Landscape with Trees and a Ruin

c. 1650 - c. 1655

Object data

graphite, with grey wash and opaque white, on light grey prepared card

height 191 mm × width 150 mm

Inscriptions

signed: lower centre, in graphite, AV. (in ligature) CROOS
inscribed on verso, in pencil: upper right, 4; centre, 44 G
stamped on verso: centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228); lower left, with the mark of Teding van Berkhout (L. 2421; but in blue ink).
inscribed on old mount (removed but preserved): lower right, in pencil, Roos / 10
inscribed on verso of old mount (removed but preserved): lower right, in pencil, = A Croos / f Roos

Condition

Stains and losses from glue on upper and lower right corners of verso

Provenance

…; ? collection Willem Philip Kops (1755-1805), Haarlem; ? his daughter, Anna Johanna Kops (1785-1825), Haarlem; her husband, Jonkheer Jan Pieter Teding van Berkhout (1786-1856), Haarlem;¹ his son, Jonkheer Hendrik Teding van Berkhout (1830-1904), Haarlem (L. 2421);² his son, Jonkheer Hendrik Teding van Berkhout (1879-1969), Amsterdam and Haarlem;³ his daughters, Suzanna Frida Barones van Höevell-Teding van Berkhout (1909-2003), Bergen, and Jonkvrouwe Anna Clara Teding van Berkhout (1910-2001), Amsterdam;⁴ from whom, fl. 2,000, to the museum (L. 2228), with the support of the Rijksmuseum-Stichting, 1979

Object number: RP-T-1980-2

Credit line: Gift of the Rijksmuseum-Stichting and Suzanna Frida Baroness van Höevell-Teding van Berkhout, Bergen

The artist

Anthonie Jansz van der Croos (? Alkmaar c. 1606/07 - The Hague in or after 1665)

Although possibly born in Alkmaar, he lived in The Hague from at least 1632, when he became member of the chamber of rhetoric De Ionghe Batavieren (The Young Batavians) and when he married his first wife, Johanna Bijl (?-?). That marriage as well as his second, in 1646, to Claesge Jansdr (?-?), each produced four children. One of his sons, Jacob Theunisz van der Croos (1632/37-1683), also worked as a painter. Anthonie’s presumed apprenticeship with Moyses van Wtenbrouck (1590/1600-in or before 1647) is undocumented, but his earliest dated painting, Satyrs, Shepherd and Nymph at the Edge of a Forest of 1627 (present whereabouts unknown) clearly betrays the latter’s influence.⁵

In 1634, Van der Croos joined the local civic guard in The Hague, and the same year he bought a house in the Keizerstraat in nearby Scheveningen. He is documented as living in De Geest, The Hague, in 1641 and from the following year in the Nieuwe Molstraat. Only in 1647 did he enter The Hague’s Guild of St Luke, together with his younger brother Pieter van der Croos (1609/11-1670). Two years later, in 1649, Anthonie joined the painters’ guild in Alkmaar, where he remained for two years. He may have moved to Amsterdam around 1651, but was back in The Hague in 1654. There, in 1656, he was a co-founder of the Confrerie Pictura. The last document mentioning the artist, dated 1663, relates to him borrowing money.⁶ Besides his son Jacob Theunisz, his other pupils were Jacob Classon (active 1658-75) and Jacob Pijl (active 1640-80).

Van der Croos – who was probably also active as an art dealer – was a prolific painter, leaving more than 250 works, of which what may be his last, View of Huis ten Bosch, dates 1663 or 1667, View of Huis ten Bosch, in the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (inv. no. GE-3394).⁷ Reportedly, he travelled through Holland with a spiegeljacht, a boat from which he sketched motifs for his paintings.⁸ However, such rough landscape sketches are either lost or preserved under incorrect attributions, since his known oeuvre of drawings is limited to only a dozen sheets. As a painter, Van der Croos was influenced by Jan van Goyen (1596-1656), but as a draughtsman, he revealed a meticulous style and choice of rare materials that set his works apart from Van Goyen’s example.

Annemarie Stefes, 2018

References
K. Lilienfeld, ‘Pieter van der Croos’, in U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, VIII (1913), pp. 162-63; A. Bredius (ed.), Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der Holländischen Kunst des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts, 8 vols, The Hague 1915-22, III (1917), pp. 945-47; H.-U. Beck, Künstler um Jan van Goyen: Maler und Zeichner, Amsterdam 1991, pp. 72-73; C. Dumas, Haagse stadsgezichten, 1550-1800: Topografische schilderijen van het Haags Historisch Museum, Zwolle 1991, pp. 210-11; E. Buijsen, Haagse Schilders in de Gouden Eeuw. Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag, 1600-1700, Zwolle 1998, pp. 113-17; R. Ekkart, ‘Pieter Jansz. van der Croos’, in A. Beyer et al. (eds.), Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich and Leipzig 1992-, XXII (1999), pp. 421-22; P. Groenendijk, Beknopt biografisch Lexicon van Zuid- en Noord-Nederlandse schilders, graveurs, glasschilders, tapijtwevers et cetera van ca. 1350 tot ca. 1720, Utrecht 2008, pp. 238-39

Entry

For this drawing, the artist used a firm piece of card, on both sides primed with a thick layer of opaque grey. The broad brushstrokes of the ground are still visible under the graphite drawing. A drawing in the same technique, River Scene with a Barge Being Loaded in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (KdZ 12679), which is signed and dated, AV Croos 1654, is the only other known drawing of this kind by Van der Croos.⁹ Its date, 1654, provides a clue for the approximate dating of the present drawing.

The present sheet’s unusual technique, with both recto and verso primed with a thick layer of ground, might indicate a practical studio use. Such prepared supports (whether paper or vellum), known as tafeletten (tablets), were made to be deliberately reusable – like a modern chalkboard – so that the drawing could be either wiped off or concealed by a new coat of ground.¹⁰ This method, described by Cennino Cennini (c. 1360-before 1427) and popular among merchants in the Middle Ages, was still occasionally used by seventeenth-century artists, such as Hendrick Goltzius (1556-1617) or Rembrandt (1606-1669), apparently motivated by the high prices of paper.¹¹ Often, these tablets were put together, forming little notebooks, of which some examples are still preserved, for instance a book of tafeletten by Adriaen van der Werff (1659-1722) of circa 1700 in the Historisch Museum, Rotterdam.¹² If the present drawing was originally made as such a quick sketch, it was apparently later given the status of an autonomous work of art by the artist himself when he added his signature.

Ingrid Oud, 2000/Annemarie Stefes, 2018

Literature

‘Keuze uit aanwinsten’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 28 (1980), p. 18 (fig. 8); H.-U. Beck, Jan van Goyen (1596-1656): Ein Oeuvreverzeichnis, 4 vols., Amsterdam 1972-91, IV (1991), no. 146, A 9; R. Ekkart, ‘Anthony Jansz. van der Croos’, in A. Beyer et al. (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992-, XXII (1999), p. 422

Citation

A. Stefes, 2018, 'Anthonie Jansz. van der Croos, Landscape with Trees and a Ruin, c. 1650 - c. 1655', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.33778

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