Rijksmuseum

Object data

black chalk, with grey wash; framing line in brown ink; verso: four horizontal lines in pen and brown ink

height 202 mm × width 321 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed on verso: upper left, probably in an eighteenth-century hand, in graphite, 6’1. [? or 64]; lower left, in an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century hand, in graphite (effaced), ƒ[? or H] [...] 5/a; below that, in an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century hand, in graphite or pencil (partially effaced), L: [...] 80+; below that, in a different eighteenth- or nineteenth-century hand, in brown ink (partially effaced), 7 N⁰ 126; lower right, probably in an early nineteenth-century hand, in dark brown ink, Van Goijen / 8 f. 36 s.
stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: countermark with letters AD (not in Heawood or Laurentius)

Condition

Small, light-brown stains at left, upper centre and centre; abrasions in the corners

Provenance

…; sale Arnold Otto Meyer (1825-1913, Hamburg), Leipzig (C.G. Boerner), 19 March 1914 sqq., no. 273, as Jan van Goyen; …; private collection, Munich;¹ …; from the dealer R.M. Light, Boston, as ‘Naiwincx’, fl. 11,765, to the museum (L. 2228), 1974

Object number: RP-T-1974-29

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).² 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 1662.³ 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).⁴ 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 1670.⁵ 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

When this drawing was purchased in 1974, it was considered to be by Herman Naiwincx (1623-c. 1651/55). That attribution was subsequently doubted by Blankert and Nystad.⁶ Given the drawing’s resemblance to inv. no. RP-T-1959-266, a sheet bearing an old attribution to ‘Casteleyn’, possibly in the hand of Jan Pietersz Zomer (1641-1699), it was cautiously attributed to Casper Casteleyn by Gerdien Wuestman. Another drawing, Castle Surrounded by Trees, executed in a comparable style, was auctioned in 1993 under the name of ‘Jasper [i.e. Casper] Casteleyn’.⁷ Unfortunately, no pure landscape drawings can be definitively assigned to the artist.

If, however, these three tentative attributions could be established as correct, it would suggest that drawings erroneously classified as by Naiwincx in other public collections might be potential candidates to expand Casteleyn’s oeuvre. These include sheets in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (inv. nos. 22838 and possibly 47295),⁸ and the British Museum, London (inv. nos. Oo,10.186 and 1893,0612.15).⁹

Gerdien Wuestman, 2000/Annemarie Stefes, 2019

Literature

W. Bernt, Die niederländischen Zeichner des 17. Jahrhunderts, 2 vols., Munich 1957-58, II (1958), no. 429 (as Naiwincx); A. Blankert and A. Nystad, ‘Herman Naiwincx’, Tableau 1 (1979-80), p. 58, no. T. 23 (unconvincing attribution to Naiwincx); 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, as attributed to Naiwincx)

Citation

G. Wuestman, 2000/A. Stefes, 2019, 'possibly Casper Casteleyn, Dune Landscape with a Cottage at Left, 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.56418

(accessed 26 November 2024 16:25:27).