River View

1651

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 57.4 cm × width 88.5 cm
outer size: depth 8 cm (support incl. SK-L-3864)

Inscriptions

signature and date, lower left: J. Schoeff 1651

Technical notes

Support The panel consists of two horizontally grained oak planks (approx. 21.4 and 36 cm). The reverse is slightly bevelled on the left and right, and has irregularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1627. The panel could have been ready for use by 1638, but a date in or after 1644 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The double ground consists of a semi-opaque, off-white layer, used primarily to fill the grain of the wood, which is followed by an opaque, pale ochre-coloured layer, containing white pigment with an addition of dark brown pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared reflectography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the right edge of the support, and over the top, bottom and left edges. The composition was built up from the back to the front and from dark to light in thin, smooth layers. Initially a fluid, semi-transparent dark paint was used to position the near landscape and trees. The sky and the distant landscape were executed next, applied wet in wet and with rich, opaque paint in long, sweeping brushstrokes and shorter, curved ones for the clouds. The sky extends over the sketched-in branches of the trees, which were then added, together with the landscape, with rich, fluid, semi-transparent paint. Finally, the highlights and foreground details such as foliage were suggested with small, thick dabs and strokes providing a textured surface. Infrared reflectography clearly revealed quite a few changes to the branches of both trees on the left, some of which have become very faintly visible to the naked eye. The two short limbs of the bare tree, for example, were originally far longer. Cross-sections show that the water in the foreground was composed of a thin, dark, medium-rich scumble containing black, blue and bright orange pigments, and the opaque clouds were created with primarily white pigment to which a few bright orange pigment particles were added.
Emma Boyce, 2024

Scientific examination and reports

paint samples: E. Boyce, RMA, nos. SK-A-2230/1-2, 4 August 2010
infrared reflectography: E. Boyce, RMA, 9 August 2010
technical report: E. Boyce, RMA, 10 August 2010
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 8 April 2011

Condition

Fair. On the reverse, one thin, oak batten (approx. 82.5 cm) was attached along the join and another (approx. 20 cm) provides reinforcement for a split on the left side of the upper plank. The ground and paint layers are cracked along the length of the join as well as on the upper left and right edges where the panel has two splits. There are minimal losses of ground and paint around the perimeter, and the paint surface is somewhat abraded, particularly in the thin paints of the sky and water. Disturbing retouchings are mostly confined to these areas and along the damaged join. The varnish has slightly yellowed.

Conservation

L. Kuiper, 1971: cleaned; retouched; revarnished

Provenance

…; from F. Muller & Co., Amsterdam, fl. 460, to the museum, May 1906

Object number: SK-A-2230

The artist

Johannes Schoeff (? Antwerp 1608/09 - ? Bergen op Zoom, in or after 1666)

Johannes Schoeff (who is also called Schooff or Schuyff in the archives) gave his age as roughly 30 on his marriage in 1639 and was 52 in 1660, so he was presumably born in 1608 or 1609. His place of birth was probably Antwerp, for a Johannes Schoeff is listed as an apprentice in the archives of the city's Guild of St Luke. There is no information on who his teacher was. In 1639 he is mentioned as living in The Hague with his father, Pieter Schoeff, who was a jeweller, and two years later he received his citizenship there. His neighbour was the artist Jan van Goyen. Schoeff’s earliest known dated work was made in 1640.¹ His name occurs frequently in notarized records. In 1647 he and Van Goyen took part in a large auction of paintings in The Hague, and it emerges from various documents that Schoeff and his father dealt in art. In 1659, for instance, Jan Miense Molenaer lodged a claim against the partnership of Schoeff and his late father for 150 guilders for paintings delivered.

Schoeff married twice, in 1639 to Cornelia Melaenen and ten years later to Anna Mailliaers, who hailed from Antwerp. In 1651 he stayed for some time in a manor house called Stabroek near Antwerp, which he inherited from his father some years later. According to a notarized file drawn up after the latter’s death the artist also lived in France and the village of Werkendam in North Brabant. Schoeff and his wife moved in or before 1656 to Bergen op Zoom, where he acquired citizenship and probably remained for the rest of his life. Documents show that he was regularly involved in real estate deals and that he retained ties with Antwerp.

