River Landscape

c. 1630 - c. 1650

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 26.9 cm × width 40.4 cm
outer size: depth 3.5 cm (support incl. SK-L-4317)

Inscriptions

signature, lower left, on the jetty: P v AS

Technical notes

Support The single, horizontally grained oak plank is approx. 1.1 cm thick. The right edge has been trimmed slightly. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1602. The plank could have been ready for use by 1628, but a date in or after 1630 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, translucent beige ground extends up to the edges of the support. It consists of whitish, black and orange pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. The composition was built up from the back to the front. A translucent dark brown paint, visible at the lower left edge, was applied first, followed by the sky, which was brushed wet in wet and extends down to the lower right edge. The trees and houses were applied on top, the ones in the background very thinly, allowing the sky to show through in order to create depth. The highlighted leaves and the waterside with its small figures and boats were added in the final stage with great attention to detail. Some slight impasto is visible in the landscape and along some contours.
Anna Krekeler, 2024

Scientific examination and reports

paint samples: A. Krekeler, RMA, nos. SK-A-1970/1-2, 28 July 2008
technical report: A. Krekeler, RMA, 28 July 2008
infrared photography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 10 September 2008
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 16 December 2008

Condition

Fair. There are two horizontal cracks, approx. 11 and 4 cm long, in the top left corner of the plank. The paint is abraded on the higher parts of the wood grain. Close to the right edge, a very straight, deep vertical scratch, probably incised as a mark to prepare the trimming, runs through the paint layer from top to bottom. There are numerous retouchings along the upper edge.

Conservation

conservator unknown, 1902: repaired

Provenance

…; sale, Hendrik Jan Antony Raedt van Oldenbarnevelt (1828-1903, The Hague) et al., Amsterdam (F. Muller), 15 April 1902, no. 4, fl. 247.25, to the museum

Object number: SK-A-1970

The artist

Pieter Jansz van Asch (Delft 1603 - Delft 1678)

Houbraken reports that Pieter van Asch was born in Delft in 1603. According to the city chronicler Dirck van Bleyswijck, his father, Hans (or Jan) van Asch, was a portrait painter, but none of his work has survived. It is known that he was not a member of the local Guild of St Luke because Pieter had to pay the full admission fee when he enrolled as a master in 1623 rather than the reduced sum due from the son of a master. Van Asch never married. He died in 1678 and was buried in the city’s Oude Kerk on 6 June.

Pieter van Asch was one of Delft’s few landscape painters, and was among the first to take his inspiration from the views of the province of Holland made by artists of the Haarlem School such as Jan van Goyen and Salomon van Ruysdael. The Italianate cast of his scenes betrays the influence of Jan Both and Jan Hackaert. The frequency with which his works are mentioned in contemporary probate inventories indicates that they were in reasonable demand, and that appreciation is underlined by the fact that Johannes Vermeer depicted landscapes by Van Asch in his interiors.

Van Asch’s only known dated work is the 1669 Kalverbos near Delft, which includes figures by Hendrick Verschuring and is signed by both artists.¹ It was intended as an overmantel for the Prinsenhof, the stadholder’s official residence when in Delft, and is very probably identical with the painting for which Van Asch was paid 100 guilders by the city in 1669. It seems that he was also involved in the production of the large engraving with the illustrated map of Delft known as the Figurative Map. In 1675 he received 9 guilders for two drawings of Overschie and Voorburg that he made for this project, but which were ultimately not used.

Richard Harmanni, 2024

References
D. van Bleyswijck, Beschryvinge der stadt Delft, II, Delft 1667, p. 859; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, I, Amsterdam 1718, pp. 235-36; F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis: Verzameling van meerendeels onuitgegeven berichten en mededeelingen betreffende Nederlandsche schilders, plaatsnijders, beeldhouwers, bouwmeesters, juweliers, goud- en zilverdrijvers [enz.], I, Rotterdam 1877-78, pp. 5, 20; ibid., III, 1880-81, pp. 200-01; ibid., V, 1882-83, pp. 168-69; ibid., VI, 1884-87, p. 12; A. Bredius, ‘Drie Delftsche schilders: Evert van Aelst, Pieter Jansz van Asch, en Adam Pick’, Oud Holland 6 (1888), pp. 289-98, esp. pp. 294-96; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, I, Leipzig/Vienna 1906, p. 30; Moes in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, II, Leipzig 1908, p. 175; J.M. Montias, ‘Painters in Delft, 1613-1680’, Simiolus 10 (1978-79), pp. 84-114, esp. p. 108; J.M. Montias, Artists and Artisans in Delft: A Socio-Economic Study of the Seventeenth Century, Princeton 1982, pp. 80-81, 125, 178, 189, 212-13, 230, 339; Thiele in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, V, Munich/Leipzig 1992, p. 381; G.J.M. Weber, ‘Johannes Vermeer, Pieter Jansz. van Asch und das Problem der Abbildungstreue’, Oud Holland 108 (1994), pp. 98-106; W. Liedtke, ‘Painting in Delft from about 1600 to 1650’, in W. Liedtke et al., Vermeer and the Delft School, exh. cat. New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)/London (The National Gallery) 2001, pp. 43-97, esp. pp. 83, 85-86

Entry

This small landscape by Pieter van Asch is of a river close to a town or village, the outlines of which can be seen in the right background. The figures are fishing – with a rod on the riverbank and with nets in the rowing boats – or tending sheep. The composition, monochrome palette and rarefied brushwork betray the influence of Salomon van Ruysdael, and even more so of Jan van Goyen.

It is difficult to establish a chronology for Van Asch’s paintings, since he rarely dated them. This one is assigned to the 1650s by Liedtke, which seems very late,² because the landscapes produced by other artists in the province of Holland around then were far more colourful. Van Goyen settled in The Hague in 1632, so Van Asch could have seen his works from then on. The dendrochronology has shown that the panel was probably only available by 1630, allowing for an execution sometime between that year and 1650.

Richard Harmanni, 2024

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

H.-U. Beck, Künstler um Jan van Goyen: Maler und Zeichner, Doornspijk 1991, p. 23, no. 1 A1; W. Liedtke, ‘Painting in Delft from about 1600 to 1650’, in W. Liedtke et al., Vermeer and the Delft School, exh. cat. New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)/London (The National Gallery) 2001, pp. 43-97, esp. pp. 86-87

Collection catalogues

1903, p. 33, no. 378; 1976, p. 88, no. A 1970

Citation

Richard Harmanni, 2024, 'Pieter Jansz. van Asch, River Landscape, c. 1630 - c. 1650', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5820

(accessed 15 November 2024 10:50:07).