Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 67.5 cm × width 113.7 cm
Pieter de Neyn (attributed to)
Frederik Hendrik’s Siege of ’s-Hertogenbosch, 1629
c. 1629 - c. 1639
Technical notes
The finely woven regular weave canvas has been lined. Cusping is visible on all sides. The canvas was primed with a light grey ground. The paint was applied from back to front without the use of reserves. Brushmarking is visible only in the sky, but there is much impasto throughout.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: M. van de Laar, RMA, 25 May 2005
Condition
Fair. There are some discoloured retouchings in the sky. The paint layers at the bottom of the painting were burned in the relining process, and the varnish is very discoloured.
Provenance
...; sale, Iddekinge van Drogershorst family, H.C. Du Bois (The Hague) et al. [section H.C. Du Bois et al.], Amsterdam (F. Muller), 27 November 1906 sqq., no. 143, as P. Nolpe, fl. 800, to the museum, through the mediation of the Vereniging Rembrandt
Object number: SK-A-2245
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Pieter de Neyn (Leiden 1597 - Leiden 1639)
The son of Flemish immigrants, Pieter Pietersz de Neyn was born in Leiden on 15 December 1597. The Leiden chronicler Jan Jansz Orlers informs us that he first trained as a stonemason before apprenticing to Esaias van de Velde in Haarlem. In 1617, he married Neeltgen Henricx van Bilderbeecq in Leiden, where he was appointed the town stonemason in 1620. His earliest dated paintings, cavalry skirmishes in the style of Esaias van de Velde, are from 1625.1 By the following year he began to adopt the style of his fellow townsman, Jan van Goyen, painting dune and river landscapes inspired by his example, and that of Pieter de Molijn and Salomon van Ruysdael for the rest of his career. In his capacity as stonemason, De Neyn worked with his father-in-law, Hendrick van Bilderbeeck on the stadholder’s country estates in Rijswijk and Honselaarsdijk in 1633 and 1634. De Neyn drew up his will on his birthday in 1638, and died the following year. Paintings by him signed with his monogram were mistakenly attributed to Pieter Nolpe in the past.
Jonathan Bikker, 2007
References
Orlers 1641, p. 374; Thieme/Becker XXV, 1931, pp. 428-29; Slothouwer 1945, pp. 267, 298-99; Gerson 1947; Beck IV, 1991, pp. 336-37; Briels 1997, p. 363
Entry
’s-Hertogenbosch took the side of the Spanish during the Eighty Years’ War. Prince Maurits unsuccessfully attempted to capture the town a number of times, but it was his successor, Frederik Hendrik who finally took it in 1629. The present painting shows the town from the south, with the St Janskathedraal prominently in the centre of the composition on the horizon. The real subject of the painting is the rebels’ army camp. The pikes are neatly lined up along a wooden rail, and the defences on the mound are being reinforced. In the left foreground two men are busy bundling wicker, while a third man drags a bundle towards the mound. Wicker was used to construct both the barricades themselves and bottomless baskets that were filled with earth in which stakes were anchored.2
The landscape and figure style warrant the attribution to Pieter de Neyn, who often employed a dark diagonal band in the foreground followed by one of intense light. The impasto rendering of the highlights is also in keeping with his work. These aspects, as well as the low horizon and the impressive handling of the stormy sky, can be compared with De Neyn’s signed View of Rhenen from 1632, although the latter painting is significantly smaller and on panel.3
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. 223.
Literature
Poelhekke in ’s-Hertogenbosch 1979, p. 88, no. 40; Van Maarseveen 1998a, pp. 93, 95; Spaans 1998, p. 170
Collection catalogues
1909, p. 393, no. 1752a (as Pieter Nolpe); 1934, p. 210, no. 1752a (as Pieter Nolpe); 1976, p. 416, no. A 2245; 2007, no. 223
Citation
J. Bikker, 2007, 'attributed to Pieter de Neyn, Frederik Hendrik’s Siege of ’s-Hertogenbosch, 1629, c. 1629 - c. 1639', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.7682
(accessed 20 September 2024 19:43:51).