Dune Landscape with a Signal Post

c. 1651 - c. 1653

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 24.4 cm × width 30.2 cm

Inscriptions

signature, with monogram, bottom left (P and H ligated): PH W

Technical notes

Support The single, horizontally grained oak plank is approx. 1 cm thick. Oak strips (approx. 1.5 cm) were added on all sides at a later date. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced saw marks.
Preparatory layers The single, very thin, off-white ground does not extend over the edges of the support. It consists of mostly white pigment particles varying in size and a minute amount of earth pigment and black pigment particles.
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. A first lay-in of the landscape was done with translucent brownish paint. The sky was executed next, starting with the bright blue parts and subsequently adding the white and grey clouds wet in wet. A similar colour sequence and technique were followed in the landscape in the right background. The landscape in the foreground was then worked up with delicate scumbles in shades of light green, blue and beige. Fine bright yellow dabs were placed at the border of the dark foreground and the hill to heighten the contrast. The tree in the middle ground was created by painting the trunk and the bare branches first, before adding the leaves with tiny bluish and greenish brushstrokes. Other elements such as the figures and the tree and the signal post on the hill were included in a very late stage. Small dabbed brushstrokes were used throughout the landscape and, with some impasto, along the contours of the light clouds.
Anna Krekeler, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

infrared photography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 15 September 2010
paint samples: A. Krekeler, RMA, nos. SK-A-479/1-2, 15 September 2010
technical report: A. Krekeler, RMA, 15 September 2010

Condition

Good. The front of the panel has a small crack at upper right and there is a small indentation in the upper left corner.

Conservation

W.A. Hopman, 1874: varnish regenerated
Sarah Walden, 1978: varnish thinned; retouchings and overpaint removed; minor retouching and revarnished

Provenance

...; collection Adriaan Leonard van Heteren (1724-1800), The Hague; his third cousin and godson, Adriaan Leonard van Heteren Gevers (1794-1866), Rotterdam (‘Paysage charmant, très délicatement peint, l’un des plus jolis connus de ce maitre, avec plusieurs figures (bois, h. 8¾ l. 11 [22.8 x 28.7 cm])’);¹ from whom, with 136 other paintings (known as ‘Kabinet van Heteren Gevers’), fl. 100,000, to the museum, by decree of Louis Napoleon, King of Holland, and through the mediation of his father, Dirk Cornelis Gevers (1763-1839), 8 June 1809;² on loan to the Fondation Custodia, Paris, since 1954

Object number: SK-A-479

The artist

Philips Wouwerman (Haarlem 1619 - Haarlem 1668)

Philips Wouwerman was baptized in Haarlem on 24 May 1619 as a son of the history painter Pouwels Joostensz, who was probably his teacher. De Bie says that he was a pupil of Frans Hals, although their work has nothing in common. An apprenticeship with Pieter Cornelisz Verbeeck is suspected on stylistic grounds. Another important influence was Pieter van Laer, who was also Haarlem-born and bred. It is known from notes made by the artist Matthias Scheits that Wouwerman, who came from a Reformed family, fled to Hamburg in 1638 in order to marry the Catholic Anna Pietersdr van Broeckhoff. He stayed there for a while, working in the studio of the history painter Evert Decker, but two years later he is again documented in his native Haarlem, where he remained for the rest of his life.

Wouwerman’s earliest dated painting is Military Encampment with Soldiers Gambling of 1639.³ He joined the Haarlem Guild of St Luke in 1640, being elected to the office of warden in 1646, and from 1642 and 1651 he served in the St George Civic Guard. Wouwerman made several history pieces with religious subjects for Catholic patrons. It is clear from various sources that he was a prosperous man. Houbraken mentions that he had important patrons from the very beginning of his career, and was able to give his daughter a dowry of 20,000 guilders. He supplemented his income by speculating on the property market and dealing in art. However, there are also indications that he suffered periods of poverty. For example, he is said to have painted his Miracle of St Hubert in 1660 for the clandestine Sint-Bernarduskerk in Haarlem in thanks for the financial support he had received from the parish priest. He remained productive to the end of his life, with his last dated picture, Grey Standing in a Stable,⁴ being executed in the year of his death. He died on 19 May 1668 and was buried in the Nieuwe Kerk in Haarlem four days later. Paintings by or belonging to him were sold at auction on 7 May 1670, a few months after the decease of his wife.

