Willem Romeyn
? Lyon, c. 1650 - c. 1651
point of brush and grey ink, with grey wash, over black chalk or graphite, some red chalk; indented for transfer with graphite; later additions with pen and brush and black ink; framing line in brown ink; laid down
height 239 mm × width 342 mm
inscribed on old mount, in pencil: lower centre, in a nineteenth-century hand, Van Romeyn; lower right, in a modern hand, A 19249
stamped on verso of old mount: lower right (with the sheet turned upside down), with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)
watermark: none visible through lining
…; from the dealer B. Houthakker, Amsterdam, fl. 200, to the museum (L. 2228), 1960
Object number: RP-T-1960-212
Copyright: Public domain
Willem Romeyn (Haarlem c. 1624 - Haarlem in or after 1695)
He was listed in the records of the Guild of St Luke in Haarlem on 29 August 1642 as a pupil of Nicolaes Berchem (1621/22-1683), and in 1644 he became member of the guild.1 Unlike his teacher, Romeyn definitely went to Rome, where he is registered in 1650 in the parish records of San Lorenzo in Lucina as ‘Guglielmo Romano’, living in the Strada Paolina, as did the French painters Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), Gaspard Dughet (1615-1675) and Claude Lorrain (1604/05-1682).2 The following year Romeyn is documented as living in the Strada della Croce. He might have joined the ‘Bentvueghels’ (the society of Dutch and Flemish artists in Rome), although, if so, his 'bent-name’ is not recorded. He seems to have travelled to or from Rome via Lyon, as is documented by the inscription ‘te Lions’ on the verso of a drawing, Arch with a Well in a Ruined Wall, in a private collection.3
By the end of 1651, Romeyn must have returned to Haarlem, where he married Geertje Jans (?-1683). Their first son, Johannes, was born in Haarlem on 26 August 1652; a second son, Dirck, was born on 3 December 1658.4 Romeyn reappears regularly the records of the Haarlem Guild of St Luke, for which he served as warden (‘vinder’) in 1659, 1660 and 1677.
Romeyn’s earliest known painting, Resting Herdsman and Cattle, dated 1644, which appeared on the art market in 1977,5 mirrors the Italianate mode promoted by his teacher, Berchem, and reflects the kind of subject-matter in which Romeyn specialized for both paintings and drawings his entire career. No securely dated drawings from Romeyn’s training or Italian period are known, the earliest example being the Arch of Drusus, Rome, dated 1655, in the Albertina, Vienna (inv. no. 9861).6 There is a disproportionately high number of extant drawings dated in his last years, between 1692 and 1695, many of which are variations of earlier drawings featuring Italianate monuments and staffage.
Contemporary reproductive engravings after Romeyn’s inventions were made by the brothers Cornelis Visscher (1628/29-1658) and Jan de Visscher (1633/36-after 1692).
Annemarie Stefes, 2019
References
A. van der Willigen, Les artistes de Harlem: Notices historiques avec un précis sur la Gilde de St. Luc, Haarlem/The Hague 1870, pp. 252-53; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, II (1910), pp. 467-68; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXVIII (1934), p. 563 (entry by R. Juynboll); H. Gerson, Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Amsterdam 1942, pp. 30, 166, 250, 262, 331, 545; G.J. Hoogewerff, Nederlandsche kunstenaars te Rome, 1600-1725. Uittreksels uit de parochiale archieven, The Hague 1942, pp. 123-24, 126; G.J. Hoogewerff, De Bentvueghels, The Hague 1952, p. 77; L.J. Bol, Holländische Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts nahe den großen Meistern: Landschaften und Stilleben, Braunschweig 1969, pp. 260-61; H. Miedema, De archiefbescheiden van het St. Lukasgilde te Haarlem, 1497-1789, 2 vols., Alphen aan den Rijn 1980, II, pp. 543, 659, 661, 671, 675, 682, 698, 935, 1040, 1041, 1061-64; F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, XL (1992), p. 90, no. 73, and XLI (1992), p. 88, nos. 122-23; P. Schatborn, with J. Verberne, Drawn to Warmth: 17th-century Dutch Artists in Italy, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001, pp. 147-51; 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. 644; J. Turner and R.-J. te Rijdt (eds.), Home and Abroad: Dutch and Flemish Landscape Drawings from the John and Marine van Vlissingen Art Foundation, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Paris (Fondation Custodia) 2015-16, p. 118; https://rkd.nl/artists/67899
In earlier literature, the present drawing was considered to be a somewhat weak copy after a drawing attributed to Thomas Wijck (c. 1616/21-1677) in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (inv. no. H 202 (PK)).7 The latter is almost identical in motif, apart from the present drawing’s staffage at lower left, the rocks on the ground and the grapevine at lower right, which were added later with a rather dry brush and black ink.8 The Rotterdam drawing is slightly larger (258 x 356 mm), with the scene extended slightly above and to the right. Since the present sheet is indented for transfer – not with the usual stylus but with graphite, leaving deep indentations in the paper9 – one would assume that there was a functional connection between the drawings. However, this seems to be contradicted by the many minor differences, including the presence of a window and two small openings in the front-facing wall of the tower-like building at centre of the Rotterdam sheet. What appears, in the present sheet, as a rain gutter at its upper left front, is merely a crack in the wall in the Rotterdam version. Moreover, the sculpted head from which water pours into the well has a different shape and the smallest of the three chimneys is square rather than cylindrical, as in the present sheet.
