Object data
oil on panel
support: height 84.8 cm × width 161.8 cm (lid) × height 25.6 cm × width 85.2 cm (leaf)
Gerard van der Horst (copy after)
Hilly Landscape with Travellers
c. 1625 - c. 1650
Technical notes
The lid of the harpsichord, which is probably made of wood from a conifer, is in two parts. The largest consists of three horizontally grained planks, the smallest of a single plank with a strip on either side with a grain at right angles to that of the plank. The small panel is attached to the left of the large one with hinges underneath. There is local cradling on the reverse. Dendrochronological analysis did not produce a possible date of execution. The white ground layer is visible at areas of paint loss. Underdrawn contour lines in a wet medium are visible here and there, for example near the head of the standing figure in the foreground of the large panel. His head was moved slightly to the left relative to the underdrawing. The paint was applied fairly thinly and transparently, with broad brushstrokes. Both the landscape and the figures are remarkably coarse. The red in the figures of the man and the horse in the foreground and the green of the trees in the right background are the only touches of bright colour in these otherwise fairly monochrome landscapes.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 20 April 2005
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 1 July 2005
Condition
Poor. The paint layer is severely abraded and there are many losses and retouchings. The edges are overpainted. There are several cracks and scratches in the panel, especially in the lower right corner. The varnish has discoloured.
Provenance
...; purchased in Wijk bij Duurstede by the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague (inv. no. 8638);1 transferred to the museum, date unknown
Object number: SK-A-4288
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Gerrit van der Horst (Rheinbach 1581/82 - Kampen 1629)
Gerrit van der Horst was born in 1581/82 in Rheinbach, near Bonn in Germany. It has been suggested that he trained with Crispijn de Passe in Cologne. A number of drawings suggest that he travelled to Italy around 1608-09. He came to the Netherlands shortly afterwards, probably for religious reasons. He is documented in Kampen from 1609 on, where he became betrothed to Wendel van Slacheke on 17 November of that year. In 1610 he became a member of the Reformed Congregation, and three years later he was registered as a new citizen of the town. His chief source of income came from the wine trade and from his position as farmer of the excise duties on wine. A note written by Jan Brueghel the Younger states that Van der Horst paid 400 guilders in 1629 for a ‘watercolour canvas’ by Pieter Brueghel the Elder and some drawings. He was buried in the Bovenkerk in Kampen on 1 December 1629.
Van der Horst worked mainly as a draughtsman of landscapes, many of them Italian views furnished with round, medieval donjons. It is believed that he also painted a landscape with a view of Mu¨nster to which Gerard ter Borch added figures many years later to depict Adriaen Pauw’s arrival in the city on 11 January 1646.2
Gerdien Wuestman, 2007
References
Thieme/Becker XVII, 1924, p. 533; Gudlaugsson 1948, pp. 45-46; Welcker 1953
Entry
Like several other harpsichord lids in the Rijksmuseum’s collection, this one dates from the first half of the 17th century.3 The subject of a dismounted horseman urinating in a landscape with a dilapidated tower is not the most obvious one for decorating a musical instrument. Landscapes were quite often painted on harpsichords, but usually they contain allusions to music, even if only in the form of a huntsman with a horn.4
The lid is listed as a work from the circle of Jan van de Velde II in the museum’s 1976 catalogue.5 The coarse execution has little to do with Van de Velde, but the composition does turn out to be derived from an example from his workshop. The large landscape was taken integrally from a print in a five-part suite that Van de Velde made after designs by Gerard van der Horst.6
The composition is reversed relative to the print, and since there are no known copies of the entire scene,7 the anonymous painter either used Van der Horst’s original drawings or, and this is more likely, reversed the scene to make it fit the shape of the lid of the harpsichord. There is no connection between the landscape on the small panel and the print series after Van der Horst, but it too is probably based on a print.
The suite after designs by Van der Horst was published in a second state by Claes Jansz Visscher in 1628. The lid of the harpsichord would have been painted in the second quarter of the 17th century. It is not clear whether that was done in the southern Netherlands, where there was a flourishing tradition of harpsichord building, or in the northern Netherlands.8
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. 151.
Collection catalogues
1976, p. 559, no. A 4288 (as circle of Jan van de Velde); 2007, no. 151
Citation
G. Wuestman, 2007, 'copy after Gerard van der Horst, Hilly Landscape with Travellers, c. 1625 - 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.6364
(accessed 23 November 2024 15:06:07).