Arent Arentsz

River Landscape with Gypsies

c. 1625 - c. 1630

Inscriptions

  • signature, in ligated monogram, on the right, on a wooden box:AA

Technical notes

The support consists of two, horizontally grained oak planks. The back of the panel has been planed down and cradled. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1606. The panel could have been ready for use by 1617, but a date in or after 1623 is more likely. The ground has an off-white colour. The paint layers were built up from the back to the front, the figures being reserved in the background.

Scientific examination and reports

  • technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 24 november 2004
  • dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 20 juni 2005

Condition

Fair. The paint layer is slightly abraded and the varnish is discoloured.

Provenance

...; sale, Jonkheer A.W. Witsen Baron Straalman (†) et al., Amsterdam (F. Muller), 25 November 1913 sqq., no. 319, fl. 500, to the dealer Frederik Muller;1Copy RKD....; sale, W.A. Royaards et al., Amsterdam (F. Muller), 20 June 1916 sqq., no. 177, fl. 700;...; sale, J. Groot Jamin et al., Amsterdam (F. Muller), 12 December 1922, no. 151, fl. 725;2Copy RKD....; sale, H.L. Klein et al., Amsterdam (F. Muller), 7 July 1931 sqq., no. 200, fl. 800;...; sale, C.A. van Hees (Reeuwijk), Amsterdam (Mak van Waay), 31 May 1960, no. 2, fl. 37,000, to the dealer A. Nijstad, Lochem;3Copy RKD. from whom, fl. 44,030, to the museum, 1960

ObjectNumber: SK-A-4033

The artist

Biography

Arent Arentsz (Amsterdam 1585/86 - Amsterdam 1631)

Arent Arentsz, known as Cabel, was born in 1585/86 as the third son of the sailmaker Arent Jansz and Giert Joosten, who lived in a house called ‘De Cabel’ (or ‘Kabel’) in Zeedijk in Amsterdam. On 19 May 1619, at the age of 33, he married Josijntje (or Joosje) Jans in Sloten. The marriage remained childless. On 4 May 1622 he bought a plot of land on Prinsengracht in Amsterdam, facing the Noordermarkt, where he built a house which he called ‘De vergulde Cabel’ (‘The gilt cable’). He was buried in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam on 18 August 1631.

Nothing is known about his artistic training or stylistic development. Most of his paintings bear his monogram AA, but not one of them is dated.4Moes (in Thieme/Becker V, 1911, p. 325) mentions one dated painting from 1629, formerly in the Wachtmeister collection, Wanäs, Sweden, but that work has not been traced. He specialized in landscape paintings, mostly in an oblong format, with prominent figures of peasants, fishermen and hunters in the foreground, and a river scene, polder or winter landscape in the distance. In his winter landscapes Arentsz’s work is dependent on that of Hendrick Avercamp, with the figures and sometimes the composition being based on Avercamp’s paintings or drawings, or both.5For example, his paintings in Toronto, Karlsruhe and Manchester, and in Amsterdam The IJ in Winter with Amsterdam on the Horizon in the Amsterdams Historisch Museum; illustrated in The Hague 2001, no. 1.

Jan Piet Filedt Kok, 2007

References
De Roever 1889, pp. 29-30; Moes in Thieme/Becker V, 1911, p. 325; Poensgen 1923; Van Eeghen 1967; Van Suchtelen in Saur V, 1992, p. 28