These deviations echo the different handling of the brush. Compared to the present sheet, the Rotterdam drawing is executed in a somewhat looser manner that coincides with that of drawings by Thomas Wijck (e.g. inv. no. RP-T-1900-A-4437). Meanwhile, the present drawing can be linked with authentic works by Willem Romeyn, among them an untraced signed painting, Landscape with Cattle at a Pond, where the drawing’s left house was used as a background motif on the right.10 Since the painted building also features the cylindrical chimney, it was clearly derived from the present sheet and not from the Rotterdam version. In terms of its draughtsmanship, the Amsterdam drawing comes close to Romeyn’s View of the Banks of the Tiber in the Special Collections, Universiteit Leiden (inv. no. PK-T-AW-283),11 a drawing probably made on the spot in Rome. In the present sheet, even the added passages relate to Romeyn’s drawings such as the nervously scribbled foliage in the Arch of Drusus of 1655 in the Albertina, Vienna (inv. no. 9861),12 or the animals in the museum’s RP-T-1879-A-60.
Another stylistic analogy seen in the present work is Romeyn’s tendency to delineate forms such as bricks with contours, as can be noted in a drawing attributed to him in a private collection, Arch with a Well in a Ruined Wall.13 That drawing, on paper with a French watermark of grapes,14 is inscribed on the verso, probably by the artist himself, ‘te Lions’, suggesting that Romeyn, like so many fellow Dutchmen, passed through Lyon on his way to Rome. Lyon may also be the setting of the present drawing. Similar buildings appear in other views of Lyon, for instance a drawing attributed to Jan Wils (1606-1666) in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem (inv. no. O+ 027).15 Unfortunately, because the present drawing’s delicate condition precludes its removal from its old mount, it is impossible to know if it has a verso annotation or French watermark.
The private collection’s Arch with a Well in a Ruined Wall is also indented for transfer – this time with a stylus – possibly in order to make an autograph replica. A second drawing of this site, from a different perspective, was once with the dealer Adolphe Stein.16 It is done in the same manner as both the present sheet and the drawing in private collection. It is likely that it was also indented, for it may have been the basis for a late, signed and dated drawing of 1693 of the same subject with added staffage in the Kunstsammlungen Veste Coburg (inv. no. Z 2708-K 66.17
For the moment, the exact relationship between the present drawing and the Rotterdam version remains an open question. Minor differences seem to rule out the possibility of one sheet simply being a copy of the other. Moreover, while Romeyn and Wijck could have participated in a joint on-site drawing session, one would have expected a slight divergence in viewpoint.
Annemarie Stefes, 2018
A.C. Steland, ‘Thomas Wijck als italienisierender Zeichner: Beobachtungen zu Herkunft, Stil und Arbeitsweise’, Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 48/49 (1987-88), pp. 229, 243 (‘a somewhat weak copy after drawing in Rotterdam, the latter attributed to Thomas Wijck’); A. Stefes, ‘Traces Traced: Methods of Transfer Found in Drawings by Karel Dujardin, Willem Romeyn and Jan de Bray’, Delineavit et Sculpsit 45 (2019), pp. 16-18, fig. 11
A. Stefes, 2018, 'Willem Romeyn, Group of Houses, Lyon, c. 1650 - c. 1651', in J. Turner (ed.), (under construction) Drawings 2, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200143802
(accessed 16 December 2025 17:34:45).