Rijksmuseum

Object data

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

height 95 mm × width 158 mm

Inscriptions

signed: lower right, in brown ink, Josua de Grave
inscribed on verso: lower right, in graphite, X
stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)
inscribed on old lining (removed, but preserved): lower left, in graphite, Ruine Van de Kerk / van Eykenduynen / ’ bij S. Gravenhaagen 1677, J de Grave
stamped on old lining (removed, but preserved): centre left, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: coat of arms ? (fragment)

Condition

Erased inscription at upper left

Provenance

…; ? sale, René Jacques della Faille de Waerloos (1830-1902, Antwerp), Amsterdam (F. Muller), 19 January 1904,¹ fl. 11, to the museum (L. 2228), with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt, 1905

Object number: RP-T-1905-150

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The artist

Josua de Grave (Amsterdam 1643 - The Hague 1712)

He was the son of the French merchant Claude Pietersz de Grave [Graeff] (c. 1597/98-after 1667) and Sara Bols (?-c. 1655) and was baptized in the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, on 2 July 1643.² De Grave had three brothers and two sisters.³ He grew up in Haarlem, where the family moved soon after his birth. In 1659, at age sixteen, he entered the Haarlem Guild of St Luke,⁴ but it is unknown with whom he trained. Based on a drawing dated 1663, depicting a landscape in the vicinity of Paris, now in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (KdZ 2480),⁵ we know that he moved to Paris during or after his training. De Grave lived in Paris until 1668, after which he moved to Maastricht.

In Maastricht he likely met Barend Klotz (?-?) and Valentijn Klotz (c. 1646-1721), two fellow draughtsmen affiliated with the Dutch army.⁶ Until 1670, the trio resided in Maastricht, where they made around sixty drawings of the city and its surroundings. Only a handful of these drawings are signed (e.g. inv. nos. RP-T-1946-63 and RP-T-1911-100).⁷ In the following decades, the three artists accompanied the army of the Dutch States-General under the Stadholder Prince Willem III of Orange Nassau (1650-1702) on their various campaigns: to Bergen op Zoom (1671-early 1672), cities around the Dutch ‘waterlinie’ (1672) and various regions in the southern Netherlands and present-day Belgium (1674, 1675 and 1676).

On 3 December 1670, De Grave married Jenneton de Bisson (1645-?) in Maastricht.⁸ The newlyweds moved from Maastricht to The Hague, joining De Grave’s sister and his brother, Cornelis, who had moved there already.⁹ After each military campaign, De Grave returned to The Hague, where he settled permanently after the last campaign in 1676 and died in July 1712.¹⁰ Several drawings dated between the 1670s and the 1710s record sights around the city. In the final years of his career, he also produced paintings and drawings of (Italianate) gardens and fantasy landscapes (e.g. inv. nos. RP-T-00-148 and RP-T-1895-A-3063).

Josua de Grave often signed his work, using his full name or a variation, such as J. de Grave or Josua de Grave fecit. In many instances, he also included a location and a date. His signature is usually followed by a colon, then the year and the day and month (expressed as a fraction). His handwriting is quite distinct, using elegant, curly (capital) letters and a typical old-fashioned letter ‘e’. His drawings were initially quickly sketched in graphite or black chalk, after which he applied brown ink lines to further work out the composition. He seemed to have relied on a certain formula for most of his drawings, placing the horizon in the centre of the sheet and scattering the main elements around it. He often included trees, foliage or figures closer to the foreground, creating a repoussoir. De Grave drew his trees by outlining the trunks and branches, then scribbling in the leaves using cloud-like shapes.¹¹ In most instances, in addition to the brown ink composition, grey washes are applied sparingly, particularly for the shadows on houses and roofs, foliage and simple cloud formations. Drawings that are more heavily washed are likely to have been worked up by (a) later hand(s).

Carolyn Mensing, 2019

References

R. van Eijnden and A. van der Willigen, ‘Klotz, Valentijn’, in U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XX (1927), pp. 549-50; R.J.G.M. van Hasselt, ‘Drie tekenaars van topografische prenten in Brabant en elders. Valentijn Klotz, Josua de Grave en Constantijn Huygens Jr.’, Jaarboek Oudheidkundige Kring ‘De Ghulden Roos’ 25 (1965), pp. 145-55; M.H. Breitbarth-van der Stok, ‘Josua de Grave, Valentinus Klotz en Bernardus Klotz’, Bulletin Koninklijke Nederlandse Oudheidkundige Bond 68 (1969), pp. 96-98; J.H. van Mosselveld and W.A. van Ham, Tekeningen van Bergen op Zoom. Topografische afbeeldingen van Bergen op Zoom en omgeving uit de zestiende tot en met de achttiende eeuw, exh. cat. Bergen op Zoom (Markiezenhof) 1973-74, pp. 15-18; G. Gordon, ‘Grave, Josua de’, in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols., London/New York 1996, XIII, pp. 323-24

Entry

De Grave and his family moved to The Hague in 1672. He returned to the city after each of his travels and settled there permanently in 1676 after his last military campaign with Prince Willem III of Orange Nassau (1650-1702).¹² He continued drawing landscapes and prominent sites throughout the Netherlands, as well as closer to home.

According to an inscription on the verso, which might have been taken over from the erased inscription at upper left of the recto, De Grave drew the ruins of the chapel in Eik en Duinen in 1677. The small municipality, now part of The Hague, was founded in the thirteenth century. On 19 July 1234, Floris IV, Count of Holland (1210-1234) died in Picardy during a jousting tournament that he had organized, and he was embalmed and buried in Rijnsburg. To commemorate him closer to home, his son, William II, Count of Holland (1227–1256), founded a chapel in his honour at Eik en Duinen. The chapel, built around 1247, was dedicated to the Virgin and probably held a reliquary or a miraculous statue of her: as a result, it became a well-known pilgrimage site. At the end of the fourteenth century, the surrounding grounds also became a burial site. The chapel was destroyed in the sixteenth century, probably by the Spaniards, and the rubble was sold in 1580. However, a large part of the tower and some of the walls remained intact and continued to draw visitors. Today, the ruin still stands, and the cemetery is a popular burial site for prominent citizens of The Hague.¹³

The Rijksmuseum’s collection includes two drawings of the same ruin, both attributed to an artist in the circle of Valentijn Klotz (c. 1650-1721); see inv. nos. RP-T-1894-A-2888 and RP-T-1894-A-2889. Those drawings were made in 1717, five years after De Grave’s death, and depict the ruins from a different angle.

Carolyn Mensing, 2019

Citation

C. Mensing, 2019, 'Josua de Grave, The Ruin of the Chapel of Eik en Duinen near The Hague, The Hague, 1677', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.51972

(accessed 23 September 2024 13:19:33).