River View in a Mountainous Region

in or after c. 1667

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 67.7 cm × width 91.4 cm
support: depth 8.5 cm (support incl. SK-L-3892)

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 single, off-white ground extends partially over the tacking edges.
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 brown initial lay-in, consisting of large white and some small black pigment particles in a brown matrix, was left exposed locally in the left foreground and shows through the mountains in the background. The blue of the sky was applied on top of it in a single layer, and consists mainly of small blue and white pigment particles. The landscape was built up in one or two layers leaving reserves for the main elements in the front, such as the tree on the left and the larger boats. Other, smaller elements were painted over the background, among them the boats on the right. The figures and other details were executed with small brushstrokes. The paint layers are smooth throughout, with only some impasto in the details, such as the foliage of the trees.
Eva van Zuien, 2023

Scientific examination and reports

infrared photography: E. van Zuien, RMA, 21 May 2008
paint samples: E. van Zuien, RMA, nos. SK-C-218/1-2, 21 May 2008
technical report: E. van Zuien, RMA, 21 May 2008

Condition

Fair. There are some paint losses along the edges and numerous discoloured retouchings throughout. Broad drying cracks are apparent in some of the greens in the foreground. The varnish has severely yellowed.

Provenance

…; from La Salle, Kassel, louis d’or 100, to Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), Amsterdam, 1834;¹ by whom bequeathed to the City of Amsterdam, with 223 other paintings, 1854;² from which on loan to the museum since 30 June 1885³

Object number: SK-C-218

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest)

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

This painting of a summer day beside a river in a mountainous part of the world looks like an imaginary Italianate landscape due to its languid mood, which is underlined by the various figures who have jumped into the water, and by the shepherd and shepherdess on their donkeys in the left foreground. The buildings on the steep slope on the left also contribute to this effect. As far as is known, Herman Saftleven only produced Italianate scenes at the beginning of his career,⁸ so it is difficult to accept the attribution to him unreservedly.

Some of the elements rarely occur in his work, such as the swimmers, shepherd and shepherdess, the house on the crag on the far right and the overhanging rock face. The structure of the composition, in which the large trees growing on the cliff on the left are counterbalanced by the sheer ones on the right, is also unusual. However, the combination of boats and figures in the foreground is almost identical to that in a signed picture by Saftleven dated 1667.⁹ The people and their interactions that give the present scene its anecdotal nature are entirely in the spirit of the artist. For example, in the centre there is a woman holding a boy by the hand. She seems agitated, and is gesturing at the barrels lying on the quayside. The man near the boat is looking up to her, so she is evidently speaking to him. Several others on the riverbank are watching the goings-on. The shepherdess on the donkey is also turning around and appears to be addressing her companion. Narrative details like this are very common in Saftleven’s oeuvre.

The way in which the figures are rendered, with rapidly executed, almost caricature heads, also reveals similarities to Saftleven’s style, as does the foliage. Although the rather poor condition of the painting precludes a firm judgement about its autograph nature, it nevertheless displays too many of the master’s features for it to be classified as a work by a follower.

Erlend de Groot, 2023

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

W. Schulz, Herman Saftleven 1609-1685: Leben und Werke: Mit einem kritischen Katalog der Gemälde und Zeichnungen, Berlin 1982, p. 187, no. 233 (as Herman Saftleven)

Collection catalogues

1887, p. 150, no. 1269 (as Herman Saftleven); 1903, p. 237, no. 2111 (as Herman Saftleven); 1934, p. 255, no. 2111 (as Herman Saftleven); 1976, p. 494, no. C 218 (as Herman Saftleven)

Citation

Erlend de Groot, 2023, 'attributed to Herman Saftleven, River View in a Mountainous Region, in or after c. 1667 - in or before c. 1667', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5361

(accessed 21 September 2024 19:13:57).