Support The panel consists of two horizontally grained oak planks (approx. 21.4 and 36 cm). The reverse is slightly bevelled on the left and right, and has irregularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1627. The panel could have been ready for use by 1638, but a date in or after 1644 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The double ground consists of a semi-opaque, off-white layer, used primarily to fill the grain of the wood, which is followed by an opaque, pale ochre-coloured layer, containing white pigment with an addition of dark brown pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared reflectography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the right edge of the support, and over the top, bottom and left edges. The composition was built up from the back to the front and from dark to light in thin, smooth layers. Initially a fluid, semi-transparent dark paint was used to position the near landscape and trees. The sky and the distant landscape were executed next, applied wet in wet and with rich, opaque paint in long, sweeping brushstrokes and shorter, curved ones for the clouds. The sky extends over the sketched-in branches of the trees, which were then added, together with the landscape, with rich, fluid, semi-transparent paint. Finally, the highlights and foreground details such as foliage were suggested with small, thick dabs and strokes providing a textured surface. Infrared reflectography clearly revealed quite a few changes to the branches of both trees on the left, some of which have become very faintly visible to the naked eye. The two short limbs of the bare tree, for example, were originally far longer. Cross-sections show that the water in the foreground was composed of a thin, dark, medium-rich scumble containing black, blue and bright orange pigments, and the opaque clouds were created with primarily white pigment to which a few bright orange pigment particles were added.
Emma Boyce, 2024

Fair. On the reverse, one thin, oak batten (approx. 82.5 cm) was attached along the join and another (approx. 20 cm) provides reinforcement for a split on the left side of the upper plank. The ground and paint layers are cracked along the length of the join as well as on the upper left and right edges where the panel has two splits. There are minimal losses of ground and paint around the perimeter, and the paint surface is somewhat abraded, particularly in the thin paints of the sky and water. Disturbing retouchings are mostly confined to these areas and along the damaged join. The varnish has slightly yellowed.

…; from F. Muller & Co., Amsterdam, fl. 460, to the museum, May 1906

Object number: SK-A-2230

Johannes Schoeff is generally regarded primarily as a follower of Jan van Goyen and Salomon van Ruysdael,³³See, for example, W. Stechow, Salomon van Ruysdael: Eine Einführung in seine Kunst, Berlin 1938, pp. 55-56; H.-U. Beck, Künstler um Jan van Goyen: Maler und Zeichner, Doornspijk 1991, p. 390. but only in the 1990s was attention drawn to the influence of Antwerp on his later paintings.⁴⁴A. van der Willigen, Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Landscape and Marine Painters Working in Oils, Active before 1725 (unpub. typescript from 1993-98, with additions by M. de Kinkelder, RKD, unpag.). That is particularly true of this panoramic view with a river meandering through a hilly landscape seen from a slightly higher vantage point. It is executed in soft colours, with brown, green and grey predominating, and the leaves of the vegetation are rendered with countless dots and dashes. One beautiful detail is depicted on the left, where the trunks of a dead and a living tree cross. A comparison has been made between this work and that of the Flemish landscapist Lucas van Uden.⁵⁵A. van der Willigen, Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Landscape and Marine Painters Working in Oils, Active before 1725 (unpub. typescript from 1993-98, with additions by M. de Kinkelder, RKD, unpag.).

The painting is dated 1651 and was recorded as such in the museum inventory, but in the 1976 collection catalogue the third digit was read as ‘3’.⁶⁶P.J.J. van Thiel et al., All the Paintings of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam: A Completely Illustrated Catalogue, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1976, p. 506. That the resulting year of 1631 is incorrect was confirmed by dendrochronological analysis.⁷⁷See Technical notes. There is a closely related river scene by Schoeff dated 1650 in Bruntál Castle in the Czech Republic.⁸⁸H.-U. Beck, Künstler um Jan van Goyen: Maler und Zeichner, Doornspijk 1991, p. 400, no. 1125 A 25, panel, 66.5 x 99 cm; photo RKD.. It seems odd that in the early 1650s, when he had already produced many landscapes that are related to the oeuvre of contemporaries such as Van Goyen and Van Ruysdael,⁹⁹H.-U. Beck, Künstler um Jan van Goyen: Maler und Zeichner, Doornspijk 1991, pp. 395-99, reproduces several signed landscapes by Schoeff from the second half of the 1640s. Schoeff came up with a Flemish-looking picture like this, but there may be a logical reason for that. On 30 May 1651 he was documented as staying in the Stabroek manor house near Antwerp, which belonged to his father.¹⁰¹⁰Bredius notes, RKD. It is very well possible that he had lived there in previous years, or had contacts in its vicinity,¹¹¹¹His marriage to Anna Mailliaers of Antwerp in 1649 may have been the reason for the departure to their shared birthplace. which could explain the Flemish character of this and other works from that period.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2024

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

H.-U. Beck, Künstler um Jan van Goyen: Maler und Zeichner, Doornspijk 1991, p. 401, no. 1130 A30

1907 (1st suppl.), p. 372, no. 2160a; 1976, pp. 505-06, no. A 2230

Gerdien Wuestman, 2024, 'Johan Pietersz. Schoeff, River View, 1651', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/2004209