Johannes Glauber

Arcadian Landscape with Figures near an Obelisk

c. 1674 - c. 1695

Inscriptions

  • signed: lower left (on stone fragment), in red chalk, Glauber

  • inscribed on verso: lower centre, in an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century hand, in pencil (mostly concealed), Gla[…]

  • stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of the museum (L. 2166)

Technical notes

Watermark: None

Provenance

…; acquired by the museum (L. 2166), by 1872

ObjectNumber: RP-T-00-327

The artist

Biography

Johannes Glauber (Utrecht 1646 - Schoonhoven c. 1726)

He was the son of Johan Rudolf Glauber (1604-1670) and Helena Cornelisdr (1615-1689). His father was of German origin, but he was baptized in Utrecht on 18 May 1646. Two of his younger siblings, Diana Glauber (1650-c. 1721) and Johann Gottlieb Glauber (1656-1703), became artists. Probably during the second half of the 1660s, Johannes studied for nine months with Nicolaes Berchem (1621/22-1683) in Amsterdam. After his apprenticeship, he copied Italian paintings for the Amsterdam art dealer Gerrit Uylenburgh (c. 1625-1679). His ‘wanderjahre’ led him first to Paris, accompanied by his brother Johann Gottlieb. There, in 1671, he worked for the Flemish art dealer and flower painter Jean-Michel Picart (c. 1600-1682). In 1672-73, he is recorded in Lyon, where he worked for Adriaen van der Kabel (c. 1630/31-1705). He arrived in Rome in 1674 or 1675 and joined the Schildersbent or Bentvueghels (society of Northern artists active in Rome), which gave him the bent-name Polidoor, a reference to his favourite model, Polidoro da Caravaggio (1499-1543). In Italy – where he also lived in Padua (1676-77) and Venice (1677-79) – he was close friends with Karel Dujardin (1626-1678) and Albert Meyering (1645-1714).

Together with Meyering, he travelled from Italy to Hamburg, where he remained from 1679 to 1684. Meyering may also have accompanied him to Copenhagen during that period, when Glauber spent six months painting decorative works at Charlottenburg Castle for the military commander Ulrik Frederik Gyldenløve (1638-1704), an illegitimate son of King Frederick III of Denmark and Norway (1609-1670).

By 1684, Glauber was back in Amsterdam. He took up lodgings with his friend Gerard de Lairesse (1641-1711) and became a member of Nil Volentibus Arduum, a literary society founded in 1669 with the aim of promoting French classicism. With Lairesse, Glauber produced wall paintings for Stadholder Willem III (1659-1702) in the palaces of Het Loo and Soestdijk. The pair also decorated patrician houses, such as those of Jacob de Flines (1657-1714) in Amsterdam, and Jacques Meijers (?-1721) and Adriaen Paets I (1631-1686) in Rotterdam. When the Swedish architect Nicodemus Tessin II (1654-1728) visited Amsterdam in 1687, he described Glauber as the best landscape painter then living in the city. Later that same year, Johannes is recorded as a member of the Confrerie Pictura in The Hague, but it is not known if he was then living there. On 28 March 1704, at the age of fifty-nine and documented as a resident of the Noordse Bos in Amsterdam, he married forty-eight-year-old Susanna Vennekool (1656-1727), sister of the architect Steven Jacobsz Vennekool (c. 1660-1719).1Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, DTB 704, p. 92. Meyering was his witness.

When Glauber drafted a will in Amsterdam on 11 October 1711, he was a resident of Schoonhoven. There, as Houbraken reported, he spent his old age in the Proveniershuis. He is said to have died in 1726. On 17 December 1727, Susanna Vennekool, ‘widow of Johannes Glauber’, was buried in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam.2Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, DTB 1058, p. 48.

