Abraham Rutgers (Amsterdam 1632-Amsterdam 1699)
He came from a long line of Mennonite textile merchants, who left Antwerp because of religious persecution, settling first in Haarlem and later in Amsterdam. Abraham followed in the family profession, working as a silk merchant in Amsterdam. He copied drawings by, and was close friends with, fellow silk merchant and amateur artist Jacob Esselens (1626/28-1687), to whose children he was appointed guardian just before Esselens’s burial on 15 January 1687. He also collaborated with Ludolf Bakhuizen (1630-1708), who added figures to at least one of Rutgers’ drawings, a sheet now in the Albertina, Vienna (inv. no. 10015).
Most of all, however, Rutgers is known for his topographical views along the Vecht, near Utrecht, drawn with distinctive brown ink hatching and strong, diagonally receding compositions. Besides three large albums of his drawings, one in the collection of the Museum Simon van Gijn, Dordrecht (inv. no. SIK 10), and two that in 2018 appeared on the Haarlem art market, consisting of drawings described as Principale (drawings after life), Inventieve (imaginary scenes) and Copijen (copies after other artists). Another large group was preserved in the Atlas Munnicks van Cleeff, now part of the John and Marine van Vlissingen Art Foundation.
Abraham’s cousin was Agneta Blok (1629-1704), the famous patron, horticulturalist and collector who commissioned artists to record the plants she grew in her garden at Vijverhof, her estate on the Vecht. There were close ties between the two families. Abraham’s father, banker and cloth merchant David Rutgers II (1601-1668), was Agneta’s uncle, and his mother was Susanna de Flines (1607-1677), the aunt of Agneta’s second husband, Sybrand de Flines (1623-1697). Abraham’s grandson Antoni Rutgers the Younger (1695-1778) was a collector and marchand amateur, whose collection of drawings was sold at auction in Amsterdam on 1 December 1778.
Jane Shoaf Turner, 2019
References
U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXIX (1935), p. 239; J.W. Niemeijer, ‘Varia Topografica, IV. Een album met Utrechtse gezichten door Abraham Rutgers’, Oud-Holland 79 (1964), no. 2, pp. 127-34; I.H. van Eeghen, ‘Abraham en Antoni Rutgers. De kunstzin van grootvader en kleinzoon’, Jaarboek Amstelodamum 67 (1975), pp. 174-88; E. Munnig Schmidt, ‘Abraham Rutgers en Ludolf Backhuysen samen op het ijs’, Jaarboekje van het Oudheidkundig Genootschap “Niftarlake”, 2006, pp. 57-58; J. Turner and R.-J. te Rijdt (eds.), Home and Abroad: Dutch and Flemish Landscape Drawings from the John and Marine van Vlissingen Art Foundation, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Paris (Fondation Custodia) 2015-16, p. 132, under nos. 54-56 (text by J. Shoaf Turner)
