Landscape with a Herdsman, Cattle and Poultry

1652

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 46.5 cm × width 58.8 cm
outersize: depth 4.8 cm (support incl. SK-L-3895)

Inscriptions

signature and date, bottom right: C saftLeven . fe : 1652

Technical notes

Support The panel consists of two horizontally grained oak planks (approx. 22.3 and 24.2 cm), approx. 0.9 cm thick. The top edge has been trimmed slightly. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1622. The panel could have been ready for use by 1633, but a date in or after 1639 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends over the edges of the support at bottom, left and right, but not over the top edge. The first, off-white layer consists of fine white pigment particles with a minute addition of earth pigment and black pigment particles. The second ground is a very thin light grey containing white pigment particles with a minute addition of black and blue pigment particles and earth pigments.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared reflectography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. The composition was built up in rather thin layers, except for the sky, and with reserves for the ducks, chickens and rooster in the foreground and most of the grazing goat in the centre. Infrared reflectography revealed a number of compositional alterations in areas where the paint is thicker and has drying cracks. On the right, just above the billy goat, for example, the upper part of a man in a hat facing the viewer was painted out. The back of the grazing goat was enlarged and its legs, which were completely visible at first, have been partly obscured by the landscape and the sheep. Some adjustments were made to the trees, the contours of the two cows to its left and the sheep in between, and to the tail feathers of some of the ducks. By way of final accent, a red dot was added in the eye of the billy goat.
Anna Krekeler, 2023

Scientific examination and reports

infrared reflectography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 11 June 2010
paint samples: A. Krekeler, RMA, nos. SK-A-797/1-2, 11 June 2010
technical report: A. Krekeler, RMA, 11 June 2010
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 12 December 2010

Condition

Good. There is a paint loss at top centre. The area on the right, where the figure was painted out (see Technical notes) is discoloured. The warm browns in the trees on the left and in the one to the right of the bare tree appear to be overpaint. The varnish has yellowed.

Provenance

…; sale, dowager of Baron P.C. Nahuys-Hodgson et al., Amsterdam (F. Muller), 14 November 1883 sqq., no. 136, fl. 201.25¹

Object number: SK-A-797

The artist

Cornelis Saftleven (Gorinchem 1607 - Rotterdam 1681)

Cornelis Saftleven was born in Gorinchem in 1607. He and his younger brothers Herman and Abraham followed in the footsteps of their father, the painter Herman Saftleven, who probably dealt in art as well. Cornelis and Herman Jr are the only ones with an extant oeuvre. Shortly after their eldest son’s birth the family moved to Rotterdam, where Herman Sr is documented before he married. Cornelis, who was still living in his parents’ house in 1629, trained with him. His earliest pictures are two small panels with grotesque figures dated 1628.²

It is thought that he spent some time in Antwerp around 1632-34, mainly because of similarities in his output to that by Flemish artists like Adriaen Brouwer and David Teniers II from about 1634, the existence of a portrait of him drawn by Anthony van Dyck, and above all the fact that Rubens added the staffage in his works before 1637. The latter’s probate inventory lists no fewer than eight paintings by Saftleven, four of them with figures by his own hand. Another hypothesis, although it does not rule out a period in Antwerp, is that Teniers shared a studio with Cornelis and his brother Herman in Rotterdam around 1634, because there are striking parallels in the repertoire of all three at that time. Cornelis was in Utrecht in the mid-1630s, where he and Herman, who was living there, collaborated on a family portrait at nearby De Haar Castle. From 1637 on he was documented back in Rotterdam, where he married Catharina van der Heyden in 1648. The inventory drawn up after her death in 1654 lists several dozen paintings. The following year Elisabeth van den Avondt became his wife. She was a Catholic, unlike Saftleven, who was a member of the Reformed Church. In 1663 the city’s firemen paid him for 18 panels they had commissioned and in 1672 for 2 ‘watch pennants’. On 18 October 1667 Saftleven was elected dean of the Rotterdam Guild of St Luke. He died on 1 June 1681 and was buried four days later in the Franse Kerk.

Saftleven is mainly spoken of in contemporary sources as an artist of ‘apparitions’ and satanic monsters, but that type was just a small part of his output. He mastered a wide range of disciplines: genre and history pieces, stable interiors, landscapes and animal pictures. He collaborated with his fellow townsman Willem Viruly, who is said to have painted the sceneries in some of his works. Saftleven also left a large drawn oeuvre. According to the 1654 inventory he had several young pupils, one of whom, according to Houbraken, was Ludolf de Jongh (1616-1679).

