Object data
oil on panel
support: height 49 cm × width 73.9 cm
outer size: depth 6 cm (support incl. frame)
Jacob Jacobsz van Geel
Landscape
c. 1633
Inscriptions
- signature, bottom centre: Jacob v geel
Technical notes
The oak support consists of a single plank with a horizontal grain bevelled on all sides. The white ground is visible at the unpainted right edge. The paint was applied smoothly in a rich palette of browns and greens; whitish dots were used to highlight the foliage of the trees.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 15 May 2002
Condition
Good. The painting is slightly abraded, particularly in thinly applied parts in dark paint.
Provenance
...; collection Fedor Zschille, Dresden, 1889;...; collection Catharinus H.C.A. van Sypesteyn (1857-1937), Loosdrecht, 1931; ? by descent to Jonkheer A.W. Ruyssenaers, Kasteel Sypesteyn, Loosdrecht; from whom purchased by dealer Gebroeders Douwes, Amsterdam, 1943; Museum Düsseldorf, 1943; war recuperation SNK; on loan to the museum from the SNK, 1948; transferred to the museum, 19601
Object number: SK-A-3968
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Jacob Jacobsz van Geel (? Middelburg c. 1585 - ? in or after 1637)
Jacob Jacobsz van Geel was born around 1585, going by a document of 1628 in which he stated that he was roughly 43 years old. He was probably born in Middelburg, and may have been the son of the painter Jacob Jacobsz. He is first recorded in Middelburg in 1615 as a member of the board of the Guild of St Luke, and in 1617 and 1618 he served as the guild’s dean. He worked in Delft from 1626, where he was accepted into the guild in 1628, before settling in Dordrecht in 1633, joining the guild there in 1634. His last known painting dates from 1637, or possibly 1638.2 It is not known where or when he died. Archival records show that he had a troubled life, with many creditors, an unhappy marriage and a dead child.
His oeuvre consists of around 30 imaginary landscapes, almost all of them on panel, with a few on copper. He only began dating his paintings in 1634. His oeuvre can be divided roughly into three groups: landscapes with trees on one side and panoramic views on the other, mountainous and rocky landscapes, and woodland scenes.
Yvette Bruijnen, 2007
References
Bredius 1899; Bol 1957; Briels 1997, pp. 329-30; The Hague 2002, pp. 92-95
Entry
In composition and style, this painting is closely related to Van Geel’s Wooded Landscape with the Rest on the Flight into Egypt of 1633 (fig. a), and can therefore be dated around the same time.3 It belongs to the type of wooded landscape that Van Geel painted during his Delft and Dordrecht periods, in which he displayed a growing fascination with freakishly contorted trees covered in moss and ivy. Their idiosyncratic, ghostly appearance were his hallmark. Staffage in the form of human figures, fauna and buildings has been reduced to a minimum in the Amsterdam painting.
By producing this type of imaginary landscape based on the Flemish tradition, Van Geel was an exception among his contemporaries, who tended more and more to take their inspiration from the real world.4
Yvette Bruijnen, 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. 77.
Literature
Bol 1957, pp. 25, 32, 34, no. 19; Rüger in New York-London 2001, pp. 264-65, no. 21
Collection catalogues
1960, p. 106, no. 948; 1976, p. 236, no. A 3968; 2007, no. 77
Citation
Y. Bruijnen, 2007, 'Jacob Jacobsz. van Geel, Landscape, c. 1633', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8463
(accessed 22 November 2024 16:26:29).