Glauber belongs to the third generation of Dutch Italianate painters, producing works in the international classicizing taste promulgated by French artists then active in Rome, Gaspard Dughet (1615-1675) and Claude Lorrain (1604/5-1682). Unfortunately, most of Glauber’s works are undated, making it difficult to establish a chronology throughout his peripatetic career. One painting, Wooded River Landscape with Shepherds, signed and dated 166[…], was on the Vienna art market in 2009,3Sale, Vienna (Dorotheum), 15 December 2009, no. 12. and another signed and dated painting, Landscape with a Shepherd and Flautist, from 1686, is in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (inv. no. 1301). A sketchy pen-and-wash landscape drawing, signed and dated, Amsterdam A° 1685 den 6 Julij, is preserved in the Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden (inv. no. C 1892-14). All these dated works seem to have been executed in Amsterdam. Glauber often collaborated with other artists, including Lairesse and Dirk Maas (1656-1717). Among Glauber’s etchings are prints after drawings by Meyering and the Monogrammist MVO (active c. 1650-80),4Bartsch 20-25. His etchings B. 1 and 2 apparently are based on drawings by Meyering and the Monogrammist MVO (formerly called Michiel van Overbeek), private collection, illustrated in S. Alsteens and H. Buijs, Paysages de France dessinés par Lambert Doomer et les artistes hollandais et flamands des XVIe et XVIIe siècles, Paris 2008, nos. 104, 105; cf. ibid. p. 331 (n. 15); the etchings’ inscriptions only state that Glauber made and published the prints (‘J. Glauber fe. (et ex.)’); most likely, B. 3 and 4 were also after the Monogrammist MVO’s design. Two more etched views of the Grande Chartreuse, north of Grenoble, in vertical format, B. 5 and 6, could have been made after designs by Meyering, as was suggested by A. Zwollo, Hollandse en Vlaamse veduteschilders te Rome, 1675-1725, Assen 1973, p. 20. as well as after paintings by Dughet and his friend Lairesse.5F.W.H. Hollstein et al., German Engravings, Etchings and Woodcuts, c. 1400-1700, 85 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1954-, X (1975), nos. 31-69; A. Roy, Gérard de Lairesse 1640-1711, Paris 1992, pp. 405-9. His only recorded pupil was Willem Troost I (1684-1752).

Annemarie Stefes, 2017

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, III (1721), pp. 66, 210, 216-19; J.C. Weyerman, De levens-beschryvingen der Nederlandsche konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen, 4 vols., The Hague/Dordrecht 1729-69, III (1729), p. 55; A.J. Dézallier d'Argenville, Abrégé de la vie des plus fameux peintres, 3 vols., Paris 1745-52, III (1752), p. 173; C. Kramm, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters van den vroegsten tot op onzen tijd, 7 vols., Amsterdam 1857-64, II (1858), pp. 575-76; F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis, 7 vols., Rotterdam 1877-90, IV (1881-82), pp. 109, 156, 211; G. Upmark, ‘Ein Besuch in Holland 1687 aus den Reiseschilderungen des schwedischen Architekten Nicodemus Tessin’, Oud Holland 18 (1900), no. 4, p. 125; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, I (1906), p. 587; A. Bredius (ed.), Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der holländischen Kunst des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts, 8 vols., The Hague 1915-22, I (1915), p. 345; III (1917), p. 987; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XIV (1921), pp. 243-44 (entry by W. von Dirksen); H. Gerson, Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Amsterdam 1942, pp. 59-60, 167, 186, 216, 470; G.J. Hoogewerff, De Bentvueghels, The Hague 1952, pp. 117, 136; B.J.A. Renckens, ‘Een Portret van Jacob Vennecool. Notities over hem, zijn familie en Johannes Glauber’, Oud Holland 73 (1958), no. 1, pp. 177, 179; W.L. Strauss (ed.), The Illustrated Bartsch, New York and elsewhere 1978-, VII (1978), pp. 195-220, nos. 1-26; D.P. Snoep, ‘Gerard de Lairesse als plafond- en kamerschilder’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 18 (1970), no. 4, pp. 193-98; A. Zwollo, Hollandse en Vlaamse veduteschilders te Rome, 1675-1725, Assen 1973, pp. 5, 10-20, 38, 195, 198; F.W.H. Hollstein et al., German Engravings, Etchings and Woodcuts, c. 1400-1700, 85 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1954-, X (1975), pp. 65-130; C. Kämmerer, Die klassisch-heroische Landschaft in der niederländischen Landschaftsmalerei, 1675-1750, Berlin 1975 (PhD diss., Freie Universität Berlin), pp. 41, 45-47, 49, 52-53, 81-100; A. Roy, Gérard de Lairesse 1640-1711, Paris 1992, pp. 51, 69, 79, 81, 94, 135, 159, 187, 205, 212, 249, 250, 310, 320, 331, 332, 337, 339, 341, 352-53, 363, 366, 405-9, 492, 514-15, 535; E. Buijsen (ed.), Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw. Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag, 1600-1700, Zwolle 1998, pp. 307-08; A.W. Vliegenthart, Het Loo, een paleis als museum. Journaal van een restauratie, Apeldoorn 1999, pp. 69, 168; F. Lammertse and J. van der Veen, Uylenburgh & Son: Art and Commerce from Rembrandt to De Lairesse, 1625-1675, exh. cat. London (Dulwich Picture Gallery)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2006, pp. 224, 226-27, 231, 287; A. Beyer et al. (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992-, LVI (2007), pp. 69-71 (entry by E. Schavemaker); P. Groenendijk, Beknopt biografisch lexicon van Zuid- en Noord-Nederlandse schilders, graveurs, glasschilders, tapijtwevers et cetera van ca. 1350 tot ca. 1720, Utrecht 2008, p. 354; H. Gebelein et al. (eds.), Johann Rudolph Glauber: Alchemistische Denkweise, neue Forschungsergebnisse und Spuren in Kitzingen, Kitzingen am Main 2011 (Schriftenreihe des Städtischen Museums Kitzingen, vol. 4), pp. 121-27; T. Žakula, ‘Reforming Dutch Art: Gerard de Lairesse on Beauty, Morals and Class’, Simiolus 37 (2013-14), pp. 59, 65-66, 72-78, 80, 127 (n. 649), 129

