Object data
oil on panel
support: height 37.2 cm × width 50.1 cm
Jan Both
Italian Landscape with Mule Driver
c. 1645 - c. 1650
Inscriptions
- signature, lower right (J and B ligated): JBoth
Technical notes
Support The single, horizontally grained oak plank is approx. 1 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1612. The panel could have been ready for use by 1621, but a date in or after 1629 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, off-white ground extends up to the edges of the support.
Underdrawing Infrared photography revealed a very loose underdrawing in a liquid medium in the sky surrounding the leaves and branches of the trees, merely giving a rough indication of their position. The underdrawing is visible with the naked eye to some extent in places where the design was not followed in the final painting.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. Dark areas were underpainted using a dark brown, very fluid paint with distinctive brushstrokes. Large areas of colour for the sky and the landscape were then filled in, leaving reserves for the trees and foliage in the sky. Swift small brushstrokes and dabs of paint were used to model the figures and define the landscape. Both the ground and the dark underpaint were left uncovered in some places. Brushmarking is visible in the sky, and impasto was used in the foliage and in a more pronounced way to create depth, especially in the dark green of the trees.
Zeph Benders, 2022
Scientific examination and reports
- infrared photography: Z. Benders, RMA, 15 May 2008
- technical report: Z. Benders, RMA, 15 May 2008
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 2 June 2008
- paint samples: Z. Benders, RMA, nos. SK-C-110/1-2, 24 June 2008
Condition
Fair. There are a few small paint losses, especially along the edges. The paint of the sky is slightly abraded. The varnish has yellowed.
Conservation
- H.H. Mertens, 1964: cleaned, retouched and revarnished; reverse of plank impregnated
Provenance
…; ? sale, Catharina Bullens († 1777), widow of Justus Oosterdijk (c. 1707-1773/76, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (J. Posthumus et al.), 23 July 1777, no. 4 (‘Een ongemeene warme Avondstond, zynde een bergachtig Landschap waar in uitmuntende Stoffagie van Beeldjes en Beesjes, […] Hoog 14½ duim, breet 19½ duim [36.3 x 48.8 cm], P.’), fl. 450, to Hope;1…; sale, H.G. Oosterdijk (1731-1795, Amsterdam) and H.A. van den Heuvel (†, Utrecht), Amsterdam (P. van der Schley et al.), 8 October 1800, no. 1, as J. and A. Both (‘hoog 15, breed 20 duim [37.5 x 50 cm], paneel. Een behaaglijk boomrijk en zonachtig Landschap, met een bergachtig verschiet, de voorgrond gestoffeerd met een Man op een Ezel, en een Jongen met een Os […]’), fl. 485, to B. Kooij;2…; sale, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Prince de Bénévent (1754-1838, Paris), Paris (C.P. Henry et al.), 9 July 1817, no. 6 (‘Bois. Hauteur 14 pouces, largeur 18 pouces 6 lignes [37.9 x 50.1 cm]. Vue prise dans un pays montagneux. Au milieu et sur la droite du spectateur se groupent ensemble plusieurs grands arbres qui croissent aux deux côtés d’une butte, parmi des broussailles et des rochers. A gauche est un chemin tournant où passent, en se croisant, un valet de ferme menant une vache, et un autre villageois conduisant deux mulets, sur l’un desquels il est affourché. On aperçoit plus loin un troisième personnage. Au-delà de ces objets sont plusieurs éminences couvertes de bois et aboutissant à des montagnes lointaines. […]’), with the rest of the collection, fr. 360,000, to the dealer William Buchanan, 3 no. 6, valued at fr. 4,000,4 fr. 4,650,5 and 150 gns,6 to Gray and Allnut;7…; sale, James-Alexandre (1776-1855, Paris), Comte de Pourtalès-Gorgier et al., London (H. Phillips), 19 May 1826 sqq., no. 49 (‘A grand mountainous Landscape, intersected by a winding road, on