‘monumental landscapes’ (e.g. inv. no. RP-T-1896-A-3165), so-called owing to their impressive subject-matter (rather than their format), another group of stylistically coherent drawings within Roghman’s oeuvre consists of pen-and-ink drawings done in a delicate, nervous manner, characterized by distinctive zigzag strokes to render the foliage and a system of dots and dashes to convey the distant parts.¹³ The wash is applied in thin layers, letting the linear elements dominate over the tonal values

Besides this sheet, the Rijksmuseum owns two other sheets of approximately the same format (c. 130 x 180 mm) in this ‘zigzag style’ (inv. nos. RP-T-1898-A-3737 and RP-T-1902-A-4553), and another of slightly larger format (inv. no. RP-T-1887-A-1383).¹⁴

Roghman’s landscape drawings are notoriously difficult to date, but the inclusion of some apparently ‘foreign’ elements in two other large-format ‘zigzag’ drawings, A Group of Tall Trees before a Panoramic Landscape, formerly in the Jacobus A. Klaver collection, Amsterdam, and later on the Amsterdam art market,¹⁵ and High Trees by a River with a Town in the Distance, from the collection of Sheldon Peck, now in the Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC (inv. no. 2017.1.71),¹⁶ suggest a date after Roghman’s presumed journey to the south (1654-1657).

Annemarie Stefes, 2018

Literature

W. Kloek and J.W. Niemeijer, De kasteeltekeningen van Roelant Roghman II, Alphen aan den Rijn 1990, p. 39 (n. 55)

Citation

A. Stefes, 2018, 'Roelant Roghman, Wooded Landscape with Herdsmen near a River, c. 1657 - c. 1670', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.59924

(accessed 15 November 2024 14:25:47).