Rijksmuseum

Object data

grey wash, over graphite; framing line in black chalk (right and lower border) and brown ink (left and upper border)

height 243 mm × width 344 mm

Inscriptions

signed, dated and inscribed by the artist on verso: centre (with the sheet turned upside down), in brown ink, N°7 Jan Worst den 19 Juli 1655
inscribed on verso: lower centre, in black chalk, Jan Worst

Technical notes

Watermark: Shield with a kneeling pilgrim; cf. Heawood 1353 (Florence: 1647)

Provenance

…; sale, Johannes Kneppelhout (1814-1885, Leiden and Oosterbeek) et al., Amsterdam (R.W.P. de Vries), 9 March 1920, no. 622, fl. 25, to the museum

Object number: RP-T-1954-156

The artist

Jan Worst (active c. 1645-1660)

As Houbraken reported, he was a painter of Italianate landscapes and close friend of Johannes Lingelbach (1622-1674), with whom he was in Rome. Since Lingelbach travelled in 1644 to Italy, where he is recorded from 1647 to 1650, this provides a clue for the date of Worst’s stay in the south. Like most of his compatriots, Worst chose the route through France on his way back to the Netherlands, spending at least several months in the area of Lyon. This is confirmed by autograph inscriptions naming French sites on two drawings, one in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the View in Vienne, Looking South toward the Bridge over the Rhône and the Tour de Valois, which is dated 19 July 1655 (inv. no. JWORST 2),¹ and another, whose current whereabouts are unknown, the Old Castle and a Chapel on the Bank of a River, which bears a date of 20 January 1656.² The present drawing in the Rijksprentenkabinet is dated the same day as the Rotterdam drawing and although the site is not specified, we know from the subject-matter that it, too, was drawn near Vienne. Worst apparently made panoramic landscapes together with Frederik de Moucheron (1633-1686), who not only worked in a similar style but also sometimes depicted the same views.³

Although Worst must also have been active as a painter, to date only drawings by him are known. This evidently was already the case in the early eighteenth century, when Houbraken stated that ‘one seldom sees his paintings, since he spent most of his time drawing on paper, which drawings were held in high esteem by the connoisseurs’.⁴ In the 1660s, probably after his return to the Netherlands, Worst also drew studio versions of his French landscape drawings for the Atlas Van der Hem, a fifty-volume collection of topographical views assembled by Laurens van der Hem (1621-1678) and now preserved in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.⁵ Although a drawing of a Landscape with Rocks in a River, near the Grande Chartreuse, in the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento (inv. no. 1871,575), used to be regarded as his last known work from 1686⁶, Schatborn now interprets the inscribed date as ‘1656’, which situates it in Worst’s French period.⁷

Annemarie Stefes, 2018

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, II (1719), p. 147; G. Jansen and G. Luijten, Italianisanten en bamboccianten. Het italianisierend landschap en genre door Nederlandse kunstenaars uit de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen) 1988, p. 119; D. Scrase and T. Vignau-Wilberg, Das goldene Jahrhundert: Holländische Meisterzeichnungen aus dem Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, exh. cat. Munich (Staatliche Graphische Sammlung)/Heidelberg (Kurpfälzisches Museum)/Braunschweig (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum)/Cambridge (Fitzwilliam Museum) 1995-96, under no. 48; P. Schatborn, with J. Verberne, Drawn to Warmth: 17th-century Dutch Artists in Italy, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001, pp. 128-31; S. Alsteens and H. Buijs, Paysages de France dessinés par Lambert Doomer et les artistes hollandais et flamands des XVIe et XVIIe siècles, Paris 2008, pp. 199, 203-9, 301-6; P. Schatborn, ‘Two Drawings of Tivoli by Jan Worst’, Master Drawings 53 (2015), no. 4, pp. 467-70; P. Schatborn, ‘Drawings by Jan Worst’, Master Drawings 58 (2020), no. 1, pp. 29-78

Entry

On his way back to the Netherlands from Italy, Worst stayed in or around Lyon for several months. A drawing in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, similarly inscribed, bearing the number ‘1’ and apparently made the on the very same day, 19 July 1655, shows a View in Vienne, Looking South toward the Bridge over the Rhône and the Tour des Valois (inv. no. JWORST 2).⁸ Given the autograph numbering – the present sheet bears the number ‘7’ – both sheets must originally have belonged to a group of at least seven drawings.

Once considered to be a representation of a Tiber landscape,⁹ the Rijksmuseum view was recognized as depicting a French site for the first time by Knab;¹⁰ in fact, the view was made near Vienne. This becomes clear if compared with another drawing, showing the same hilly landscape with similar rocks in the foreground, but also giving a glimpse of the fourteenth-century Tour de Valois, partly trimmed by the left border.¹¹

Stylistically, these works differ from Worst’s sketchier View of the Ruins in the Colosseum, Rome (inv. no. RP-T-1884-A-388). The more panoramic vista and the delicate structures reflect the influence of Frederik de Moucheron (1633-1686). Both artists apparently travelled and drew together around 1655-56, recording sites in the region south of Lyon.¹² As is documented by multiple drawings, they even sketched the very same scenes and motifs. Such is the case with the present scene, a variant of which by Moucheron, embellished with a pastoral detail of a shepherd making music in the right foreground, was auctioned in 1995.¹³

Annemarie Stefes, 2018

Literature

Catalogus tentoonstelling van schilderijen en teekeningen van Nederlandsche Italianiseerende schilders uit de 16de en 17de eeuw, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Arti et Amicitiae) 1934, no. 184 (as a Tiber landscape); E. Knab, Claude Lorrain und die Meister der römischen Landschaft im XVII. Jahrhundert, exh. cat. Vienna (Albertina) 1964-65, no. 333 (as a river landscape in France); G. Jansen and G. Luijten, Italianisanten en bamboccianten: Het italianisierend landschap en genre door Nederlandse kunstenaars uit de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen) 1988, p. 119, under no. 78 (n. 2, as a river landscape, probably in France); P. Schatborn, with J. Verberne, Drawn to Warmth: 17th-century Dutch Artists in Italy, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001, pp. 130, 208 (n. 8, as View of the Grève outside of Vienne); S. Alsteens and H. Buijs, Paysages de France dessinés par Lambert Doomer et les artistes hollandais et flamands des XVIe et XVIIe siècles, Paris 2008, p. 301 (fig. B, as ‘a landscape near Lyon’); P. Schatborn, ‘Two Drawings of Tivoli by Jan Worst’, Master Drawings 53 (2015), no. 4, pp. 467-70, 467 (as Valley with a River); P. Schatborn, ‘Drawings by Jan Worst’, Master Drawings 58 (2020), no. 1, pp. 29, 46, 47 (fig. 34), 48, 49, 51, 68, no. 3

Citation

(accessed 24 November 2024 00:04:02).

Landscape with the Rhône River Valley, near Vienne