Wouwerman gained fame as a painter of horses, and specialized in landscapes with riders, ranging from battle scenes and army camps to hunting parties, horse fairs and stables. He also supplied the figures in landscapes by other Haarlem artists like Jacob van Ruisdael, Jan Wijnants and Cornelis Decker. His many pupils included Nicolaes Ficke (c. 1620/23-before 1702), Emanuel Murant (1622-c. 1700), Simon Dubois (1632-1708) and Anthonie de Haen (1640/41-in or before 1675). He may also have taught his younger brothers Pieter (1623-1682) and Jan (1629-1666). Wouwerman’s work, which in the eighteenth century fetched some of the highest prices for paintings from the Dutch Golden Age, was imitated by countless others.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2022

References
T. Schrevelius, Harlemias, Haarlem 1648, p. 384; 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, pp. 281-82; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, II, Amsterdam 1719, pp. 70-75, 102; R. van Eynden and A. van der Willigen, Geschiedenis der vaderlandsche schilderkunst, sedert de helft der XVIII eeuw, I, Haarlem 1816, pp. 404-06; A. van der Willigen, Geschiedkundige aanteekeningen over Haarlemsche schilders en andere beoefenaren van de beeldende kunsten, voorafgegaan door eene korte geschiedenis van het schilders- of St. Lucas Gild aldaar, Haarlem 1866, pp. 241-44; C.J. Gonnet, ‘De schilders Pouwels, Pieter en Steven Wouwerman’, in 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.], VII, Rotterdam 1888-90, pp. 118-26; C. Hofstede de Groot, ‘Die Malerfamilie Wouwerman’, Kunstchronik, N.S. 2 (1890-91), cols. 1-5; A. Lichtwark, Matthias Scheits, als Schilderer des Hamburger Lebens, 1650-1700, Hamburg 1899, pp. 43-44; S. Kalff, ‘De gebroeders Wouwerman’, Elsevier’s Geïllustreerd Maandschrift 30 (1920), pp. 96-103; U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXXVI, Leipzig 1947, pp. 265-68; H. Miedema, De archiefbescheiden van het St. Lucasgilde te Haarlem, 1497-1798, II, Alphen aan den Rijn 1980, p. 1211; F.J. Duparc, ‘Philips Wouwerman, 1619-1668’, Oud Holland 107 (1993), pp. 257-86; B. Schumacher, Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668): The Horse Painter of the Golden Age, I, Doornspijk 2006, pp. 13-21, 25-38; I. van Thiel-Stroman, ‘Biographies 15th-17th Century’, in P. Biesboer et al., Painting in Haarlem 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 99-363, esp. pp. 357-61

Entry

The subordinate role of the staffage sets this well-preserved view of dunes apart from most of Philips Wouwerman’s later works. The scene is populated with only a few figures, which one only notices at second glance. The artist concentrated on the depiction of the landscape under a cloudy sky. A few people are standing by the water’s edge on the right, and there is a farmhouse on the hill. To its left is probably a signal post on which a storm warning could be hoisted to announce impending bad weather. Wouwerman could have seen a coastal panorama like this near his native Haarlem. There are similar dune landscapes in the oeuvre of his assumed teacher Pieter Cornelisz Verbeeck.⁵ Although no documents showing that he was trained by the latter have yet been found, the similarities in subject matter, composition and use of colour do make it likely that he was influenced by Verbeeck.

Few of Wouwerman’s works bear the year of execution, so it is sometimes difficult to establish a chronology for his paintings. This small panel has been placed in both his early career and at the beginning of the 1650s.⁶ Krempel believed that it was made in the mid-1640s, partly because of the putative monogram ‘PH . W’, which was the type that Wouwerman used between 1642 and 1646.⁷ However, it is doubtful whether Wouwerman only signed as ‘PHiLS W’ after 1646.⁸ Stylistic evidence makes an origin in the early 1650s more likely, at a time when he produced several related dune scenes in which the emphasis is on the landscape and not the figures.⁹ One clue to a more precise date is a dune landscape with a river of 1652.¹⁰

Gerdien Wuestman, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters, I, London 1829, p. 332, no. 451; C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, II, Esslingen/Paris 1908, p. 596, no. 1044; B. Schumacher, Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668): The Horse Painter of the Golden Age, I, Doornspijk 2006, pp. 61, 358, no. A475

Collection catalogues

1809, pp. 83-84, no. 357; 1843, p. 71, no. 361 (‘in good condition’); 1853, p. 31, no. 336 (fl. 1,000); 1858, p. 166, no. 367; 1880, p. 350, no. 410 (with incorrect provenance); 1887, p. 193, no. 1649 (with incorrect provenance); 1903, p. 303, no. 2711 (with incorrect provenance); 1934, p. 324, no. 2711 (with incorrect provenance); 1976, p. 615, no. A 479 (with incorrect provenance)

Citation

Gerdien Wuestman, 2022, 'Philips Wouwerman, Dune Landscape with a Signal Post, c. 1651 - c. 1653', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6825

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