Landscape with a Stone Bridge

1635 - 1661

Object data

black chalk, with grey wash; framing lines in black ink over brown ink

height 158 mm × width 202 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed on verso: upper left, in an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century hand, in pencil, 12; centre, in an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century hand, in pencil, 104; lower left, in a late seventeenth- or eighteenth-century hand (possibly Zomer), in graphite, Casteleijn
stamped on verso: lower right, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: two circles (not in Heawood or Laurentius)

Condition

Some losses along left edge; brown stains at upper centre and upper right

Provenance

...; ? collection Jan Pietersz. Zomer (1641-1724), Amsterdam;¹ ? collection P.H. van den Heuvell (?-?), Leiden, by c. 1850;² ...; from the dealer Chiltern Art Gallery, London, fl. 120,11, to the museum (L. 2228), with the support of the F.G. Waller-Fonds, 1959

Object number: RP-T-1959-266

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the F.G. Waller-Fonds

The artist

Casper Casteleyn (Haarlem c. 1625 – place unknown, after 1661)

Casper (or Jasper) Casteleyn was the fifth child of the Haarlem-born Mennonite printer and bookseller of Flemish origin, Vincent Casteleyn (1587-1658), and his wife, Maycke Jaspers (?-1661). Of Casper’s eight siblings, four followed their father’s footsteps: Johannes Casteleyn (1612-c. 1653) was a bookseller and paper merchant in Amsterdam; Pieter Casteleyn (1618-1676) was the editor from 1651 to 1676 of the Hollantse Mercurius; Jacob Casteleyn (?-?) was a member of the Guild of booksellers in 1650; and Abraham Casteleyn (1628-1682) was the founder of the Oprechte Haarlemse Courant in 1656. Two of his brothers were trained as painters. The eldest, Vincent Casteleyn II (1609-1659), first studied medicine, then was apprenticed to Pieter de Grebber (1595/1605-c. 1600), entered the Haarlem Guild of St Luke in 1636, moved to Amsterdam two years later and to Rotterdam in 1647. The other artist brother was the publisher Pieter Casteleyn, who was taught in 1635 by Willem de Poorter (1608-in or after 1649/51) and also by Pieter de Grebber.

Casper Casteleyn was himself admitted as a painter to the Haarlem Guild of St Luke on 6 May 1653. His earliest work dates from the previous year, his design in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1852,1211.23), for the engraved and etched Portrait of Dirck Raphaelsz Camphuysen, etched by Salomon Savery (1593/94-1683) in 1652 (e.g. RP-P-OB-5582).³ The following year Casper designed the title-page of an anatomy book (inv. no. RP-T-1890-A-2395). The designs by Casper for the pages of his brother’s Hollantse Mercurius were engraved by Savery, as well as by Cornelis Visscher (1628/29-1658).

Although not so well known today, in the seventeenth century Casteleyn was apparently regarded as a renowned painter. Cornelis de Bie, in his Gulden cabinet (1662), mentions a ‘Casteleyn’, usually likened with Casper, who was inclined to art since his youth and who was still active in 1662.⁴ Only a few paintings can now be securely given to the artist, including Granida and Daifilo (1652) in the State Hermitage, St Petersburg (inv. no. ??-7647). His latest dated painting is Minerva Visiting a Prisoner (1659) in the Muzeum Kolekcij im. Jana Pawla II, Warsaw (inv. no. unknown).⁵ History paintings by him are mentioned in seventeenth-century inventories, and according to a sale catalogue of 1893, he might have been active until circa 1670.⁶ Only a few signed drawings by the artist are known, and the boundary between his oeuvre and that of his elder brothers Vincent II and Pieter is not always clear.

Annemarie Stefes 2019

References
C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edel vry schilder-const, Antwerp 1661-62, p. 384; A. van der Willigen, Les Artistes de Harlem: Notices historiques avec un précis sur la Gilde de St. Luc, Haarlem/The Hague 1870, pp. 30, 106; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, I (1906), p. 248; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, VI (1912), pp. 140-41 (entry by E.W. Moes); A. Bredius (ed.), Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der holländischen Kunst des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts, 8 vols., The Hague 1915-22, VI (1919), pp. 1985, 1993-99, 2036; VII (1921), pp. 22, 138; P.C. Molhuysen et al. (eds.), Nieuw Nederlandsch biografisch woordenboek, 10 vols., Leiden 1911-37, IX (1933), col. 134-35; A. Beyer et al. (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992-, XVII (1997), p. 167; 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. 183; G. Verhoeven and S. van der Veen, De Hollandse Mercurius. Een Haarlems jaarboek uit de zeventiende eeuw, Haarlem 2011, pp. 21-27

Entry

The drawing was annotated in a late seventeenth- or eighteenth-century hand on its verso with the name ‘Casteleijn’, probably referring to Casper Casteleyn, by whom the museum owns a rare signed drawing (inv. no. RP-T-1881-A-101). However, no securely documented landscape by Casper or any of his six brothers, including the two trained as artists, Vincent II Casteleyn (1609-1659) and Pieter Casteleyn (1618-1676), is known. A few landscapes are mentioned in old sale catalogues, but these include some staffage.⁷

Perhaps more importantly, however, ‘capital landscapes’ by Casteleyn – presumably without figures – are described in the Catalogus van een cabinet van tekeningen, compiled circa 1720/24 to document the collection of the seventeenth-century art dealer Jan Pietersz Zomer (1641-1699),⁸ , Kastelyn, [...] en andere meer’), p. 21, Album 14 (‘Admirabele konstige Tekeningen [...] 8 van Castelyn’) and pp. 29-30, Album 43 (‘Conterfeytsels van [...] Castelyn’).] the collector to whom the inscription ‘Casteleyn’ on the present sheet has been ascribed.⁹ Although the drawing does not feature Zomer’s collector’s stamp and while his inscriptions are usually found on the recto of drawings from his collection, there are exceptions, and the form of the capital ‘C’ of this inscription matches that of the name ‘Cangiagi’ written on the recto of a pair of drawings in the Rijksmuseum, the Presentation in the Temple once thought to be by Luca Cambiaso (1527-1585), though now considered a copy after him (inv. no. RP-T-1886-A-664),¹⁰ and Cambiaso’s Holy Family in a Landscape with the Young St John the Baptist (inv. no. RP-T-BR-1948-10).¹¹

More recently, another drawing, Castle Surrounded by Trees, executed in a comparable hand to that of the present Landscape with a Stone Bridge, was auctioned in 1993 under the name of ‘Jasper [i.e. Casper] Casteleyn’,¹² and a further pure landscape drawing in the Rijksmuseum, Dune Landscape with a Cottage on the Left (inv. no. RP-T-1974-29), has been ascribed to the artist on the basis of similarities to the present sheet.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2000

Literature

? J.P. Zomer, Catalogus van een uytstekend heerlyk cabinet van tekeningen, en schoone drukken van prenten, s.l., s.a. (Amsterdam c. 1720-24), p. 8, Album T (‘Heerlyke kapitale Landschappen, getekent van [...], Kastelyn, [...] en andere meer’); ? Tentoonstelling van schilder- en andere kunstwerken ten voordeele van de algemeene armen der stad Leiden, exh. cat. Leiden (Schreuder en van Baak) 1850, p. 22, no. 18; A. Stefes, Niederländische Zeichnungen, 1450-1800, 3 vols., coll. cat. Hamburg 2011 (Die Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, vol. 2), II, p. 401, under no. 706 (n. 2)

Citation

G. Wuestman, 2000, 'attributed to Casper Casteleyn, Landscape with a Stone Bridge, 1635 - 1661', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.31602

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