Gerdien Wuestman, 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. 412; S. van Hoogstraten, Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst: Anders de zichtbaere werelt: Verdeelt in negen leerwinkels, Rotterdam 1678, p. 184; G. van Spaan, Beschrijvinge der stad Rotterdam en eenige omleggende dorpen, Rotterdam 1698, p. 421; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, I, Amsterdam 1718, pp. 342-43; ibid., II, 1719, p. 33; C. Kramm, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters: Van den vroegsten tot op onzen tijd, V, Amsterdam 1861, p. 1435; J.H. Scheffer and F.D.O. Obreen, Rotterdamsche Historiebladen, III, Rotterdam 1880, pp. 670-74; 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. 115-28; A. Bredius, ‘Het schildersregister van Jan Sysmus, Stads-Doctor van Amsterdam’, Oud Holland 8 (1890), pp. 1-17, 217-34, 297-313, esp. p. 4; C. Hofstede de Groot, ‘Een spotteekening van Cornelis Saftleven op de Dordtsche Synode’, Oud Holland 15 (1897), pp. 121-23; P. Haverkorn van Rijsewijk, ‘De geboorteplaats van Cornelis Saftleven’, Oud Holland 17 (1899), pp. 239-40; N. Alting Mees, ‘Aanteekeningen over Oud-Rotterdamsche kunstenaars, III’, Oud Holland 31 (1913), pp. 241-68, esp. pp. 255-58; J. Denucé, Kunstuitvoer in de 17e eeuw te Antwerpen: De firma Forchoudt, Antwerp 1931, p. 25; E. Wiersum, ‘Cornelis Saftleven, geboren te Gorcum in 1607, overleden te Rotterdam in 1681’, Rotterdams Jaarboekje, series III, 9 (1931), pp. 88-90; J. Denucé, De Antwerpsche ‘Konstkamers’: Inventarissen van kunstverzamelingen te Antwerpen in de 16e en 17e eeuwen, The Hague 1932, p. 69; Stechow in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXIX, Leipzig 1935, pp. 309-10; B.J.A. Renckens, ‘Enkele notities bij vroege werken van Cornelis Saftleven’, Bulletin Museum Boymans-van Beuningen 13 (1962), pp. 59-74; M.-L. Hairs, Dans le sillage de Rubens: Les peintres d’histoire anversois au XVIIe siècle, Liège 1977, pp. 20-21; W. Schulz, Cornelis Saftleven, 1607-1681: Leben und Werke: Mit einem kritischen Katalog der Gemälde und Zeichnungen, Berlin 1978, pp. 1-5; Van der Zeeuw in N.I. Schadee (ed.), Rotterdamse meesters uit de Gouden Eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Historisch Museum) 1994, pp. 295-96; R. van Dijk, Nieuwsbrief Stichting Gouden Eeuw Gorinchem, no. 3 (Spring 2009); Veldman in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, C, Munich/Leipzig 2018, pp. 344-45; Bredius notes, RKD

Entry

Several cows, sheep and goats have gathered at a small pool populated and surrounded by ducks, chickens and a rooster, while a herdsman is leaning back against a hillock and playing a flute.³ This 1652 picture by Cornelis Saftleven contains so many animals that there is little land or water to be seen without one.⁴ In the same decade Saftleven painted more scenes of this kind with livestock.⁵ The work of the Utrecht artist Gijsbert de Hondecoeter has been mentioned as the source of inspiration for his poultry,⁶ which he could have known through his brother Herman, who lived in that city.

The abundance of animals, which seem to be scattered arbitrarily across the landscape, and their relative proportions, not all of which appear to be correct, give the scene a rather unbalanced look. That may be because Saftleven modified the composition in various places as he was going along. For example, several of the trees and animals seem to be later additions. Moreover, infrared reflectography revealed that he had originally planned a figure in a hat squatting on the ground behind the crooked tree trunk on the right and looking straight at the viewer (fig. a). In a later stage he was replaced by a billy goat. Since the present herdsman playing the flute was not reserved but added on top of the background, it was probably never the intention to depict two men. At a certain moment Saftleven must have decided to paint out the figure on the right and include a less prominent one on the left.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2023

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

W. Schulz, Cornelis Saftleven, 1607-1681: Leben und Werke: Mit einem kritischen Katalog der Gemälde und Zeichnungen, Berlin 1978, p. 208, no. 572

Collection catalogues

1887, p. 150, no. 1263; 1903, pp. 235-36, no. 2102; 1934, p. 254, no. 2102; 1976, p. 492, no. A 797

Citation

Gerdien Wuestman, 2023, 'Cornelis Saftleven, Landscape with a Herdsman, Cattle and Poultry, 1652', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5357

(accessed 27 May 2024 21:00:44).

Figures

fig. a Infrared reflectogram of *Landscape with a Herdsman, Cattle and Poultry* (detail)