Object data
black and white chalk, on blue paper; framing line in dark brown ink
height 238 mm × width 178 mm
Gerrit Berckheyde (circle of)
Seated Woman, Head Facing Right / verso: Sketch of a Man with a Hat
Technical notes
watermark: none
Condition
Some foxing; loss lower left corner; brown spots; damage, lower left; pasted in album Figuurstudies I, fol. 65
Provenance
...; Pieter Kikkert (1775-1855), Leiden and Vlaardingen; by descent to Mrs E. Peereboom, Haarlem; from whom, together with 242 drawings, fl. 80.000, to the museum, with the support of the F.G. Waller-Fonds, the Belport Familienstiftung and a contribution from the J.A.Z. Count van Regteren Limpurg Bequest, 1981
Object number: RP-T-1981-157
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the F.G. Waller-Fonds, the Belport Familienstiftung and a contribution from the J.A.Z. Count van Regteren Limpurg Bequest
Copyright: Public domain
Context
This drawing is found on fol. 65 of the first of two albums of 17th- and 18th-century figures studies assembled by Pieter Kikkert (1775-1855), consisting of ninety-eight drawings on eighty-nine sheets (inv. nos. RP-T-1981-92 to RP-T-1981-181). The contents of the vellum-bound album (381 x 287 mm) are inscribed in brown ink on the second page of the album: ‘Hier in leggen / Zeventien Voornaeme Schetsen Van Bramer / en Seventig Standen in alle position / door Sagtleven, Van Blomme en de / Voornaemste / Oude Beroemde Mesters’ (‘Contained herein are seventeen distinguished sketches by Bramer and seventy of standing figures in all different positions by Saftleven, Van Bloemen and the best-known Old Masters’); see inv. no. RP-T-1981-92A.
The artist
Gerrit Berckheyde (Haarlem, 1638 - Haarlem, 1698)
He was probably trained by his older brother, Job Berckheyde (1630-1693). In the 1650s, as a young teenager, Gerrit travelled with Job along the Rhine to Heidelberg to study and draw German architecture.1
The brothers established themselves in their native Haarlem around 1653-54 and probably shared a workshop.2 Gerrit joined the Guild of St Luke on 27 July 1660.3 He specialized in townscapes. Gerrit drew figure studies in red and black chalk to be used as staffage for his paintings, a large number of which have been preserved. The models for these drawings were shared among Haarlem artists and recorded by different hands during joint drawing sessions. In the past Gerrit’s drawings have thus often been confused with those of other Haarlem artists, especially Cornelis Bega (1631-1664).4 He is not known to have had students, but he collaborated with Jan van Huchtenburg (1647-1733) and possibly Nicolas Guérard (?-1719), Dirk Maas (1656-1717) and Johannes Lingelbach (1622-1674).5
From 1666 to 1681, Gerrit was a member of the Haarlem society of rhetoricians, the ‘Wijngaardranken’. He served as an official for the Haarlem Guild of St Luke between 1691 and 1695. He died unexpectedly on 10 January 1698, when he fell into the Brouwersvaart and drowned. He was buried in the nave of the St Jan four days later.6
Carolyn Mensing, 2020
References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, III (1721), pp. 189-97; A. van der Willigen, Geschiedkundige aantekeningen over Haarlemsche schilders, Haarlem 1866, p. 70; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, III (1909), p. 376; H. Jantzen, Das niederländische Architecturbild, Leipzig 1910, pp. 87-88; H. Gerson, Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Amsterdam 1942, pp. 168, 204, 25; B. Haak, Hollandse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw, Amsterdam 1984, p. 392; C. Lawrence, Gerrit Adriaensz. Berckheyde (1638-1698): Haarlem Cityscape Painter, Doornspijk 1991; C. Lawrence, ‘Berckheyde Family’, Grove Art Online, 2003, online at https://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000008029; I. van Thiel-Stroman, ‘Gerrit Adriaensz Berckheyde’, in P. Biesboer et al., Painting in Haarlem, 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 105-06
Entry
The model in this drawing is probably the same woman as represented in the museum’s inv. no. RP-T-1883-A-265 by Gerrit Berckheyde, but the drawing is too weak to be attributed to the artist. Further, the technique – black and white chalk on blue paper – is one that he hardly ever used. Perhaps it was made by another Haarlem artist during a joint drawing session. This might have been the same occasion on which Berckheyde drew the same woman in exactly this pose, but seen slightly more to the right, in a red chalk stucy preserved in the Schlossmuseum, Weimar (inv. no. KK 4761).7 The model might be the same woman that Cornelis Bega (1631-1664) depicted up close in inv. no. RP-T-1883-A-271.
Bonny van Sighem, 2001
Literature
M.A. Scott, Cornelis Bega (1631/32-1664) as Painter and Draughtsman, 2 vols., Ann Arbor (MI) 1984 (PhD diss., University of Maryland), p. 409, no. D138 (circle of Bega)
Citation
B. van Sighem, 2001, 'circle of Gerrit Berckheyde, Seated Woman, Head Facing Right / verso: Sketch of a Man with a Hat, ', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.502646
(accessed 28 December 2024 02:15:56).