Rijksmuseum

Object data

red chalk; framing line in brown ink

height 165 mm × width 204 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed: lower left, by Zomer, in red chalk, G. Berkheijde
inscribed on verso, in pencil: lower left, 3455; centre, 173
stamped on verso: lower right, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: posthorn (fragment); similar to Heawood, no. 2732 (Leiden: 1704)

Condition

Some foxing; discolouration along the left edge

Provenance

…; Jan Pietersz Zomer (1641-1724), Amsterdam¹; Dirk Vis Blokhuyzen (1799-1869), Rotterdam; his sale, Rotterdam (D.A. Lamme and A.C. van Wijngaarden), 23 October 1871 sqq., no. 68 (‘G. Berkheyde. Etude de paysans. Deux dessins. A la sanguine’), fl. 1, to Carel Vosmaer (1826-88), The Hague;² by descent to Carel Johannes Jacob Gualtherus Vosmaer (1907-86), Leiden; purchased from his heirs, with the support from the Vereniging Rembrandt, the Prins Bernhard Fonds, the Rijksmuseum-Stichting, and De Ster Holding BV, by the museum (L. 2228), 1989

Object number: RP-T-1989-107

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt, with additional funding from the Prins Bernhard Fonds, the Rijksmuseum-Stichting and De Ster Holding BV

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.³

The brothers established themselves in their native Haarlem around 1653-54 and probably shared a workshop.⁴ Gerrit joined the Guild of St Luke on 27 July 1660.⁵ 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).⁶ 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).⁷

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.⁸

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

Besides architectural views of the Netherlands and Germany, Berckheyde also painted Italianate landscapes with ruins, shepherds and hunters. This drawing of a resting shepherd was probably intended to be used for one such picture, but so far it has not been possible to match it with one.

No fully signed figure studies by Gerrit Berckheyde are known, but the dealer and collector Jan Pietersz Zomer (1641-1724) recorded the artist’s name on a number of drawings, including this sheet, the Rijksmuseum’s Seated Man, Drinking (inv. no. RP-T-1989-106) and the Standing Woman in Museum Boijmans Van Beunningen, Rotterdam (inv. no. G.A.B.1.).⁹ Zomer’s attributions are a useful starting-point for recognizing Gerrit’s hand as a draughtsman, especially since over time many of his drawings have been attributed to fellow Haarlem artist Cornelis Bega (1631-1664) or to his older brother, Job Berckheyde (1630-1693).¹⁰ Because Zomer often, as here, added the first name or initial on sheets that he annotated, he evidently believed himself to be capable of distinguishing between the brothers’ hands. However, as Broos correctly noted, the mere presence in Gerrit’s paintings of figures that correspond to surviving drawings is not sufficient grounds for making an attribution, since Gerrit and Job could have used each other’s drawings.¹¹ Moreover, Gerrit sometimes had other artists paint the staffage in his pictures.¹² A drawing attributed to Johannes Lingelbach (1622-1674) in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem (inv. no. Q*7), for instance, features six oriental figures found in various paintings by Berckheyde.¹³

Bonny van Sighem, 2001

Literature

J.F. Heijbroek (ed.), De verzameling van mr. Carel Vosmaer (1826-1888), exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet) 1989, pp. 69-71, no. 26; M.C. Plomp, ‘Jan Pietersz. Zomer’s Inscriptions on Drawings’, Delineavit et Sculpsit 17 (1997), p. 17, figs. 11 and 11a

Citation

B. van Sighem, 2001, 'Gerrit Berckheyde, Seated Shepherd, Haarlem, 1648 - 1698', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200117084

(accessed 15 December 2025 02:45:56).