Mountainous, Italianate Landscape with a Rotunda Church

c. 1660 - c. 1670

Object data

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

height 154 mm × width 232 mm

Inscriptions

signed: lower right, in brown ink, Roelant. Roghman.
inscribed on verso: centre, in an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century hand, with pencil, fl 90–
stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of Pitcairn Knowles (L. 2643); lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

Watermark: Countermark with letters, LR

Provenance

…; ? sale, Jan Jansz. Gildemeester (1744-99, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (P. van der Schley et al.), 24 November 1800 sqq., Album I, no. 12 (‘Een buitengezicht by de Vestmuuren van een oude Stad, gestoffeerd met een Pleisterplaats, en Landlieden met Vee, in alles als de voorige geteekend; door R. Roghman’), with one other drawing, fl. 17:10:-, to the dealer P. van der Schley, Amsterdam;¹ …; collection William Pitcairn Knowles (1820-94), Rotterdam and Wiesbaden (L. 2643); his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 25 June 1895 sqq., probably no. 543, with one other drawing, fl. 14, to the dealer F. Muller, for the Vereniging Rembrandt,² from whom, fl. 12, to the museum (L. 2228), 1901

Object number: RP-T-1901-A-4534

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,³ as did two of his five siblings: his sisters Geertruyt (1625-c. 1651/57) and Magdalena (1632⁴-after 1669).⁵ 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).⁶ 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.⁷

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.⁸ A number of alpine landscapes – including one in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (inv. no. MB 221), dated 1654⁹ – suggest that he must have travelled to the Alps that year,¹⁰ 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,¹¹ and a signed drawing in the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Sailing Boat at a Moorage, could have well been made in Venice.¹² In 1657, Roghman stayed in Augsburg, where he had a set of six etched alpine landscapes published by Melchior Küsel (1626-1684)¹³ 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,¹⁴ 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

In Roghman’s drawn oeuvre, the second largest group after the castle series, numbering more than seventy examples, consists of what Kloek has christened his ‘monumental landscapes’, all boldly executed in pen and brown ink, with heavy grey and brown washes, and most of them signed.¹⁵ Of these imaginary landscapes, done on sheets of more or less uniform format of circa 160 x 230 mm, the Rijksprentenkabinet owns four other sheets: inv. nos. RP-T-1896-A-3165, RP-T-1901-A-4533, RP-T-1901-A-4535 and RP-T-1901-A-4537. Despite the fact that the five sheets are of only average format, the term ‘monumental’ seems appropriate given their impressive mountainous scenery, dramatically staged with strong contrasts of light and shade.

The scenery of the present view has a decidedly southern character.¹⁶ As noted in the 1895 Pitcairn Knowles sale catalogue, Roghman probably first recoded the scene as a ‘souvenir of his travels’, perhaps during or after his presumed journey to the south (1654-57), in other words, around the same time as a stylistically similar sheet, Mountain Landscape with Ruins and a Land Bridge, dated 1655, in the Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig (inv. no. N.I. 471).¹⁷ That does not necessarily mean that the present sheet was drawn in situ – in general, the ‘monumental landscapes’ are rightly considered to be imaginary views based on first-hand experience, perhaps made a decade or more later.¹⁸ This conclusion is supported by the watermarks in the supports of such drawings, which date from the 1660s.

A round or rotunda church building at the end of a bridge, though in a more urban setting, is found in a stylistically related drawing in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (inv. no. 1916-493).¹⁹ There are autograph replicas or copies of both that sheet and the present drawing in the British Museum, London (inv. nos. inv. no. 1836,0811.475 and 1836,0811.474).²⁰ The presumed copy after the present sheet features fewer goats and omits the dog drinking from the pond at left; the signature was replaced by little pen strokes indicating grass. A third drawing in the British Museum (inv. no. Oo,9.59)²¹ was squared for transfer and apparently served as model for an autograph replica or copy in the Biblioteca Reale, Turin (inv. no. 16432).²²

Annemarie Stefes, 2018

Literature

W. Kloek and J.W. Niemeijer, De kasteeltekeningen van Roelant Roghman II, Alphen aan den Rijn 1990, p. 39 (nn. 62, 77)

Citation

A. Stefes, 2018, 'Roelant Roghman, Mountainous, Italianate Landscape with a Rotunda Church, c. 1660 - 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.59912

(accessed 15 November 2024 08:04:27).