which are passing a peasant with two mules, and a boy driving a cow; opposite to which are masses of trees […] from the collection of the Prince Talleyrand’), 205 gns, to Maud of Bath;8 anonymous sale, Bath (auction house not known), 1828, 250 gns;9…; ? sale, Alexis Delahante et al., London (H. Phillips), 29 June 1830 sqq., no. 82 (‘A singularly rich and beautifully composed Landscape and Figures, with effect of Evening, when Sun is retiring behind the distant mountainous scenery […] formerly adorned the gallery of Prince Talleyrand’), £357, to Ramsay, or bought in;10…; purchased for 160 gns by the dealer John Smith, London, 1833;11 from whom, fl. 2,000, to Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), Amsterdam, 1833;12 by whom bequeathed to the City of Amsterdam, with 223 other paintings, 1854;13 on loan from the City of Amsterdam to the museum since 30 June 188514
Object number: SK-C-110
Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest)
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Jan Both (Utrecht c. 1615 - Utrecht 1652)
Not everything reported by Joachim von Sandrart, Jan Both’s first biographer, is backed by the scarce documentary sources about the artist. What is beyond doubt is that Jan was a younger brother of Andries Both and was therefore born in Utrecht as a son of the glass painter Dirk Joriaensz Both. Von Sandrart could have seen the brothers when he was studying with Gerard van Honthorst in Utrecht in 1625-27. According to him they were apprenticed to Abraham Bloemaert in those days. It is far from certain, though, that the tuition fees that their father paid in 1634-37 to an unnamed master for an unnamed child actually related to Jan as Bloemaert’s pupil.
It seems unlikely that the brothers travelled to Rome together, as Von Sandrart stated, because Jan is not recorded in the city until 12 June 1638, when he attended a meeting of the Accademia di San Luca. The two of them were registered as living in a house in Strada Vittoria in 1639 and 1641. It was around this time that Jan received a commission from King Philip IV of Spain for six large landscapes to be installed in one or more galleries in Buen Retiro palace in Madrid.15 Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin, Gaspar Dughet, Herman van Swanevelt and Jean Lemaire were also involved in this, the largest landscape painting project in seventeenth-century Europe. The prestigious contract suggests that Jan Both was probably older than 20, which would place his year of birth around 1615.
He was still in Rome on 29 April 1642, when Cardinal Antonio Barberini paid him 60 scudi for two paintings. He returned to Utrecht soon afterwards, where he took on pupils like Hendrick Verschuring (1627-1690) and the virtually unknown Barend Bispinck (c. 1625-after 1658). He was certainly in Utrecht in 1644, when he executed the background in a portrait of the Utrecht collector Baron Willem Vincent van Wyttenhorst.16 Cornelis van Poelenburch, Jacob Duck and Bartholomeus van der Helst also worked on it. Van Poelenburch painted Jan Both’s likeness in 1648 and presented it to the baron.17 In 1649 Jan was one of the senior officials of the Guild of St Luke in Utrecht. He died in the city on 9 August 1652, still a bachelor, and was buried in the Buurkerk.
Jan Both specialized in Italianate landscapes. His only dated picture is the Landscape with Mercury and Argus of 1650.18 Only a few of his paintings contain mythological staffage, which was added by other artists like Cornelis van Poelenburch. His street scenes with genre-like figures mainly date from his time in Rome and shortly afterwards. He only developed his characteristic Italianate style after returning to Utrecht. His landscapes were so popular during his lifetime that they gave rise to copies and works done in his style, or ‘in the Bothian manner’ as it was put at the time.
