Ships near Zierikzee with the Zuidhavenpoort in the Background

c. 1640 - c. 1650

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 98.8 cm × width 133.4 cm

Inscriptions

signature, lower left: H.V.A.T.

Technical notes

Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been preserved, though trimmed. Cusping is visible on the left and right. Judging by the crack pattern the bars of the original strainer were approx. 6.5 cm wide.
Preparatory layers The thick, coarse ground extends over the tacking edges. It was applied in two to three layers varying in tone from brown to red, consisting of rounded brown, transparent and minute red pigment particles, and lead white and charcoal black particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the tacking edges. The composition was built up from the back to the front and from dark to light. The buildings and boats were left in reserve; the borders are generally carefully hidden with overlapping elements in the background. The figures and flags, though, were added on top of the background. Dark-grey undermodelling was used for the buildings and boats, a small corner of which is visible along the right side of the roof line of the building at the very back (to the left of the tree). Attention to detail is evident in the mortar delineating individual bricks. Thin, scumbled wisps of paint form characteristic yellow waves and grey clouds on the left. Infrared photography revealed a change in the composition: a group of three (or possibly five) three-quarter length men with hats originally stood conversing along the bottom edge, below and to the right of the central boat.
Gwen Tauber, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

infrared photography: G. Tauber, RMA, 8 June 2010
paint samples: G. Tauber, RMA, nos. SK-A-2970/1-2, 8 June 2010
technical report: G. Tauber, RMA, 8 June 2010

Condition

Fair. There is strong cupping, and a great deal of abrasion in the paint of the sky (currently retouched).

Conservation

E. van Zuien, 2010: complete restoration

Provenance

…; ? anonymous sale, Amsterdam (P. van der Schley et al.), 12 April 1759, no. 84, as by ‘HVAT’ (‘Een Rivier Gezigt met Scheepen, en een dorp in ’t verschiet’), fl. 14;¹…; ? anonymous sale, Amsterdam (C. Ploos van Amstel et al.), 24 September 1777, no. 1 (‘op Doek, hoog 38½ breed 61 duim [98.9 x 156.7 cm] […] Gezigt op de Rivier; aartig gestoffeerd met zeilende en dryvende Scheepen en roeijende Schuiten’), fl. 10, to J. Spaen;²…; collection Jonkheer Adrianus Willem Gerrit van Riemsdijk (1803-1871), Maastricht and Utrecht, 1850;³ his son, Jonkheer Adriaan Daniël van Riemsdijk (1837-1897), Utrecht;⁴ his mother, Jonkvrouw Wilhelmina Cornelia de Jonge (1814-1882);⁵ her son, Jonkheer Theodorus Helenus Franciscus van Riemsdijk (1849-1923), The Hague; donated from his estate by his daughter, M.L.A. Barnardiston, née van Riemsdijk, The Hague, to the museum, 1923; on loan to the Dutch Ministry of Defence since 1953

Object number: SK-A-2970

Credit line: Gift of M. Barnardiston-van Riemsdijk, The Hague

The artist

Hendrick van Anthonissen (Amsterdam 1605 - Amsterdam 1656)

Hendrick van Anthonissen, who went by the name of Hendrick Aerts until 1632, was baptized on 29 May 1605 in Amsterdam as a son of the marine painter Aert Anthonisz, who came from Antwerp. He would have learned the basic principles of art from his father, but it is known from the archives that he was studying with Jan Porcellis in 1626, so that is where he would have completed his training. In 1630 Van Anthonissen married Judith Flessiers, Porcellis’s sister-in-law. Shortly after his teacher’s death in 1632 the couple moved to Leiden together with Janneke Flessiers, Porcellis’s widow, and it turns out that they had settled in Leiderdorp in 1635. The family moved back to Amsterdam around 1639. Van Anthonissen is documented in Rotterdam in 1645, and around 1651 he was staying in Rijnsburg, near Leiden. However, in all those years he was probably living in Amsterdam, which is where he died and was buried on 12 November 1656. His son and pupil Arnoldus van Anthonissen (1631-1703) also specialized in marine painting.

Hendrick van Anthonissen’s small oeuvre is made up entirely of paintings, mostly marines and beach scenes. Dated works are rare. His earliest one is from 1631,⁶ while his last of 1653 is in the Rijksmuseum.⁷ His initial pictures are in a refined monochrome, often grey palette with close attention to a convincing rendering of atmospheric effects. That reflects the influence of Porcellis, with whose works his own were already being confused in the seventeenth century. There is more colour in his paintings from the 1640s onwards, as well as growing evidence of the influence of Simon de Vlieger.

