Object data
oil on panel
support: height 75.5 cm × width 113 cm
Esaias van de Velde
The Ferry
1622
Inscriptions
- signature and date, lower right: E. V. VELDE 1622
Technical notes
The support is an oak panel that originally consisted of three horizontally grained planks. A fourth plank, some 14 cm wide, was added at the top at a later date. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1603. The panel could have been ready for use by 1614, but a date in or after 1620 is more likely. The earliest possible date for the addition of the top plank is 1634, but it is more likely that this was done in or after 1640. The panel was thinned to 0.4 cm for cradling (cradle now removed), and is now supported by two aluminium battens attached to the back. Bevels are visible along the left and right edges and to a lesser degree along the bottom edge. The left and right edges of the original panel are unpainted, the strips measuring approximately 1 cm on the left and between 2 and 3 cm on the right. The top of the panel must have been sawn or planed down slightly when the extra plank was attached. The panel was probably also sawn or planed down at the bottom. The white ground layer, visible in the beard along the left and right edges, was applied with broad vertical and diagonal brush strokes. Some underdrawing is visible with the naked eye. Infrared reflectography did not show more of the underdrawing. The composition was generally executed from the background to the foreground, very detailed in most of the figures and the boats in the centre, and sketchy in the trees and the bushes. The figures were painted on top of the background.
Scientific examination and reports
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 24 August 1987
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 27 October 1995
- technical report: M. Chavannes, RMA, 13 January 2005
Literature scientific examination and reports
unpublished entry by Ariane van Suchtelen, RMA, 1995
Condition
Fair. The panel is thin and fragile. The upper part of the sky was overpainted when the top plank was added. There is some abrasion in the water near the right riverbank, and there are areas of retouching in the sky and the water.
Conservation
- conservator unknown, 1947: cleaned
- L. Kuiper, 1976: discoloured retouching and varnish removed; paint consolidated along the upper panel join
- L. Kuiper, 1987: cradle removed; discoloured varnish and retouching removed
- H.C. Coen, 1987: cradle removed; discoloured varnish and retouching removed
- M. van de Laar, 1991 - 1992: cradled; retouched and revarnished
Provenance
...; collection Mr P. VerLoren van Themaat, Utrecht;1 his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller et al.), 30 October 1885, no. 100, fl. 755, to C.F. Roos for the museum2
Object number: SK-A-1293
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Esaias van de Velde (Amsterdam 1587 - The Hague 1630)
Esaias van de Velde was born in Amsterdam in 1587 as the son of the painter and art dealer Hans van de Velde, who hailed from Antwerp. His teacher was probably Gillis van Coninxloo, although the name of David Vinckboons is also mentioned in the literature, both of whom, like the Van de Veldes emigrated from the southern Netherlands to Amsterdam. In 1609, he, his mother and sister went to live in Haarlem with his brother-in-law, the painter Jacob Martens. Cathelijn Martens, the woman Van de Velde married two years later, was Martens’s sister. In 1612, he, Hercules Segers and Willem Pietersz Buytewech joined the Guild of St Luke in Haarlem. He was also a member of the Wijngaardranken chamber of rhetoric in 1617-18. On 22 April 1618 he moved to The Hague and joined the painters’ guild there the same year. In 1620 he gained citizenship of The Hague. According to Houbraken, Van de Velde’s paintings were expensive and popular, which is confirmed by contemporary mentions of prices. One of his patrons was the stadholder, Prince Maurits. Several documents of January 1626 reveal that there was a problem relating to the payment of 200 guilders for a painting commissioned by the Stadholder’s Court. Van de Velde was buried in the St Jacobuskerk in The Hague on 18 November 1630.
Esaias van de Velde was a painter of landscapes, battle scenes and merry companies in the open air, as well as being a draughtsman and an etcher. His earliest dated paintings are winter landscapes and companies out of doors from 1614. His early landscapes have a colourful palette, but the later ones are more naturalistic. He must have been in great demand as a specialist in staffage. He painted the figures in works by Bartholomeus van Bassen (SK-A-864). Pieter de Molijn, François van Knibbergen and other artists. Jan van Goyen (1596-1656) and Pieter de Neyn (1597-1639) were taught by him in his Haarlem studio. Other pupils or followers included Jan Asselijn (after 1610-1652), Pieter van Laer (1599-in or after 1642) and Palamedes Palamedesz (1607-38).
Gerdien Wuestman, 2007
References
Buchelius 1583-1639 (1928), pp. 50, 67; Orlers 1641, pp. 373, 374; Van Bleyswijck 1667, II, p. 847; Von Sandrart 1675 (1925), p. 182; Houbraken I, 1718, pp. 171, 173, 275, 303; Miedema 1980, II, p. 1036; Briels 1984, pp. 20-26; Briels 1997, p. 392; Buijsen in The Hague 1998, pp. 250-54; Van Thiel-Stroman 2006, pp. 314-15
Entry
The ferry of 1622 is a highlight in Esaias van de Velde’s oeuvre, as well as being one of the most important works in Dutch landscape painting. Never before had a naturalistic Dutch landscape been depicted on such a monumental scale. The main subject is the river zigzagging through the village. The composition is enlivened by the reflections on the smooth surface of the water and the wealth of detail.
The scene is populated with an unusually large number of figures by Van de Velde’s standards.3 There are dozens of them to be seen by the inn on the left, on both banks of the river, on the ferry itself and in the rowingboat behind it. Nevertheless, this staffage plays a less important role than it does in other works by the artist.4 Typical Van de Velde touches are the crooked trees with their distinctive foliage. The shape of the trees and the way they are painted have been associated with the work of the German artist Adam Elsheimer, which Van de Velde would undoubtedly have known from engravings by Hendrick Goudt.5
In this painting Van de Velde was embroidering on a river landscape he had painted seven years earlier, which is also dominated by the water.6 Sutton noted an affinity with the work of Jan Brueghel, such as his River Landscape with Landing and Ferry of 1603 in Antwerp.7 Van de Velde based the composition and staffage of his ambitious work in the Rijksmuseum on drawings from a sketchbook that he must have filled in the period 1618-20 (fig. a).8 It is very possible that other preliminary studies for The Ferry will re-emerge, because there were probably more than the 15 in Keyes’s reconstruction of the sketchbook.
The painting was exhibited until well into the 20th century with a plank 14 centimetres high that had been attached to the top. It was only in 1987, after Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann’s suggestion that the top plank, which was mainly blue sky, might be a later addition,9 that it was discovered that Van de Velde’s masterpiece originally had far less sky and consequently a higher horizon. The painting also turned out to be less colourful than was thought, for the bright blue that also made up part of the sky on the original panel turned out to be an overpaint. As happened to several landscapes by other artists, the enlargement was made in the 17th century itself.10 Dendrochronological examination has shown that it took place after Van de Velde’s death.11 The extra plank has not been removed but is hidden by the specially designed frame.
Gerdien Wuestman, 2007
See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements
This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 287.
Literature
Keyes 1984, pp. 35, 66-67, 104, 148, no. 104; Stechow 1966, pp. 52-53; Sutton 1987, p. 25; De Bruyn Kops in Amsterdam etc. 1987, pp. 499-501, no. 106, with earlier literature
Collection catalogues
1887, p. 174, no. 1493 (as dated 1623); 1903, p. 274, no. 2452; 1934, p. 289, no. 2452; 1960, p. 314, no. 2452; 1976, p. 558, no. A 1293; 1992, p. 88, no. A 1293; 2007, no. 287
Citation
G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Esaias van de Velde, The Ferry, 1622', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6362
(accessed 10 November 2024 00:48:20).