Rocky Coast

c. 1630 - c. 1640

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 83 cm × width 143.2 cm
outer size: depth 8 cm (support incl. SK-L-3566)

Technical notes

Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. The tacking edges have not been preserved. Cusping is present on the right.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends up to the current edges of the canvas. The first layer is a solid, somewhat transparent beige. The second, lighter layer is off-white and contains white and orange pigment and carbon black particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the current edges of the canvas. The composition was built up from the back to the front. The sky, water and landscape were first laid in, with a reserve for the foremost figure on the coast and the two horsemen behind him. Many of the smaller elements, such as the foliage and the other figures, were added in the final stage. The scene was rendered in a straightforward, lively manner without much detailing. The fluid paints were applied wet in wet, with hardly any texture, but leaving some of the brushwork visible. A few changes could be detected with the naked eye and infrared photography. A dark shape showing through the water just to the left of the white horse’s leg, possibly part of an undermodelling, seems to indicate an earlier, higher position of the rock formation below. Also the waterfall was originally intended to be far wilder, but most of the splashing foam was later covered. A fallen tree above it was painted out, while several minor adjustments were made to the contours of the group of figures, horses and dogs in the foreground.
Willem de Ridder, 2024

Scientific examination and reports

paint samples: W. de Ridder, RMA, nos. SK-A-2086/1-2, 10 September 2010
technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 10 September 2010
X-radiography: J. van der Brugge-Mulder, RMA, nos. A1-4/B1-4/C1-4, 22 May 2018

Condition

Poor. The canvas has become exceptionally rigid probably due to a previous lining. X-radiography revealed a tear (heavily filled and overpainted) over almost the entire width, visible to the naked eye as a light band running down from top left, along the contour of the mountains through the clouds, up to the right. The edges of the canvas are very damaged. The paint layer has a strong craquelure with areas of cupping and small losses all over, and is abraded in the dark colours, especially visible where they cover lighter ones. There are generous, discoloured retouchings and overpaints throughout. The paint surface has wrinkled in the lower left corner. Small crater-like holes, some filled with a glassy substance, have formed in the figures and horses in the foreground. The varnish has severely yellowed and saturates poorly. Several areas appear matte, especially in retouched passages.

Conservation

Van der Haeghen: canvas lined
J.A. Hesterman, 1904: canvas relined

Provenance

…; purchased in The Hague, fl. 25, by Arnoldus Andries des Tombe (1812-1902), The Hague;¹ by whom bequeathed to the museum, 1903

Object number: SK-A-2086

Credit line: A.A. des Tombe Bequest, The Hague

The artist

Simon Jacobsz de Vlieger (? Rotterdam c. 1600/01 - Weesp 1653)

In 1649 Simon de Vlieger declared that he was about 47, which would mean that his year of birth must have been 1600 or 1601. He was probably born in Rotterdam, where his father died in 1633. Simon himself married the daughter of a cloth dyer there in 1627, and is mentioned in the city several times up until 1633. The following year he joined the Guild of St Luke in Delft, and rented a house and stayed there until 1638, when he can be traced to Amsterdam. However, he kept up the ties with the places where he previously lived and worked. In 1637 he bought property in Rotterdam’s Schilderstraat which he sold in 1644. In 1640 he delivered the cartoons for tapestries for Delft Town Hall, and in 1645 the churchwardens of St Lawrence’s in Rotterdam paid him for painting the organ wings. He also received several public commissions in Amsterdam, of which he became a citizen in 1643. He drew designs for the prints depicting Maria de’ Medici’s entry into the city in 1638, and in 1648 for stained-glass windows in the Nieuwe Kerk. These projects involved considerable sums of money, indicating that he was prospering. In 1649 he purchased a house and garden in Weesp, a small town near Amsterdam, where he remained until his death in 1653 and where his daughter Cornelia married the painter Paulus van Hillegaert II in 1651.

De Vlieger was one of the leading Dutch marine artists of the seventeenth century. Works of his that show dramatic and/or historical events at sea are in the tradition of his predecessors Hendrick Vroom and the Flemish marine painters. However, many of his pictures display a fresh approach to the genre, primarily inspired by Jan Porcellis, with the sea becoming a subject in its own right. De Vlieger left a very large oeuvre, but the hundreds of works attributed to him include many by anonymous followers and contemporaries, not infrequently bearing a fake signature. A couple of dozen paintings are dated, the earliest being from 1624 and the latest from 1651.² According to Houbraken De Vlieger taught Willem van de Velde II (1633-1707) but that is not certain. His most important followers include Pieter Mulier I, Hendrick Dubbels and Jan van de Cappelle. The latter owned nine of his paintings and more than 1,300 of his drawings.