Entry

In this painting, which is quite large by Arentsz’s standards, a group of gypsy women have pitched their tents on a riverbank outside a town. One of them is reading the palm of a fisherboy on the right, an elderly woman is paying the one in the middle, and in the tent on the left is a woman with a baby and two children. The gypsies are set apart by their long hair, dark complexion and long dresses, and in the case of the one in the centre, a blanket. There is another, but smaller version of this painting,6Paris, Galerie Heim, panel, 27.5 x 51.5 cm; illustrated in dealer cat. Heim 1974, no. 23. in which the gypsy sitting to the right of the tent is missing and the two groups in the centre of the composition have changed places. In terms of the palette, the structuring of the composition with a broad view of a river in the background, and the draughtsman-like execution, this work fits in with the Rijksmuseum’s other paintings by Arentsz from the period c. 1625-30. The motif of the duck pen in the left middleground, in which a swimming dog is chasing the ducks, is also found in a painting by Arentsz in Paris.7Muse´e du Louvre; illustrated in Poensgen 1923, p. 119. The building in the right background is the Haarlem Gate in Amsterdam, which was built by Hendrick de Keyser in 1616-17. Here it appears to have been used more as an isolated motif rather than to define a location.8With thanks to Boudewijn Bakker for this observation.

Gypsies, also known as Egyptians (after their supposed land of origin) and heathens, were regarded as antisocial because of their nomadic lifestyle, and were repeatedly getting into trouble with the authorities for begging, vagrancy, theft and swindling people out of money for reading palms and predicting the future.9See Amsterdam 1965, pp. 22-23, with earlier literature. Roaming gypsies foretelling the future to ordinary citizens were a recurrent theme in Dutch and French prints, drawings and paintings from the beginning of the 17th century.10Pigler 1974, II, pp. 571-74; see the discussion of this subject by Luijten in Amsterdam 1997, pp. 133-36, in connection with The Fortune-teller, a print after a design by Jacques de Gheyn II. Gypsies are also depicted a few times in the work of Hendrick Avercamp. A gypsy woman reads a peasant woman’s hand in the foreground of his Winter Scene on a Frozen Canal of c. 1620 in Los Angeles,11Carter collection; Welcker 1979, p. 214, no. S 58.1, fig. 25. and camping and fortune-telling gypsies also feature in two drawings.12Welcker 1979, p. 266, no. T 88, p. 272, no. T 118, fig. 50. The financial accounts of Kampen record that gypsies (‘the heathens’) were expelled from the town in 1625.13Welcker 1979, p. 177, Appendix 67.

Jan Piet Filedt Kok, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 7.

Literature

Heppner 1940, p. 242; Amsterdam 1965, pp. 22-23, no. 61

Collection catalogues

1976, p. 87, no. A 4033; 2007, no. 7

Citation

J.P. Filedt Kok, 2007, 'Arent Arentsz., River Landscape with Gypsies, c. 1625 - c. 1630', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5810

(accessed 2 May 2025 06:53:18).

Footnotes

  • 1Copy RKD.
  • 2Copy RKD.
  • 3Copy RKD.
  • 4Moes (in Thieme/Becker V, 1911, p. 325) mentions one dated painting from 1629, formerly in the Wachtmeister collection, Wanäs, Sweden, but that work has not been traced.
  • 5For example, his paintings in Toronto, Karlsruhe and Manchester, and in Amsterdam The IJ in Winter with Amsterdam on the Horizon in the Amsterdams Historisch Museum; illustrated in The Hague 2001, no. 1.
  • 6Paris, Galerie Heim, panel, 27.5 x 51.5 cm; illustrated in dealer cat. Heim 1974, no. 23.
  • 7Muse´e du Louvre; illustrated in Poensgen 1923, p. 119.
  • 8With thanks to Boudewijn Bakker for this observation.
  • 9See Amsterdam 1965, pp. 22-23, with earlier literature.
  • 10Pigler 1974, II, pp. 571-74; see the discussion of this subject by Luijten in Amsterdam 1997, pp. 133-36, in connection with The Fortune-teller, a print after a design by Jacques de Gheyn II.
  • 11Carter collection; Welcker 1979, p. 214, no. S 58.1, fig. 25.
  • 12Welcker 1979, p. 266, no. T 88, p. 272, no. T 118, fig. 50.
  • 13Welcker 1979, p. 177, Appendix 67.