View of an Imaginary Town across a River, with the Tower of Saint Pol in Vianen

1649

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 64.5 cm × width 96.7 cm
outer size: depth 4 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature and date, lower left: VG 1649

Technical notes

The support consists of three horizontally grained oak planks. The middle one has a knot at the left. The panel is bevelled on all sides and was thinned for cradling (cradle now removed). Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1616. The panel could have been ready for use by 1625, but a date in or after 1635 is more likely. The thin white ground probably consists of chalk. Pigment analysis revealed that a second layer, probably the upper ground, consists of white lead and some chalk toned with a little earth. Paint was applied with visible brushstrokes in thin, transparent darks and thicker, more opaque lights.

Scientific examination and reports

paint samples: G. Tauber, RMA, 16 February 1995
X-radiography: RMA, nos. 1680a-h, 16 August 1995
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 15 February 2002
technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 6 September 2004

Literature scientific examination and reports

unpublished entry A. van Suchtelen, RMA, 1995

Condition

Fair. Abrasion is extensive, particularly in the sky. There are many areas of damage in the paint film along the lower panel join, and a scratch above the second rowing boat from the right.

Conservation

M. van de Laar, 1992: complete restoration; cradle removed

Provenance

...; sale, Paul Mersch, Paris (Hôtel Drouot), 8 May 1908, no. 34, fr. 4,000;¹...; sale, Baron F.A.S.A. van Ittersum et al., Amsterdam (F. Muller et al.), 14 May 1912, no. 118, fl. 6,700;²...; sale, A. de Labrouchede de Laborderie (Paris) et al., Amsterdam (F. Muller et al.), 23 May 1922, no. 37, bought in for fl. 4,500;³...; anonymous sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller et al.), 11 December 1923, no. 476, fl. 3,200;⁴...; dealer Knoedler (London), prior to 1948;⁵...; purchased by Mr M. van Embden;⁶ donated to the museum by his daughter, Mrs Serine Bonnist, née Van Embden, Mamaroneck, New York, 1991

Object number: SK-A-4879

Credit line: Gift of S. van Embden Bonnist, Mamaroneck

The artist

Jan van Goyen (Leiden 1596 - The Hague 1656)

Jan van Goyen, the son of a cobbler, was born in Leiden on 13 January 1596. According to the Leiden chronicler Jan Jansz Orlers, from 1606 onward he was a pupil successively of the Leiden painters Coenraet van Schilperoort, Isaac Claesz van Swanenburg (1537/38-1614) and Jan Adriansz de Man, a glass-painter named Clock and Willem Gerritsz in Hoorn. After spending a year in France, he trained in 1617-18 with the landscape painter Esaias van de Velde in Haarlem. Van Goyen subsequently returned to his birthplace, where he married Anna Willemsdr van Raelst on 5 August 1618. He is recorded several times in Leiden archives between 1625 and 1631. In 1632, Van Goyen settled in The Hague, where he acquired citizenship two years later. In 1634, he worked for some time in Isaack van Ruisdael’s workshop in Haarlem. Van Goyen was head man of the Hague guild in 1638 and 1640. In 1651, he was commissioned to paint a panoramic view of The Hague for the burgomaster’s room in the Hague Town Hall, for which he received 650 guilders. Documents reveal that throughout his life Van Goyen had speculated with little success in various businesses, including property and tulips. Van Goyen died at the age of 60 in The Hague on 27 April 1656, leaving debts of at least 18,000 guilders.

Van Goyen was among the most prolific and innovative of all 17th-century Dutch artists. He painted landscapes and seascapes, river scenes and town views. His oeuvre comprises more than 1,200 paintings and about 1,500 drawings, several hundred of which are still in the original sketchbooks. Many of his works are dated, ranging from 1620 to 1656. His early landscapes are polychrome, and closely resemble those by his teacher Esaias van de Velde. From c. 1626 he moved away from this example. With Salomon van Ruysdael, Pieter de Molijn and Jan Porcellis, he was a pioneer of the ‘tonal’ style that introduced a new standard of naturalism to landscape painting. His dune and river landscapes from the 1630s are executed in a palette of browns and greens. In the early 1640s he painted townscapes and panoramic landscapes that are dominated by a brown tonality. Around 1645, here turned to a more natural colour range. Van Goyen was a highly influential painter. He had many followers and imitators, among them Wouter Knijf, Anthonie Jansz van der Croos and Maerten Fransz van der Hulst. One of his pupils was Jan Steen (c. 1625/26-79). According to Houbraken, others were Nicolaes Berchem (1620-83) and Arent Arentsz, called Cabel (1585/86-1631).

Gerdien Wuestman, 2007

References
Orlers 1641, pp. 373-74; Van Hoogstraeten 1678, p. 237; Houbraken I, 1718, pp. 166-68, 170-71, II, 1719, pp. 110, 111, 235, III, 1721, p. 13; Bredius 1896 (documents); Bredius 1916; Bredius 1919; Beck I, 1972, ‘Einführung’, pp. 15-22, 29-38 (documents), pp. 39-66; Beck in Turner 1996, pp. 255-58

Entry

The town with the many towers in this painting of 1649 has wrongly been identified as Vianen on the River Lek, south of Utrecht.⁷ That identification was based on the square, squat tower above the rowing boat to the left of center, which was recognized as being the tower of Saint Pol, part of the 14th-century Kasteel Batestein.⁸ That castle also features in an ice scene with skaters by Van Goyen dated 1624 which is now in a private collection.⁹ The Saint Pol tower (the name of which became corrupted to Simpletower) is also a recurring motif in Van Goyen’s oeuvre.¹⁰

However, the tower, here seen from the north-west, is the only structure in the painting that can be associated with Vianen. The distant church to the right of it does not match the Grote Kerk of Vianen, which survives intact to this day. The church and spire to the left of Saint Pol never stood in Vianen, nor did the squat tower to the right of them. The buildings in the right half of the composition are equally imaginary.¹¹ Van Goyen repeated this fictitious city scape, with a few minor alterations, in an oil sketch of 1651.¹²

There is no known preliminary study. Two almost identical drawings of the tower of Saint Pol that have been associated with Van Goyen are in fact by another hand.¹³ In the past those drawings were also attributed to Salomon van Ruysdael, in whose oeuvre the tower of Saint Pol features repeatedly from 1643 on.¹⁴ According to Hofstede de Groot, the Rijksmuseum painting is probably identical to the cityscape sold at the auction of the paintings belonging to Hendrik Verschuuring in 1770, but the catalogue of that sale states that the panel was dated 1640.¹⁵ Another provenance mentioned by Hofstede de Groot, the sale of the collection of Johan van der Linden van Slingeland in 1785, cannot be confirmed either, given the disparity in the dimensions.¹⁶

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. 98.

Literature

Hofstede de Groot 1923, pp. 234-35, no. 972; Beck II, 1973, p. 200, no. 412, III, 1987, p. 191, no. 412

Collection catalogues

1992, p. 140, A 4879 (as View of Vianen); 2007, no. 98

Citation

G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Jan van Goyen, View of an Imaginary Town across a River, with the Tower of Saint Pol in Vianen, 1649', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.60282

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