View of the Rhine near Andernach

1655

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 18.1 cm × width 23.3 cm
outersize: depth 3.5 cm (support incl. SK-L-4521)

Inscriptions

date, lower left, on the wall of the building: AD. 1655.
inscription and date, on the reverse: Bij Anderneg A 165[.]

Technical notes

Support The single, horizontally grained oak plank is approx. 0.8 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced vertical saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1629. The panel could have been ready for use by 1640, but a date in or after 1646 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, off-white ground extends up to the edges of the support.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. An initial brown lay-in, consisting of large white and some small black pigment particles in a brown matrix, was left exposed locally in the left foreground and shows through the mountains in the background. The blue of the sky was applied on top of it in a single layer, and consists mainly of small blue and white pigment particles. The landscape was built up in one or two layers leaving reserves for the main elements in the front, such as the tree on the left and the larger boats. Other, smaller elements were painted over the background, among them the boats on the right. The figures and other details were executed with small brushstrokes. The paint layers are smooth throughout, with only some impasto in the details, such as the foliage of the trees.
Eva van Zuien, 2023

Scientific examination and reports

infrared photography: E. van Zuien, RMA, 23 April 2008
paint samples: E. van Zuien, RMA, nos. SK-A-361/1-2, 23 April 2008
technical report: E. van Zuien, RMA, 23 April 2008
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 21 March 2011

Condition

Good. There are some small paint losses along the edges. The varnish has slightly yellowed and is somewhat irregular due to the remains of an older varnish in the darker areas in the foreground.

Conservation

P. J. Thijs, 1799: cleaned and revarnished

Provenance

…; sale, Wijnand Coole (†), Rotterdam (Laurens Constant), 6 August 1782, no. 97 (‘Een extra fraai Rhyn-Gezigt […], hoog 6½ duim, breed 8½ d [17 x 22 cm]’), or no. 98 (‘Een dito tot een wederga’), fl. 44.20, to Gerrit van der Pot (1732-1807), Lord of Groeneveld, Rotterdam;¹ his sale, Rotterdam (Gebr. Van Ryp), 6 June 1808 sqq., no. 151 (‘Een aangenaam Rijngezigt, rijk gestoffeerd met Schuiten, Beelden en Beesten. Hoog 6¾, en breed 8¾ duim [17.7 x 22.9 cm] pnl’), fl. 66, to J. de Wit, for the museum²

Object number: SK-A-361

The artist

Herman Saftleven (Rotterdam 1609 - Utrecht 1685)

Herman Saftleven, whose surname has been spelled in more than 100 different ways down the centuries, was born in Rotterdam in 1609. Like his older brother Cornelis and the younger Abraham he followed in the footsteps of their father, the painter Herman Saftleven, who probably dealt in art as well. Herman Jr and Cornelis are the only ones with an extant oeuvre.

Saftleven moved to Utrecht around 1632, and married Anna van Vliet there in 1633. He is mentioned several times in the guild records between 1655 and 1667, as warden in 1655, 1656 and 1665, and as dean in 1657, 1658, 1666 and 1667. Although he was not granted his burgess rights until 1659, the Utrecht authorities had made use of his services as an artist before then, as in 1648 he received 150 guilders for ‘copies of the view of this city made by him and published in print’.³ In 1669 they also paid him for an engraving with a panorama of Utrecht.⁴ Five years later, on 1 August 1674, a hurricane destroyed part of the old centre and the cathedral. Saftleven recorded the devastation in three series of drawings, some of them highly detailed. Although he was extremely successful as a painter and draughtsman, it seems that he ran into financial difficulties at the end of his life. After his death on 3 January 1685 and burial in the Buurkerk, his house and possessions were sold by judicial decree, with the proceeds going to his creditors.

Saftleven’s earliest pictures from the first half of the 1630s are of peasant cottages and landscapes, but from around 1635 he specialized almost exclusively in the latter genre. Initially his output followed a variety of styles and influences, most notably those of Cornelis van Poelenburch and Jan Both. He was in close touch with the former, for they were both wardens of the guild in 1656 and deans in 1657-58. It seems likely that Van Poelenburch was a mentor to him even earlier, for in 1635 he and the young Saftleven were two of the Utrecht painters who worked on a series of scenes from Il pastor fido for the stadholder’s Honselaarsdijk palace. Saftleven signed his Silvio and Dorinda, which he may have executed jointly with Abraham Bloemaert.⁵ He was undoubtedly introduced at court by Van Poelenburch. Between 1648 and 1659, finally, Saftleven was in regular contact with the latter’s main patron, the art collector Baron Willem Vincent van Wyttenhorst. In addition to many pictures by both artists separately, the baron’s collection included a landscape dead-coloured by Van Poelenburch and completed by Saftleven.

At some stage between 1649 and 1651 Saftleven embarked on a journey along the Rhine through Germany that was to have a profound impact on his career. He must have made countless sketches of the landscape, castles and places as he travelled. He later worked them up into drawings and pictures in which he often combined real and imaginary elements. He quickly gained a great reputation as the ‘Rhine stream painter’, and continued producing views of the river until just before his death. His last dated one is from 1684.⁶ Only two of Saftleven’s apprentices are known for certain: Willem van Bemmel between 1645 and 1647, and Jan van Bunnick in 1668-71. He had many imitators, both at home and abroad and until well into the eighteenth century.

