Rijksmuseum

Object data

point of brush and black ink, with grey wash

height 156 mm × width 176 mm

Inscriptions

stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of Van Regteren Altena (L. 4618)

Technical notes

Watermark: None

Provenance

…; from the dealer H. Kuyt, Haarlem, fl. 10, to Johan Quirijn van Regteren Altena (1899-1980), Amsterdam (L. 4618), 1929; by descent; his heirs’ sale, Amsterdam (Christie’s), 10 December 2014, no. 214, €86,271, to the dealer B. Haboldt for the museum

Object number: RP-T-2016-96

Credit line: Purchased with support from the Vereniging Rembrandt with additional funding from the the Stichting Nationaal Fonds Kunstbezit and the VSB Fund

The artist

Claes van Beresteyn (Haarlem c. 1627/29-Haarlem 1684)
Little is known about this art-loving dilettante, aside from the fact that he was from an aristocratic Haarlem family—a son of the distinguished and wealthy Haarlem lawyer Paulus van Beresteyn (1588-1636) and his third wife, Catharina Both van der Eem (1589-1666). According to the Thieme–Becker entry by E.W. Moes, he was born c. 1627, but a birthdate of two years later was given in the genealogical research undertaken by descendant E(ltjo) A(ldegondus) van Beresteyn. Moes further claimed that Claes lived in the house of his father in the Zijlstraat, but this cannot be confirmed in archival sources. However, Paulus is documented as living in that street in 1618. On 5 January 1644, Claes is mentioned in the records of the Haarlem Guild of St Luke as a citizen of the city and as a pupil of Salomon de Braij (1597-1664). He made his will on 18 June 1677, in which he is described as the founder of the Hofje van Beresteyn (a family-funded almshouse for elderly Catholic women).¹ According to Van der Willigen, Claes was buried on 4 March 1684 in Haarlem’s Grote Kerk (St. Bavo’s).² Moes, however, reported that he died unmarried 5 March 1684 and was buried in the church five days later, that is, on 10 March, a date that can be confirmed from the burial record in the Noord-Hollands Archief, Haarlem.³ Claes had an older brother Arnoldus van Beresteyn (c. 1620-1654) who was apparently also an artist, but today no works of art by him are known.

Jane Shoaf Turner, 2018

REFERENCES
E.W. Moes, ‘Claes van Beresteyn’, in U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, III (1909), p. 382; H. Gerson, Leven en werken van Claes v. Beresteyn. Bijlage II der genealogie van het geslacht Van Beresteyn, The Hague 1940; E.A. van Beresteyn, with W.F. del Campo Hartman, Genealogie van het geslacht Van Beresteyn, 2 vols., The Hague 1941-54, I (1954), pp. 220-21; J. Giltaij, ‘The Drawings of Claes van Beresteyn and Adriaen Verboom’, Master Drawings, 55 (2017), no. 3, pp. 317-32

Entry

The Rijksmuseum preserves at least one impression of all nine etchings by the talented amateur Claes (or Nicolaes) van Beresteyn, but, until recently, not a single drawing by him. The first art historian to study the work of Van Beresteyn’s work on paper was Gerson, who in 1940 attributed to the artist a total of thirty-eight drawings, two of which are signed with the monogram ‘C VB’: the Knotty Old Tree in the Dunes with a Fence, in a private collection, which descended within the artist’s family and in the early twentieth century was owned by descendant E.A. van Beresteyn (who undertook much genealogical research into the family),⁴ and the Landscape with Gnarled Trees in the Foreground, which is preserved in the Stiftung Weimarer Klassik und Kunstsammlungen, Weimar (inv. no. KK 4760).⁵ Although one new, similarly monogrammed drawing has since emerged, Landscape with Trees, now in the P. & N. de Boer Foundation, Amsterdam (inv. no. B 678 B),⁶ recent scholarship by Giltaij has drastically reduced Van Beresteyn’s drawn oeuvre. Giltaij reassigned most unsigned drawings once thought to be by Van Beresteyn to the Rotterdam-born artist Adriaen Verboom (c. 1628-?), who was active in Amsterdam rather than Haarlem (e.g. inv. nos. RP-T-1881-A-145, RP-T-1881-A-146 and RP-T-1881-A-147).

Of the unsigned works still accepted as autograph works by Van Beresteyn, the present sheet is one of only a very few secure examples. Others include the Study of a Truncated Willow Tree now in the collection of Clement C. Moore, II, New York,⁷ which is related to a motif in the etching known as the Landscape in Oval (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-BI-1054).⁸

Although the Amsterdam sheet is neither signed, nor connected with any of his etchings, the stellate clumps of leaves, trees, branches and grass are rendered with his characteristic very fine, short pen lines in a delicate, quasi-pointillist style, as if each leaf were drawn using an etching needle. Also typical of his way of composing landscape motifs are the gnarled, twisted forms of the tree-trunks. Giltaij described his work as if made by ‘a child who meticulously recorded every single leaf,’ but that abstract sense of overall pattern - like the work of a nineteenth-century Impressionist or Post-Impressionist painter - is what lends Van Beresteyn’s draughtsmanship and etching technique its special charm.

Jane Shoaf Turner, 2018

Literature

H. Gerson, Leven en werken van Claes v. Beresteyn: Bijlage II der genealogie van het geslacht Van Beresteyn, The Hague 1940, no. B 5; J. Giltaij, Kabinet van tekeningen: 16e en 17e eeuwse Hollandse en Vlaamse tekeningen uit een Amsterdamse verzameling, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen)/Paris (Institut Néerlandais)/Brussels (Koninklijke Bibliotheek Albert I) 1976-77, no. 13; J. Giltaij, ‘The Drawings of Claes van Beresteyn and Adriaen Verboom’, Master Drawings 55 (2017), no. 3, p. 323 (fig. 7); R.-J. te Rijdt et al., ‘Acquisitions: Old Master Drawings’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 66 (2018), no. 4, pp. 402-03, no. 5 (text by J. Shoaf Turner)

Citation

J. Shoaf Turner, 2018, 'Claes van Beresteyn, Dune Landscape with Gnarled Trees, Haarlem, c. 1670', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.637426

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