Landscape with Gypsies and Travellers before an Inn near a Watering Place

1663

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 105 cm × width 150 cm
outersize: depth 9.5 cm (support incl. SK-L-4627)

Inscriptions

signature and date, bottom centre (S, V and R ligated): SVRuysdael / 1663

Technical notes

Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been removed. Shallow cusping is visible on all sides. Linear crack patterns at approx. 3 cm from the top, left and right may correspond to the bars of the original strainer.
Preparatory layers The triple ground does not extend up to the current edges of the support. The first, brownish layer consists of coarse white, carbon black and a small addition of minute orange pigment particles. The second, grey ground contains white pigment and carbon black. The third, yellow-pinkish layer is composed of white, carbon black and a small addition of very fine orange and red pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint does not extend up to the current edges of the support. General reserves were left for the houses and the large trees on the left when the first lay-in of the landscape and sky was done. The figures and animals were all modelled over the background with fluid, small, sketchy strokes in vivid colours, creating a sharp contrast between light and dark areas, and giving these compositional elements a somewhat cartoonish look. The brownish areas, particularly the foreground, were executed rather thinly, while the rest of the painting is thicker and thus more opaque. The brushwork is visible throughout, especially in the sky. Extensive impasto was used in the foliage. Small adjustments were made to the contours of the trunks of the trees and in the church steeple.
Ige Verslype, 2023

Scientific examination and reports

infrared photography: I. Verslype, RMA, 2008
paint samples: I. Verslype, RMA, nos. SK-A-2571/1-2, 1 October 2008
technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 1 October 2008

Condition

Fair. The paint layer is slightly abraded overall, but more so in the lower left corner. This passage has been extensively retouched, and the tree and the man with the dog have been strengthened. There is an old retouched area of damage in the lower right corner. Small, slightly discoloured retouchings are present throughout. The varnish is somewhat irregular and has yellowed.

Provenance

…; collection Cornelis Hoogendijk (1866-1911), The Hague;¹ from whom on loan to the museum, 1907-11;² donated from his estate to the museum, May 1912

Object number: SK-A-2571

Credit line: Gift of the heirs of C. Hoogendijk, The Hague

The artist

Salomon van Ruysdael (Naarden 1600/03 - Haarlem 1670)

Salomon van Ruysdael was born in Naarden, presumably between 1600 and 1603, because when he enrolled as a master in Haarlem’s Guild of St Luke in 1623 he must have been at least 20 years old. He was a son, probably the youngest one, of the prosperous Mennonite cabinetmaker Jacob Jansz de Gooyer. After the latter’s death in 1616 the artist and his brothers adopted the surname derived from the Ruysdael or Ruisschendael country estate near Blaricum, where their father had been born.

Van Ruysdael settled in Haarlem, and is first mentioned in the St Luke archives there in 1623, when he presented the guild with a landscape he had painted. Shortly before 1627 he married Maycke Willemsdr Buyse, the daughter of a wealthy Mennonite bleacher, and it was through her family that he became involved in that trade, dealing in the blue agent used in the city’s famous bleacheries. That explains why he also became a member of the local drapers’ guild in 1658. By 1657 he also owned a share in a tanning mill in Gorinchem, a town east of Rotterdam. As a Mennonite he was not allowed to bear arms, so each year he had to buy off his obligations to the Haarlem civic guard.

Van Ruysdael’s earliest known paintings are from 1626: The Valkenburg Horse Fair and Dune Landscape with a Horseman Riding a Grey.³ In 1628 Samuel Ampzing praised both him and Gerrit Bleker as landscapists in his Beschryvinge of Haarlem. His work started appearing on the market as early as 17 November 1631, when two of his pictures were sold from the collection of Hendrick Willemsz den Apt, the landlord of the Coningh van Vranckrijck inn. Van Ruysdael took an active part in organizing lotteries and sales in Haarlem, and in 1642 he vainly tried to persuade the authorities not to ban auctions of paintings.

On 6 October 1637 Van Ruysdael paid St Luke’s for an apprenticeship for Hendrik Pietersz de Hondt (dates unknown). Cornelis Decker (1618-1678) is mentioned as a pupil in 1649, and others whom he taught were his son Jacob (1629/30-1681) and his nephew Jacob Isaacksz van Ruisdael (1628/29-1682). He served the guild as warden in 1647, 1663-64 and 1669-70, and as dean in 1648. Van Ruysdael’s last dated works are from 1669: Winter Landscape with Skaters and View of Alkmaar with a Maypole.⁴ He was buried in the high choir of the Grote Kerk in Haarlem on 3 November 1670. Although he was reasonably well-off, his finances had suffered in a recession.