Erlend de Groot, 2023

References
C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edel vrij schilder const, inhoudende den lof vande vermarste schilders, architecte, beldthowers ende plaetsnijders van deze eeuw, Antwerp 1662, p. 275; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, I, Amsterdam 1718, pp. 340-43; F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis: Verzameling van meerendeels onuitgegeven berichten en mededeelingen betreffende Nederlandsche schilders, plaatsnijders, beeldhouwers, bouwmeesters, juweliers, goud- en zilverdrijvers [enz.], II, Rotterdam 1879-80, pp. 71-96, 266; S. Muller, Schilders-vereenigingen te Utrecht: Bescheiden uit het Gemeente-Archief, Utrecht 1880, pp. 129, 131; F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis: Verzameling van meerendeels onuitgegeven berichten en mededeelingen betreffende Nederlandsche schilders, plaatsnijders, beeldhouwers, bouwmeesters, juweliers, goud- en zilverdrijvers [enz.], V, Rotterdam 1882-83, pp. 48, 115-28; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, I, The Hague 1915, p. 116; ibid., II, 1916, pp. 422, 582; ibid., IV, 1917, pp. 1232, 1374; ibid., V, 1918, pp. 1590-91, 1605, 1619; ibid., VI, 1919, pp. 1893, 2038; Stechow in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXIX, Leipzig 1935, pp. 310-11; A.F.E. Kipp, ‘Saftleven, verslaggever van de stormramp’, in A. Graafhuis and D.P. Snoep, De Dom in puin 1 augustus 1674: Herman Saftleven tekent de stormschade in de stad Utrecht, exh. cat. Utrecht (Centraal Museum) 1974, pp. 29-33; W. Schulz, Herman Saftleven 1609-1685: Leben und Werke: Mit einem kritischen Katalog der Gemälde und Zeichnungen, Berlin 1982; J. de Meyere, ‘De Utrechtse schilder Herman Saftleven en “an extensive Rhineland view…” uit 1669’, Maandblad Oud-Utrecht 63 (1990), no. 4, pp. 33-40; M. Boers, ‘De schilderijenverzameling van baron Willem Vincent van Wyttenhorst’, Oud Holland 117 (2004), pp. 181-243; Veldman in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, C, Munich/Leipzig 2018, pp. 345-46

Entry

Herman Saftleven often annotated his drawings and pictures to identify the locations.⁷ In the case of the paintings, these autograph inscriptions are invariably on the backs of the panels or copper plates, and are quite often accompanied by a date. The one on the reverse of this river view is ‘Bij Anderneg’ (near Andernach).⁸ Schulz believed that such geographical references have no connection with the actual spot, but that is not entirely true.⁹ Although much of the present landscape is probably invented, the structure on the right bank of the river is the so-called Weisser Turm, a medieval tower standing just upstream from Andernach, north-west of Koblenz, that did service as a tollhouse.¹⁰ It also features in a drawing by Saftleven in the Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem, but there it is seen from the south with Andernach in the background.¹¹ So Saftleven’s annotation ‘Bij Anderneg’ is very much to the point. He probably worked with a stock of topographical motifs which he had drawn ‘from life’ and later incorporated in his paintings, to which he could add imaginary elements to his heart’s desire, so it is impossible to say if the inn on the left bank did exist at the time or not. It is where the town of Neuwied should be, but it does not appear that it is depicted here. For that matter, the height of the mountains in the distance is greatly exaggerated, as it always is in Saftleven’s scenes of the Rhine.

Whether or not he tried to portray reality, Saftleven always took the beholder on a trip to a calm river on a summer afternoon. The central motifs here are the inn, the travellers taking their ease, and the boats moored by the waterfront. He thus conjured up a landscape that was ideally suited, as Joost van den Vondel put it, for the viewer to go in thought: ‘Silently up the Rhine / Between the banks of the stream, / Between wine-hill, wood and trees, / Taking delight everywhere’.¹²

There are many variants of this theme of the imaginary journey in early modern literature, and it helped shape topographical depictions in the sixteenth century.¹³ It would certainly have contributed to the popularity of Saftleven’s views of the Rhine.

Erlend de Groot, 2023

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

W. Schulz, Herman Saftleven 1609-1685: Leben und Werke: Mit einem kritischen Katalog der Gemälde und Zeichnungen, Berlin 1982, p. 147, no. 85

Collection catalogues

1809, p. 88, no. 370; 1843, p. 73, no. 371 (‘in good condition’); 1853, p. 32, no. 342 (fl. 100), or no. 343 (fl. 200), or no. 344 (fl. 200); 1858, p. 126, no. 278 (as A River View; ‘The view is mountainous and has the nature of the Rhine’); 1880, p. 276, no. 317 (as A River View); 1887, p. 150, no. 1265 (as River View); 1903, p. 236, no. 2106 (as River View); 1976, p. 493, no. A 361 (as River View); 1992, p. 82, no. A 361

Citation

Erlend de Groot, 2023, 'Herman Saftleven, View of the Rhine near Andernach, 1655', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6772

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