Mountainous Landscape with Farm

1663

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 60.9 cm × width 81.4 cm

Inscriptions

signature and date, with ligated monogram, lower right: HS / 1663

Technical notes

Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been preserved. Cusping is visible on all sides.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends over the tacking edges. The first layer consists of red pigment particles. The second, beige-coloured layer contains white and brown pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the tacking edges on the left and right, and partially over the top and bottom edges. A brown to greyish initial lay-in, introducing light and dark tonal values, shows through the mountains on the left. The sky was applied on top of it in two layers of blue paint: the first containing large grey-blue pigment particles and the second one smaller and brighter blue pigment particles. The foreground, also rendered on top of the initial lay-in, consists of a single light brown layer with some small green and brown pigment particles. Some larger elements, such as the building, were reserved in the background. Impasto was used for the foliage of the trees.
Eva van Zuien, 2023

Scientific examination and reports

infrared photography: E. van Zuien, RMA, 9 July 2008
paint samples: E. van Zuien, RMA, nos. SK-A-716/1-2, 9 July 2008
technical report: E. van Zuien, RMA, 9 July 2008

Condition

Fair. There are some paint losses along the edges. The varnish is irregular and degraded, and has severely yellowed.

Conservation

H. Heijdenrijk, 1906: canvas lined

Provenance

…; ? sale, Cornelis Wittert (1672-1733, Rotterdam), Lord of Valkenburg, Rotterdam (A. Willis), 11 April 1731, no. 52 (‘Het Klos-baentje van Herman Zagtleven. H. 22d., br. 31d. [57.6 x 81.1 cm]’), fl. 370;¹…; sale, Hendrik Muilman (1743-1812, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (P. van der Schley et al.), 12 April 1813 sqq., no. 143 (‘Een hoog bergachtig Landschap, aan den Rhijn, met Geboomte en laag Houtgewas; gestoffeerd met verscheide Woningen en werkende Landlieden; op den voorgrond vermaken zich twee Lieden in een Klosbaan. 23½ x 31½ pouces [60.4 x 81 cm].’), bought in at fl. 47 (last bidder Jeronimo de Vries);² ? his son, Willem Ferdinand Mogge Muilman (1778-1849), Amsterdam; ? his daughter, Anna Maria van de Poll-Mogge Muilman (1811-1878), Amsterdam; her stepson, Jacobus Salomon Hendrik van de Poll (1837-1880), Amsterdam; by whom bequeathed to the museum, with 49 other paintings, 2 July 1880;³ on loan to Cannenburch Castle, Vaassen, since 1954

Object number: SK-A-716

Credit line: Jonkheer J.S.H. van de Poll Bequest, Amsterdam

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’.⁴ In 1669 they also paid him for an engraving with a panorama of Utrecht.⁵ 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.⁶ 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 1684.⁷ 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

In this 1663 scene Herman Saftleven presents an impression of the charming German Rhine landscape. Starting in the 1660s he quite often used the viewpoint of a traveller looking down from the hills onto the river in a distant valley.⁸ A very similar work, from the same year, is Peasants Merry-Making outside an Inn, which bears the autograph inscription ‘Inde zevenbergen’ (In the Siebengebirge), referring to a low mountain range east of the Rhine near Bonn.⁹ In both paintings there is a farm which also seems to be serving as a watering place.

The Rijksmuseum canvas has a post with a signboard with what appears to be a swan on it. There is a man in a wooden tub under the porch – being watched by a fellow in front of him – who has rolled up his trouser legs and hung his jacket on the fence. Is he washing his clothes or treading grapes? Many people are engaged in typical rural occupations: chopping wood, drawing water from a well and tending geese. A traveller with a knapsack has just arrived at the farm, and another one is emerging from behind a hill on the far right. The most noteworthy activity is taking place in the foreground, where two men are involved in the game of beugelen. Unlike kolf, which was far better known in the Netherlands and was often set on the ice and over longer courses, playing bowls was done in a closed alley with a ring as the target.¹⁰ It was probably a rather peculiar amusement for the seventeenth-century beholder, although it featured in a few pictures.¹¹

From a stylistic point of view there is very little difference between this 1663 landscape and Saftleven’s earlier panoramas of the Rhine. As in his paintings of the 1650s, he has used a delicate, almost miniaturist touch, there are pastel colours, particularly in the background, and the entire scene is very anecdotal. Unlike the later work, there is as yet no trace of a horror vacui. However, the artist was rather clumsy with the perspective here and there, for example with the farmhouses on the slope on the left. On the other hand, there is a superb sky with the sun just breaking through the clouds and turning the one in the middle orange with its rays.

Erlend de Groot, 2023

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

V. de Stuers, ‘Het Kabinet van Jhr. J.S.H. Van de Poll’, Nederlandsche Kunstbode 2 (1880), pp. 243-46, esp. p. 244; W. Schulz, Herman Saftleven 1609-1685: Leben und Werke: Mit einem kritischen Katalog der Gemälde und Zeichnungen, Berlin 1982, p. 157, no. 121

Collection catalogues

1880, p. 495, no. 319a (as dated 1662); 1887, p. 150, no. 1268 (as dated 1662); 1903, p. 236, no. 2109; 1976, p. 493, no. A 716

Citation

Erlend de Groot, 2023, 'Herman Saftleven, Mountainous Landscape with Farm, 1663', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6999

(accessed 21 September 2024 09:48:59).