Erlend de Groot, 2024

References
G. van Spaan, Beschrijvinge der stad Rotterdam en eenige omleggende dorpen, Rotterdam 1698, p. 421; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, II, Amsterdam 1719, p. 325; P. Scheltema, Rembrand: Discours sur sa vie et son génie, Paris 1866, p. 77; 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, p. 6; A.D. de Vries, ‘Biografische aanteekeningen betreffende voornamelijk Amsterdamsche schilders, plaatsnijders, enz. en hunne verwanten’, Oud Holland 3 (1885), pp. 55-80, 135-60, 223-40, 303-12, esp. p. 150; ibid., 4 (1886), pp. 71-80, 135-44, 215-24, 295-304, esp. p. 297; A. Bredius, ‘Het schildersregister van Jan Sysmus, Stads-Doctor van Amsterdam’, Oud Holland 9 (1891), pp. 137-49, esp. p. 147; P. Haverkorn van Rijsewijk, ‘Simon Jacobsz. De Vlieger’, Oud Holland 9 (1891), pp. 221-24 (documents); ibid., 11 (1893), pp. 229-35; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, I, The Hague 1915, pp. 356-58; ibid., V, 1918, pp. 1643, 1687-88; Vollmer in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXXIV, Leipzig 1940, p. 462; J. Kelch, Studien zu Simon de Vlieger als Marinemaler, diss., Freie Universität Berlin 1971; Van der Zeeuw in N.I. Schadee (ed.), Rotterdamse meesters uit de Gouden Eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Historisch Museum) 1994, p. 306; Kelch in J. Giltaij and J. Kelch (eds.), Praise of Ships and the Sea: The Dutch Marine Painters of the 17th Century, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen)/Berlin (Bode-Museum) 1996-97, pp. 181-82; Bredius notes, RKD

Entry

Landings on foreign coasts often feature in the work of Simon de Vlieger from the 1630s on. Recurrent motifs are fanciful rock formations with pines, dead trees, waterfalls and a group of people foraging, fishing or hunting. He was following a Flemish tradition to which he was probably introduced by Adam Willaerts.³ Although similar imaginary landscapes with contorted cliffs are not uncommon in southern Netherlandish art,⁴ Willaerts seems to have taken his lead from Roelant Savery, who is supposed to have made drawings from life in Tirol and Bohemia.⁵ De Vlieger may even have known the latter’s work himself. Distinctive Savery motifs found in this painting are the waterfall, the rickety bridge over the gorge and the dead trees.

In the past, coastal scenes such as this with the odd combination of an Alpine landscape and a seascape were associated with the Scandinavian countries with which the Dutch Republic traded intensively at this time.⁶ However, there are several elements indicating that De Vlieger actually wanted to evoke an association with the Far or Near East. For example, to the right of the waterfall, close to its base, is a figure in a turban with a Black servant beside him. In addition, the large ships on the right include a galley.

Kelch regarded the Rijksmuseum canvas as the earliest depiction of the subject in De Vlieger’s oeuvre and dated it around 1630,⁷ based mainly on the narrow stern of the pinnace on the far right, which is typical of that period. There is a similar work in Greenwich with the cliffs and waterfall on the right which he assigned to around 1635.⁸ De Vlieger continued to paint foreign coasts until the 1650s, and since there is no clear-cut evolution in his style it is difficult to pin down their year of execution.⁹ The fairly monochrome palette would appear to rule out a very late date, so the most plausible one is somewhere between 1630 and 1640.

Erlend de Groot, 2024

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

W. Steenhoff, ‘Legaat A.A. des Tombe aan het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam’, Bulletin Koninklijke Nederlandse Oudheidkundige Bond 4 (1902-03), pp. 120-23, esp. pp. 121-22; J. Kelch, Studien zu Simon de Vlieger als Marinemaler, diss., Freie Universität Berlin 1971, pp. 16-17, 28-29, 163, no. 80

Collection catalogues

1903, p. 286, no. 2563; 1934, p. 303, no. 2563; 1960, p. 329, no. 2563; 1976, p. 581, no. A 2086

Citation

Erlend de Groot, 2024, 'Simon de Vlieger, Rocky Coast, c. 1630 - c. 1640', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.7613

(accessed 13 November 2024 06:59:43).