Richard Harmanni, 2022
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, pp. 156-58; J. von Sandrart, Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von 1675: Leben der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. A.R. Peltzer, Munich 1925 (ed. princ. Nuremberg 1675), pp. 184-85; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, I, Amsterdam 1718, p. 114; 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, p. 82; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, I, Leipzig/Vienna 1906, pp. 156-57; Moes in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, IV, Leipzig 1910, pp. 410-11; G.J. Hoogewerff, Bescheiden in Italië omtrent Nederlandsche kunstenaars en geleerden, II, The Hague 1913, p. 53; G.J. Hoogewerff, Nederlandsche kunstenaars te Rome (1600-1725): Uittreksels uit de parochiale archieven, The Hague 1942, pp. 108, 110; L. de Bruyn, ‘Het geboortejaar van Jan Both’, Oud Holland 67 (1952), pp. 110-12; M.R. Waddingham, ‘Andries and Jan Both in France and Italy’, Paragone, no. 171 (1964), pp. 13-43, esp. pp. 13-16, 25-28; Blankert in A. Blankert, H.J. de Smedt and M.E. Houtzager, Nederlandse 17e eeuwse Italianiserende landschapschilders, exh. cat. Utrecht (Centraal Museum) 1965, pp. 112-15; M.A. Lavin, Seventeenth-Century Barberini Documents and Inventories of Art, New York 1975, p. 8; J.D. Burke, Jan Both: Paintings, Drawings and Prints, New York/London 1976, pp. 34-39; Chong in P.C. Sutton et al., Masters of 17th-Century Dutch Landscape Painting, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Boston (Museum of Fine Arts)/Philadelphia (Philadelphia Museum of Art) 1987-88, pp. 276-77; Blankert in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XIII, Munich/Leipzig 1996, pp. 241-42; Bok in J.A. Spicer and L.F. Orr (eds.), Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht during the Golden Age, exh. cat. San Francisco (Fine Arts Museum)/Baltimore (The Walters Art Gallery)/London (The National Gallery) 1997-98, pp. 377-78
Entry
Burke placed this landscape shortly before 1638, when Jan Both received the commission in Rome to produce several landscapes for Buen Retiro palace in Madrid,19 which are the only pictures in his oeuvre that can be dated with reasonable certainty. In this panel, though, the foliage of the trees is more differentiated than in the Buen Retiro works, so it was probably made later.20 The dendrochronology shows that the panel was most probably ready for use by 1629.21 The oak, which comes from the Baltic states or Poland, makes it unlikely that the landscape was painted in Italy.
It is more sensible to follow Blankert and date the picture a few years after 1642, when Both was back in Utrecht.22 This supposition is borne out by the fairly simple composition and the monochrome palette, although the latter has been exacerbated by the discolouration of the yellow to blue over time - the ‘green disease’.23 The increased transparency of the top paint layer has also reduced the persuasiveness of the aerial perspective of the mountain in the background.24
A closely related landscape in the Musée Fabre in Montpellier was long thought to be an autograph Both,25 but is now regarded as a good eighteenth-century copy after the Rijksmuseum painting.26 It differs from the original in several respects. The mule driver in the background is missing, as is the shepherd with his flock just visible behind the hill in the centre. In that work, though, there is a castle which is not in the original. It also has very sketchy foliage and lacks Both’s subtlety.
Hofstede de Groot stated that the provenance of the present painting begins with the Destouches auction in Paris on 21 March 1794.27 He based this on the data provided by Smith,28 but the description in the sale catalogue does not match this scene.29 Now that the variant in Montpellier has been recognized as an early copy after the picture in the Rijksmuseum, it seems more likely that the provenance Hofstede de Groot gave it in fact relates to the Amsterdam panel, as suggested in the Musée Fabre catalogue.30
The Centraal Museum in Utrecht has a drawing by Jan Both with an almost identical composition (fig. a). The amount of detail shows that this is not a preliminary study but an autograph work made after the painting. There are several such examples in Jan Both’s oeuvre.31
Richard Harmanni, 2022
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
Literature
J.D. Burke, Jan Both: Paintings, Drawings and Prints, New York/London 1976, pp. 182-83, no. 4; Zeder in M. Hilaire and O. Zeder, De la Nature: Paysages de Poussin à Courbet dans les collections du Musée Fabre, exh. cat. Montpellier 1996, pp. 120-21
Collection catalogues
1885, p. 91, no. 23; 1887, p. 21, no. 164; 1903, p. 50, no. 594; 1934, p. 59, no. 594; 1960, p. 53, no. 594; 1976, p. 137, no. C 110
Citation
Richard Harmanni, 2022, 'Jan Both, Italian Landscape with Mule Driver, c. 1645 - 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.6192
(accessed 23 November 2024 07:30:29).