Rijksmuseum

Object data

pen and brown ink, with grey wash; with possibly later additions in watercolour; traces of framing line in black ink (right and lower edges)

height 96 mm × width 149 mm

Inscriptions

signed, inscribed and dated by the artist, in brown ink: lower right, J: de Grave: fecit; upper centre, de Schans naVanje 1670 8/8 : (exact date expressed as a fraction, month over day)
inscribed on verso: centre, in brown ink, feitama; below that, in graphite, J de Grave; below that, in brown ink, N0 . 49. page 151 (crossed out); below that, in brown ink, no 144. Capdeux – 8.; left of that, in brown ink (effaced), illegible code; above that, in graphite, f r: m r : —
stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: coat of arms (fragment)

Condition

Foxing throughout; holes in upper and lower left; some repairs

Provenance

…; collection Sybrand Feitama II (1694-1758), Amsterdam; his sale, Amsterdam (B. de Bosch), 16 October 1758 sqq., Album Q, no. 49 (‘Twee gezichtjes, het eene een Schans en het andere het dorp Bry’), together with one other drawing, fl. 2.15 for both, to Pieter Fouquet, Jr (1729-1800), Amsterdam;¹ …; from the dealers M. Marignac (d. after 1951) and M. Marignac (1879-1956), fl. 17, to the museum (L. 2228), 1911

Object number: RP-T-1911-100

The artist

Josua de Grave (Amsterdam 1643 - The Hague 1712)

He was the son of the French merchant Claude Pietersz de Grave [Graeff] (c. 1597/98-after 1667) and Sara Bols (?-c. 1655) and was baptized in the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, on 2 July 1643.² De Grave had three brothers and two sisters.³ He grew up in Haarlem, where the family moved soon after his birth. In 1659, at age sixteen, he entered the Haarlem Guild of St Luke,⁴ but it is unknown with whom he trained. Based on a drawing dated 1663, depicting a landscape in the vicinity of Paris, now in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (KdZ 2480),⁵ we know that he moved to Paris during or after his training. De Grave lived in Paris until 1668, after which he moved to Maastricht.

In Maastricht he likely met Barend Klotz (?-?) and Valentijn Klotz (c. 1646-1721), two fellow draughtsmen affiliated with the Dutch army.⁶ Until 1670, the trio resided in Maastricht, where they made around sixty drawings of the city and its surroundings. Only a handful of these drawings are signed (e.g. inv. nos. RP-T-1946-63 and RP-T-1911-100).⁷ In the following decades, the three artists accompanied the army of the Dutch States-General under the Stadholder Prince Willem III of Orange Nassau (1650-1702) on their various campaigns: to Bergen op Zoom (1671-early 1672), cities around the Dutch ‘waterlinie’ (1672) and various regions in the southern Netherlands and present-day Belgium (1674, 1675 and 1676).

On 3 December 1670, De Grave married Jenneton de Bisson (1645-?) in Maastricht.⁸ The newlyweds moved from Maastricht to The Hague, joining De Grave’s sister and his brother, Cornelis, who had moved there already.⁹ After each military campaign, De Grave returned to The Hague, where he settled permanently after the last campaign in 1676 and died in July 1712.¹⁰ Several drawings dated between the 1670s and the 1710s record sights around the city. In the final years of his career, he also produced paintings and drawings of (Italianate) gardens and fantasy landscapes (e.g. inv. nos. RP-T-00-148 and RP-T-1895-A-3063).

Josua de Grave often signed his work, using his full name or a variation, such as J. de Grave or Josua de Grave fecit. In many instances, he also included a location and a date. His signature is usually followed by a colon, then the year and the day and month (expressed as a fraction). His handwriting is quite distinct, using elegant, curly (capital) letters and a typical old-fashioned letter ‘e’. His drawings were initially quickly sketched in graphite or black chalk, after which he applied brown ink lines to further work out the composition. He seemed to have relied on a certain formula for most of his drawings, placing the horizon in the centre of the sheet and scattering the main elements around it. He often included trees, foliage or figures closer to the foreground, creating a repoussoir. De Grave drew his trees by outlining the trunks and branches, then scribbling in the leaves using cloud-like shapes.¹¹ In most instances, in addition to the brown ink composition, grey washes are applied sparingly, particularly for the shadows on houses and roofs, foliage and simple cloud formations. Drawings that are more heavily washed are likely to have been worked up by (a) later hand(s).

Carolyn Mensing, 2019

References

R. van Eijnden and A. van der Willigen, ‘Klotz, Valentijn’, in U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XX (1927), pp. 549-50; R.J.G.M. van Hasselt, ‘Drie tekenaars van topografische prenten in Brabant en elders. Valentijn Klotz, Josua de Grave en Constantijn Huygens Jr.’, Jaarboek Oudheidkundige Kring ‘De Ghulden Roos’ 25 (1965), pp. 145-55; M.H. Breitbarth-van der Stok, ‘Josua de Grave, Valentinus Klotz en Bernardus Klotz’, Bulletin Koninklijke Nederlandse Oudheidkundige Bond 68 (1969), pp. 96-98; J.H. van Mosselveld and W.A. van Ham, Tekeningen van Bergen op Zoom. Topografische afbeeldingen van Bergen op Zoom en omgeving uit de zestiende tot en met de achttiende eeuw, exh. cat. Bergen op Zoom (Markiezenhof) 1973-74, pp. 15-18; G. Gordon, ‘Grave, Josua de’, in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols., London/New York 1996, XIII, pp. 323-24

Entry

As a strategic site along the River Maas, Fort Navagne (also known as Elvenschans) – located some two kilometres south of the present-day village of Eijsden in Limburg (close to the border with Belgium) – was occupied by the Spanish twice, first during the Siege of Maastricht (1579) and again in 1673. In the eighteenth century, the fortification was used to collect tolls from passing ships. In August 1670, De Grave lived in Maastricht, only thirteen kilometres away from Fort Navagne. He drew the structure from the opposite side of the river, prominently placing the entrenchment and the castle, owned by the Elven de Navagne family, in the centre of the composition.

The drawing once belonged to Sybrand Feitama II (1694-1758), an eighteenth-century collector known to have commissioned contemporary artists to ‘improve’ some of the drawings in his collection.¹² In Feitama’s Notitie der teekeningen, a manuscript recording his purchases and sales, he mentioned twenty-eight drawings that had been embellished, finished or filled in at a later date.¹³ The present sheet is recorded in his manuscript, though in this case Feitama did not mention any later additions. It is therefore not certain if the sheet was enhanced with watercolour while in his family’s possession.

Carolyn Mensing, 2020

Citation

C. Mensing, 2020, 'Josua de Grave, View of Fort Navagne, Limburg, Eijsden, 1670-08-08', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.51835

(accessed 31 May 2024 06:35:09).