View of the Abbey of Egmond-Binnen

1638

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 31.2 cm × width 71.7 cm × thickness 1.5 cm
outer size: depth 3.5 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature and date, lower left: C Heck / fecit 1638

Technical notes

The support is a single horizontally grained oak plank bevelled on all sides. The yellowish ground layer covers the edges of the panel and shows through the thinly applied paint layers. An underdrawing for the building is visible with the naked eye. Planes of dead colouring were applied under the various elements of the composition, which was built up from back to front. The building was reserved but the figures were painted over the landscape. Impasto is limited to the leaves of the trees, which were executed in a uniform manner but with great detail.

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 22 May 2006

Condition

Good. The varnish is slightly discoloured.

Conservation

B. Giuliani, 1982 - 1983: complete restoration

Original framing

Ebonized pear reverse-ogee frames¹

Provenance

...; sale, collection Van der Straelen-Moons-Van Lerius, Antwerp, 19 February 1885, no. 252, as Pieter Saenredam, fr. 500, to the museum; on loan to the Stedelijk Museum, Alkmaar, since 2000

Object number: SK-A-991

The artist

Claes Jacobsz van der Heck (Alkmaar c. 1575/81 - Alkmaar 1652)

Claes Jacobsz van der Heck was the most important painter in Alkmaar in the first decades of the 17th century, and one of the founders of the town’s Guild of St Luke in 1631. Based on his age, which is recorded variously in a number of archival documents, he was probably born in Alkmaar between 1575 and 1581. As Karel van Mander discusses him in his Schilder-boeck of 1604, the actual year of Van der Heck’s birth is probably closer to 1575 than to 1581. Van Mander also mentions Van der Heck’s father, Jacob Dircksz van der Heck, who was a nephew of Maarten van Heemskerck and owned portraits by that famous 16th-century painter. By profession Jacob Dircksz van der Heck was secretary and steward of the drainage locks water board. Claes Jacobsz van der Heck married Cecilia Arts van Wede sometime before 1606, the year in which the couple’s eldest child was born.

According to Van Mander, Van der Heck trained with the little-known Haarlem landscape painter Jan Nagel. Van der Heck painted mountainous landscapes in the tradition of Joos de Momper, often with biblical or mythological staffage, as well as topographical views. His earliest dated painting, however, is not a landscape but the 1611 Portrait of Magrita Heyckens.² His most important work as a portraitist is Officers of the Old Civic Guard in a Landscape, executed in 1613.³ Van der Heck was also active as a history painter. In 1616, 1618 and 1620 he painted three judicial scenes drawn from the Bible, Dutch and classical history for the magistrates’ chamber of Alkmaar Town Hall: The Judgement of Solomon, The Judgement of Count William the Good and The Judgement of Cambyses.⁴

Claes van der Heck probably trained his eldest son Maarten, who was named after his famous 16th-century relative Maarten van Heemskerck. Maarten Heemskerck van der Heck, as he called himself, probably worked in his father’s studio until the latter’s death in 1652. Another possible pupil was Caesar van Everdingen (1616/17-78). Paintings by Claes Jacobsz van der Heck are often wrongly ascribed to his cousin, Claes Dircksz van der Heck.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

References
Van Mander 1604, fol. 247r, 300r; Houbraken II, 1719, pp. 7-8; Thieme/Becker XVI, 1923, p. 202; Wortel 1943; Huys Janssen 1997, pp. 26-28; De Vrij and De Vries in coll. cat. Alkmaar 1997, p. 144; Huys Janssen 2002, p. 30

Entry

Claes Jacobsz van der Heck specialized in views of the Abbey of Egmond-Binnen (as shown here), which are most often paired, as is the Rijksmuseum painting, with a view of the Castle of Egmond aan den Hoef (SK-A-990). In some cases these two views form a set with a third view, that of the village of Egmond aan Zee.⁵ In one instance, a painting of 1635 in the Catharijneconvent, Van der Heck showed both the abbey and the castle together in the same composition, although the buildings lay kilometres apart.⁶ Egmond Castle is shown in the distance on the right of the Rijksmuseum View of the Abbey of Egmond-Binnen, while a view of Alkmaar with the Sint Laurenskerk clearly recognizable, can be seen on the right of the View of the Castle of Egmond aan den Hoef.

Egmond Abbey was founded around 950 by Dirk I, Count of Holland, as a convent, but soon became a monastery for Benedictine monks. The abbey is the oldest in the Netherlands, and was an important cultural centre in the middle ages, possessing a very large library. Egmond Castle was the seat of the counts of Egmond. Under orders of William the Silent both the abbey and castle were destroyed by the troops of Diederik Sonoy, governor of the northern quarter of Holland in 1573, in order to prevent invading Spanish troops from using them as encampments. Both structures were in ruins in Van der Heck’s time, so he obviously based his views of them on earlier images made before they were destroyed. A painting by Gilles de Saen (1580-1610) now in the townhall of Sottegem may have served as the prototype for Van der Heck’s view of Egmond Castle.⁷

Van der Heck’s views of the Abbey of Egmond-Binnen, the Castle of Egmond aan den Hoef and the village of Egmond aan Zee are of varying quality, which probably indicates the participation of his workshop. Van der Heck’s son, Maarten Heemskerck van der Heck, probably had a hand in their execution, continuing his father’s workshop after the latter’s death in 1652.⁸ Indeed, one pair showing the abbey and castle is dated 1655.⁹

Jonathan Bikker, 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. 116.

Literature

Wortel 1943, p. 139, no. 23, p. 140, no. 32; De Vrij and De Vries in coll. cat. Alkmaar 1997, p. 153

Collection catalogues

1887, pp. 57-58, nos. 456, 457 (as Claes Dirksz van der Heck); 1903, p. 119, nos. 1117, 1118 (as Claes Dirksz van der Heck); 1934, p. 120, nos. 1117, 1118 (as Claes Jansz van der Heck); 1960, p. 123, no. 117; 1976, p. 262, nos. A 991, A 990; 2007, no. 116

Citation

J. Bikker, 2007, 'Claes Jacobsz. van der Heck, View of the Abbey of Egmond-Binnen, 1638', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8631

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