Schoeff fell seriously ill in 1664, and on 17 October he drew up his will, in which he left prints and all the sketches made by his wife’s brother-in-law, the Antwerp artist Michiel van der Haagen, to his son. In April 1665 Schoeff and Anna Mailliaers signed an acknowledgement of debt of 500 guilders to the Middelburg physician Johannes Larore, who received 17 paintings that he could sell to pay off the arrears. It is not known when or where Schoeff died, but he is recorded in Bergen op Zoom for the last time on 5 April 1666. His wife is referred to as a widow in 1681, when she was living in The Hague. Schoeff’s last dated picture is from 1662.²

Schoeff was a true landscape specialist, and chiefly produced panoramic views of dunes and rivers, many of which recall the work of Jan van Goyen and Salomon van Ruysdael. Much of his output was attributed to better known contemporaries down the years. There is documentary evidence that in 1664-65 he had a pupil called Jan Baptist van der Moesen lodging with him.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2024

References
P. Rombouts and T. van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, onder zinspreuk ‘Wt jonsten versaemt’, I, Antwerp/The Hague 1864, p. 584; A. Bredius, ‘Aus den haager Archiven’, Kunstchronik 17 (1882), cols. 553-55, 573-75, 667-68, 686-89, 747-50, esp. cols. 553-55; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, II, The Hague 1916, pp. 457-70; ibid., VII, 1921, p. 159; Bredius and Batowski in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXX, Leipzig 1936, p. 215; H.-U. Beck, Künstler um Jan van Goyen: Maler und Zeichner, Doornspijk 1991, p. 390; Buijsen in E. Buijsen et al., Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw: Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag 1600-1700, exh. cat. The Hague (Haags Historisch Museum) 1998-99, p. 345; A. van der Willigen, Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Landscape and Marine Painters Working in Oils, Active before 1725 (unpub. typescript from 1993-98, with additions by M. de Kinkelder, RKD); Bredius notes, RKD

Entry

Johannes Schoeff is generally regarded primarily as a follower of Jan van Goyen and Salomon van Ruysdael,³ but only in the 1990s was attention drawn to the influence of Antwerp on his later paintings.⁴ That is particularly true of this panoramic view with a river meandering through a hilly landscape seen from a slightly higher vantage point. It is executed in soft colours, with brown, green and grey predominating, and the leaves of the vegetation are rendered with countless dots and dashes. One beautiful detail is depicted on the left, where the trunks of a dead and a living tree cross. A comparison has been made between this work and that of the Flemish landscapist Lucas van Uden.⁵

The painting is dated 1651 and was recorded as such in the museum inventory, but in the 1976 collection catalogue the third digit was read as ‘3’.⁶ That the resulting year of 1631 is incorrect was confirmed by dendrochronological analysis.⁷ There is a closely related river scene by Schoeff dated 1650 in Bruntál Castle in the Czech Republic.⁸ It seems odd that in the early 1650s, when he had already produced many landscapes that are related to the oeuvre of contemporaries such as Van Goyen and Van Ruysdael,⁹ Schoeff came up with a Flemish-looking picture like this, but there may be a logical reason for that. On 30 May 1651 he was documented as staying in the Stabroek manor house near Antwerp, which belonged to his father.¹⁰ It is very well possible that he had lived there in previous years, or had contacts in its vicinity,¹¹ which could explain the Flemish character of this and other works from that period.

Gerdien Wuestman, 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. 401, no. 1130 A30

Collection catalogues

1907 (1st suppl.), p. 372, no. 2160a; 1976, pp. 505-06, no. A 2230

Citation

Gerdien Wuestman, 2024, 'Johan Pietersz. Schoeff, River View, 1651', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5414

(accessed 13 November 2024 02:23:20).