Object data
oil on copper
support: height 27.6 cm × width 35.6 cm
outer size: depth 4.5 cm (support incl. frame)
Pieter de Molijn
Halting at a Roadside Inn
1657
Inscriptions
- signature and date, bottom right (P and M ligated): PMolyn [1]657
Technical notes
The support is a very smooth copper plate that was not, as is usually the case, roughened in order to facilitate adhesion of the ground and paint layers. The ground, visible at the paint losses, is white. The painting was executed from back to front, reserves being left for most of the figures. Only those in the background were painted over the landscape. The paint layers were applied thickly, wet in wet, with small strokes and with visible brushmarking. There is a small pentimento in the head of the larger cow on the right.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 31 May 2006
Condition
Fair. The painting is abraded and there are a number of small losses in the ground and paint layers throughout, and some large losses along the edges. The varnish is very discoloured.
Provenance
...; sale, Gijsbert de Clercq (1850-1911), Amsterdam (F. Muller), 1 June 1897, no. 25, as Barend Gael, bought in; purchased from Gijsbert de Clercq by the Vereniging Rembrandt, 1899;1 from the Vereniging Rembrandt, fl. 60, to the museum, March 19022
Object number: SK-A-1942
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Pieter de Molijn (London 1595 - Haarlem 1661)
The son of Flemish immigrants, Pieter de Molijn was baptized in London on 6 April 1595. He had settled in Haarlem by 1616, in which year he joined the local Guild of St Luke. De Molijn made a drawing in the album amicorum of Wybrand de Geest with the inscription ‘Pieter de Molijn in Rome 6 June 1618’.3 Ampzing mentions him in the 1621 edition of his Lof der stadt Haerlem in Hollandt, indicating that De Molijn had returned to Haarlem by then. In 1624 he married Mayken Gerards. De Molijn was a member of the civic guard in Haarlem in 1624, 1627 and 1630. He also served various functions in the painters’ guild; in 1631, 1637/38, 1645 and 1649 he was appointed warden of the guild, in 1636/37 he was the guild’s alms collector, and in 1632, 1633, 1638, and 1646 he held the office of dean. He was buried in Haarlem’s St Bavokerk on 23 March 1661.
Although he began his career as a genre painter, De Molijn came to specialize in paintings and drawings (most of which are signed and dated) of dune landscapes, views of sandy roads and some forest landscapes. His 1626 Dune Landscape with Trees and Wagon is considered a cornerstone of the tonal phase of 17th-century Dutch landscape painting.4 Later in his career, De Molijn also painted mountain landscapes, winter landscapes and views of nocturnal fires and plundering soldiers. His documented pupils were Christian de Hulst (dates unknown), the genre painter Gerard ter Borch (in 1633), and Jan Nose, Jan ten Berge and Hercules Patronius (all recorded in 1655). De Molijn probably also trained his son Anthonie, who became a landscape painter. Houbraken claimed that Allaert van Everdingen (1621-75) was also a pupil. De Molijn made collaborative works with a number of painters, including Ter Borch and Frans Hals, and possibly with Pieter de Grebber, Jacob de Wet, Jacob Pynas and Nicolaes Berchem as well.
Jonathan Bikker, 2007
References
Ampzing 1621, unpag.; Ampzing 1628, p. 372; Schrevelius 1647, p. 294; Houbraken I, 1718, p. 25, II, 1719, pp. 95, 343, III, 1721, p. 183; Van der Willigen 1870, pp. 225-27; Granberg 1884, pp. 369-77; Fokker in Thieme/Becker XXV, 1931, pp. 49-50; Allen 1987, pp. 30-41; Briels 1997, pp. 360-61; Van Thiel-Stroman 2006, pp. 246-49
Entry
The subject of this painting, a group of figures outside a country inn, is an unusual one for De Molijn, who is best known for his dune landscapes and views of sandy roads. In this work he was probably following the example of his fellow townsman Isaac van Ostade.5 The subject of a country inn, as well as the figures shown close to the picture plane and the diagonal composition readily call to mind a number of Isaac van Ostade’s paintings, such as Halt at an Inn formerly in a German private collection.6
De Molijn used diagonal compositions in many of his paintings, often accompanied by a triangular patch of shadow in the lower left corner, as in the Rijksmuseum work. Also typical for the painter are the local colours with which the figures are rendered and their mask-like faces, especially apparent in the woman just right of centre, who is looking out at the viewer. The horse and rider on the left are disproportionately large, a flaw that often occurred in De Molijn’s work. As far as is known, this is the only extant work by De Molijn executed on copper, his preferred support being wood.7 His technique in this painting, however, does not differ from that in his works on wooden supports; the paint was applied thickly and in a relatively coarse manner.
Jonathan Bikker, 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. 214.
Literature
Allen 1987, p. 199
Collection catalogues
1903, p. 181, no. 1637; 1934, p. 194, no. 1637; 1976, p. 392, no. A 1942; 2007, no. 214
Citation
J. Bikker, 2007, 'Pieter de Molijn, Halting at a Roadside Inn, 1657', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4617
(accessed 26 November 2024 05:46:37).