Winter Landscape

c. 1620 - c. 1630

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 9.1 cm × width 11.5 cm
frame: height 14.2 cm × width 16.6 cm × depth 2.2 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature, lower centre: I.V.V.

Technical notes

The support is an oval oak plank with a horizontal grain that has been bevelled all round. It has not been possible to date the panel dendrochronologically. A very thin and smooth white ground is visible at the edges and in the areas of paint loss. The paint layer is thin and was applied rapidly. The palette is limited to brown tints and white, with the thicker white passages serving mainly for the details.

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 29 November 2004
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 1 July 2005

Condition

Fair. The paint layer is abraded, and there are several losses, notably in the sky and in the ice. Several retouched scratches appear in the middle. The varnish has discoloured slightly.

Conservation

M. Zeldenrust, 1978: complete restoration
A.E. van Zanten, 1978: complete restoration
L. Kuiper, 1978: complete restoration

Provenance

...; sale, 19th century, as Esaias van de Velde;¹...; sale, Dr Kurt Glaser (1879-1943) et al. [section Kurt Glaser], Berlin (Internationales Kunst- und Auktions-haus G.M.B.H.), 9 May 1933, no. 233 (‘Jan van de Velde, Antwerpen 17 Jahrh.: Winterlandschaft mit Schnittschuhlaüfern. Monogrammiert. Oval. Holz. S.R. 8:11 cm.’);...; art dealer Abels, Cologne;²...; art dealer P. de Boer, Amsterdam, 1934;³ from whom, probably with pendant, to Estella Boas, née Kogel, Baarn, probably in August 1934;⁴ by whom donated to the museum, 1935

Object number: SK-A-3241

Credit line: Purchased with the support of Hein and Lilian Beuth, Amsterdam

The artist

Jan van de Velde II (Delft or Rotterdam c. 1593 - Enkhuizen 1641)

Jan van de Velde II was born in Delft or Rotterdam. His father was the well-known calligrapher Jan van de Velde I, who came from Antwerp. In 1613 he was training with the engraver Jacob Matham in Haarlem, and the following year he joined the Guild of St Luke there. On 2 April 1614 he was a witness at the baptism of a son of his cousin Esaias van de Velde. In 1618 he was living in Enkhuizen, where he married Styn Freecx. He returned to Haarlem in or before 1626. In 1629 the magistrates asked him, Frans Hals and Pieter de Molijn to inspect the cell in the house of correction where the painter Johannes Torrentius was imprisoned to see whether it would be suitable as a studio. In 1635 he was assistant dean of the guild. The following year he, Salomon van Ruysdael, Cornelis Helmbreecker and several other artists carried out the valuation of a group of paintings that were prizes in a lottery. His name appears a few times in connection with debts. He was in Enkhuizen in the middle of 1641, and was buried there on 4 November of that year.

Jan van de Velde was one of the leading printmakers and publishers of the first half of the 17th century. It is not clear whether he was also active as a painter. In contemporary documents he is invariably referred to as an engraver. An inventory of 1666 mentions four paintings supposedly made by this Jan van de Velde, but there are no paintings that can be securely attributed to him, although two winter scenes signed with the monogram I.V.V. are associated with him.

Documented pupils of his were Cornelis Goutsblom (dates unknown) and Thomas Joncker (dates unknown), who studied with him in 1635. He may also have trained Willem Outgertsz Akersloot (c. 1600-after 1651), Cornelis van Kittenstein (1598-1652), Claes Pouwelsz (active 1615-35) and Simon Poelenborch (1591-after 1625). His son Jan van de Velde III became a still life painter.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2007

References
Ampzing 1628, p. 371; Schrevelius 1648, p. 381; Houbraken I, 1718, p. 275; Bredius 1888b (documents); Moes 1895, p. 190; Van Gelder 1933; Zoege van Manteuffel in Thieme/Becker XXXIV, 1940, pp. 201-02; Van Gelder 1955; Miedema 1980, I, p. 194, II, pp. 1036, 1198; Luijten in Turner 1996, XXXII, p. 140; Briels 1997, pp. 392-93

Entry

Only two works in the painted oeuvre of the engraver Jan van de Velde II reconstructed by Van Gelder are signed.⁵ In addition to the winter landscape in Amsterdam there is a much larger one in Denmark.⁶ They are stylistically related, and the theory that they were painted by Van de Velde is defensible. The Rijksmuseum picture fits within his oeuvre in both subject matter and style, and he used the same monogram on several of his prints.⁷

Both Bengtsson and Van Gelder give the winter scene quite an early date: c. 1615,⁸ and not much later than 1620.⁹ Van Suchtelen, on the other hand, thought it should be placed in the 1620s.¹⁰ Its brisk and sketchy nature and the monochrome palette do indeed argue for a date in the 1620s.

According to the art dealer who had this painting in 1934, it had a pendant in the form of a summer landscape.¹¹ It is not known where that painting is today. It must in any event have been added to the present work as a pendant, because no such companion piece is mentioned in the auction catalogue of 1933. Van Gelder’s statement that the Rijksmuseum painting once bore the fake monogram S.R., standing for Salomon van Ruysdael,¹² was probably based on a misunderstanding of the abbreviation in the auction catalogue, where it stood for ‘Schwarze Rahmen’, or black frame.

Gerdien Wuestman, 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. 289.

Literature

Bengtsson 1952, p. 27; Van Gelder 1955, pp. 34-35; Van Suchtelen in The Hague 2001, no. 33, p. 165

Collection catalogues

1951, p. 184, no. 2454 B 1; 1960, p. 315, no. 2454; 1976, p. 559, no. A 3241 (as Van de Velde); 2007, no. 289

Citation

G. Wuestman, 2007, 'attributed to Jan van de (II) Velde, Winter Landscape, c. 1620 - c. 1630', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6363

(accessed 22 November 2024 14:52:28).