Eddy Schavemaker, 2022

References
Bredius, ‘Johannes Porcellis: Zijn leven, zijn werk’, Oud Holland 23 (1905-06), pp. 69-73, esp. p. 70; Moes in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, I, Leipzig 1907, p. 553; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, I, The Hague 1915, pp. 348, 363; ibid., II, 1916, pp. 423, 615, 617-19, 626-34, 645-46; ibid., VII, 1921, pp. 1, 176, 178; L.J. Bol, Die holländische Marinemalerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Braunschweig 1973, pp. 105-11; J.G.C.A. Briels, Vlaamse schilders in de Noordelijke Nederlanden in het begin van de Gouden Eeuw 1585-1630, Haarlem 1987, pp. 389-99, 404-05, 420; Trauzeddel in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, IV, Munich/Leipzig 1992, p. 249; Giltaij in J. Giltaij and J. Kelch (eds.), Lof der zeevaart: De Hollandse zeeschilders van de 17de eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen)/Berlin (Bode-Museum) 1996-97, pp. 129, 203-05; J.G.C.A. Briels, Vlaamse schilders en de dageraad van Hollands Gouden Eeuw 1585-1630, Antwerp 1997, p. 293; 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. 283

Entry

On the beach in the foreground is a passage boat, and a little further off a small warship, with another one, its sails reefed, at anchor beyond. At the quay there are fishing boats, a few of which are flying the Prince’s Flag. Until now the painting has been going under the title Shipping on the East Scheldt near the Zuidhavenpoort, Zierikzee. The tower on the right is indeed that of the Zuidhavenpoort gate. The broad stretch of water could be the Eastern Scheldt, if Hendrick van Anthonissen took the liberty of omitting the canal dug in the sixteenth century, beside which the port and gate lie in reality, which flows into the Eastern Scheldt. In the distance are the vague outlines of a town with several church towers. Given the location of the Zuidhavenpoort that could only be Goes with the nearby village of Kloetinge.

Van Anthonissen painted topographically recognizable views from the very start of his career. One early example is a beach scene near Scheveningen that can be dated to the late 1620s on the basis of the clothing of the figures.⁸ He often depicted locations in Zeeland,⁹ so Bol was probably right when he remarked that Van Anthonissen must have visited this province.¹⁰ The artist’s son Arnoldus actually settled there in 1664. Bol assigned this canvas to the mid-1630s, but the influence of Simon de Vlieger, which is clearly evident in the subject of a harbour scene in calm weather and in the composition with its monumental emphasis, suggests dating it later, to the 1640s. De Beer even placed it around 1650 at the earliest.¹¹

Jonkheer A.W.G. van Riemsdijk, who owned Ships near Zierikzee around the middle of the nineteenth century,¹² had another large picture by Van Anthonissen, and according to Bredius this was its pendant.¹³ That work is no longer traceable, nor is there a known photograph of it. Without further information it is impossible to say for certain whether the present canvas had a companion piece, although Van Anthonissen definitely did produce paintings in pairs.¹⁴

Van Anthonissen’s paintings are usually much smaller and were undoubtedly made for the open market. This large, highly detailed piece, which Bredius praised as ‘one of the master’s most important works’, could very well have been a commission. The small three-master with the arms of Deventer on its ornately decorated stern could be the portrait of a real ship, and the admiralty to which it belonged could have ordered the picture. It cannot be identified for certain with one of the men-of-war named Deventer, all of which belonged to the Amsterdam Admiralty.

Eddy Schavemaker, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

J.F.L. de Balbian Verster, ‘De schilder Hendrick Anthonissen (1605 tot omtrent 1655)’, Eigen Haard 31 (1905), pp. 360-62; F.C. Willis, Die niederländische Marinemalerei, Leipzig 1911, pp. 42, 115; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, II, The Hague 1916, p. 626; L.J. Bol, Die holländische Marinemalerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Braunschweig 1973, p. 110

Collection catalogues

1926, p. 13, no. 366b (as Harbour View; 1934, p. 30, no. 366b (as Harbour View); 1976, p. 84, no. A 2970

Citation

Eddy Schavemaker, 2022, 'Hendrick van Anthonissen, Ships near Zierikzee with the Zuidhavenpoort in the Background, c. 1640 - 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.5791

(accessed 20 September 2024 03:37:52).