His oeuvre consists largely of landscapes, many with views of rivers and some featuring an inn, as well as a number of seascapes and winter scenes. He also began painting still lifes in 1659.

Richard Harmanni, 2023

References
S. Ampzing, Beschryvinge ende lof der stad Haerlem in Holland, Haarlem 1628 (reprint Amsterdam 1974), p. 372; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, III, Amsterdam 1721, p. 66; J. Immerzeel Jr, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters: Van het begin der vijftiende eeuw tot heden, II, Amsterdam 1843, p. 41; A. van der Willigen, Geschiedkundige aanteekeningen over Haarlemsche schilders en andere beoefenaren van de beeldende kunsten, voorafgegaan door eene korte geschiedenis van het schilders- of St. Lucas Gild aldaar, Haarlem 1866, pp. 183-84; A. van der Willigen, Les artistes de Harlem: Notices historiques avec un précis sur la Gilde de St. Luc, Haarlem/The Hague 1870, pp. 254-55; P. Scheltema, Aemstel’s oudheid of gedenkwaardigheden van Amsterdam, VI, Amsterdam 1872, pp. 99-100; H.F. Wijnman, ‘Het leven der Ruysdaels’, Oud Holland 49 (1932), pp. 49-60, 173-81, 258-75, esp. pp. 52, 56, 272-73; Simon in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXIX, Leipzig 1935, pp. 189-90; W. Stechow, Salomon van Ruysdael: Eine Einführung in seine Kunst, Berlin 1975 (ed. princ. 1938), pp. 11-14; H. Miedema, De archiefbescheiden van het St. Lucasgilde te Haarlem, 1497-1798, 2 vols., Alphen aan den Rijn 1980; I. van Thiel-Stroman, ‘Biographies 15th-17th Century’, in P. Biesboer et al., Painting in Haarlem 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 99-363, esp. pp. 289-90; Van der Molen in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, C, Munich/Leipzig 2018, pp. 203-04

Entry

The repetition of architecture is no exception in the oeuvre of Salomon van Ruysdael, as shown by two other paintings of his in the Rijksmuseum.⁵ It was generally done within a short space of time, but he had depicted the present group of three small houses, a wooden shed and a haystack almost two decades earlier, in 1645, in exactly the same formation and perspective.⁶ Another, undated landscape with these buildings can also be placed in the 1640s on the basis of its monochrome palette.⁷ Reverting to a compositional element used so many years previously is very unusual in Van Ruysdael’s work.

Trees become increasingly prominent in his paintings without large stretches of water in the second half of the 1650s, and in the foreground they can often extend to almost the full height of the composition, as in a landscape dated 1656 in Berlin.⁸ A later example can be found in this canvas of 1663. Here the tall tree on the left is echoed on the right, where there is a village among the trees. Together with the sandy road winding off into the distance it gives the scene a great sense of depth. The marked contrasts between light and shade and the wealth of colour, which extends into the sky, make this a typical product of Van Ruysdael’s late style.

There are two figures in the group on the right who differ from the others in that they are barefoot. Both are clearly gypsies, one of whom is reading a bystander’s palm. They occur in almost the same poses in the earlier 1645 landscape referred to above. Gypsies were quite popular subjects in seventeenth-century paintings, but not with Van Ruysdael.⁹ The present picture and the 1645 scene are the only works by the artist in which they appear.

Richard Harmanni, 2023

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

R. Bangel, ‘Die Sammlung Hoogendijk im Rijksmuseum’, Der Cicerone 7 (1915), pp. 171-89, esp. p. 186; W. Stechow, Salomon van Ruysdael: Eine Einführung in seine Kunst, Berlin 1975 (ed. princ. 1938), p. 93, no. 163; Sutton in P.C. Sutton et al., Masters of 17th-Century Dutch Landscape Painting, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Boston (Museum of Fine Arts)/Philadelphia (Philadelphia Museum of Art) 1987-88, p. 472

Collection catalogues

1918, p. 413, no. 2084a; 1934, p. 252, no. 2084a; 1976, p. 490, no. A 2571

Citation

Richard Harmanni, 2023, 'Salomon van Ruysdael, Landscape with Gypsies and Travellers before an Inn near a Watering Place, 1663', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5341

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