Entry

The present sheet, signed by Johannes Glauber in the same medium used for the drawing, was correctly classified as by the artist when it entered the collection at an unknown date. Though executed in a sketchier manner than Glauber’s finished drawings in the same technique – such as examples in the Hamburger Kunsthalle (inv. no. 30718),6A. Stefes, Niederländische Zeichnungen, 1450-1800, 3 vols., coll. cat. Hamburg 2011 (Die Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, vol. 2), no. 358 the Special Collections, Universiteit Leiden (inv. nos. PK-T-AW-532 and PK-T-AW-533), and the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo (inv. no. 84 kl 1)7I. Veenstra and T. van Kooten, Onderweg in het landschap. Tekeningen uit de verzameling van het Kröller-Müller Museum, 1600-1900, exh. cat. Otterlo (Kröller-Müller Museum) 1996, p. 30. – it may still have been intended as an autonomous work of art, the differences in style probably to be explained by a different date. However, as Schavemaker rightly stated, the rather homogenous oeuvre of Johannes Glauber, mostly undated, makes it difficult to establish a chronological order.8A. Beyer et al. (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992-, LVI (2007), p. 70 (entry by E. Schavemaker).

Even if apparently signed by Glauber, however, the drawing has also been associated with Albert Meyering (1645-1714).9C. Kämmerer, Die klassisch-heroische Landschaft in der niederländischen Landschaftsmalerei, 1675-1750, Berlin 1975 (PhD diss., Freie Universität), pp. 59, 105, 168 (n. 132), 174. This is for good reason, since it closely corresponds, in reverse, to an etching and engraving by Meyering (B. 10; e.g. inv. no. RP-P-1883-A-6897)10F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, VII (1952), no. 10. The similarities include not only the general composition but also key elements, such as the obelisk and the buildings behind, as well as the staffage. Yet the drawing – which bears no traces of indentation – cannot be the etching’s actual model, for it is considerably larger than the print (234 x 196 mm) and varies in detail. Where there is a statue on the wall in the drawing, the print features an urn; where there are three slender trees in the centre of the drawing, the etching has only one next to a tree stump; and where there is a capital of a column lying on the ground next to the seated figures, there is a round basin in the etching.

Meyering’s etching was part of a series of twelve, for one of which the Rijksmuseum owns the original design (inv. no. RP-T-1885-A-469). This provides a yardstick for what the as yet unidentified design for B. 10 would have looked like.11It was probably drawn in a darker tone of red chalk, less orange and more purple in character, and with more rigid hatching. Since the print credits Meyering as both the inventor and maker of the etching (‘A: Meyeringh Inv: et fec:’), it suggests that Glauber must have drawn inspiration from his friend’s work. However, since the concept of intellectual property was more liberally conceived in the seventeenth century than it is today, it might even be the other way around, with Meyering copying Glauber. In either case, it is a striking example of friends borrowing motifs from each other.

If the precise sequence of the prototype to variant copy could be established, it might also give a clue as to the date of the present drawing. Meyering’s etchings are dated circa 1695,12A. Zwollo, Hollandse en Vlaamse veduteschilders te Rome, 1675-1725, Assen 1973, p. 22. providing a terminus ante quem for the drawing if it were derived from Meyering’s print. If, however, it is the other way around, a terminus post quem is given by the motif of the capital in the left foreground of Glauber’s drawing, which, in turn, was directly copied from an etching by Abraham Genoels (1640-1723) made in Rome, where Genoels was between 1674 and 1682 (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-52.530).13F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, VII (1952), no. 24: ‘A. Genoels f. Romae’. For Genoels’ influence on Glauber, cf. C. Kämmerer, Die klassisch-heroische Landschaft in der niederländischen Landschaftsmalerei, 1675-1750, Berlin 1975 (PhD diss., Freie Universität), p. 99.

Annemarie Stefes, 2017

Literature

C. Kämmerer, Die klassisch-heroische Landschaft in der niederländischen Landschaftsmalerei, 1675-1750, Berlin 1975 (PhD diss., Freie Universität), pp. 59, 105, 168 (n. 132), 174 (n. 226; as ‘Meyering [...] without an inventory number’)

Citation

A. Stefes, 2017, 'Johannes Glauber, Arcadian Landscape with Figures near an Obelisk, c. 1674 - c. 1695', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.44116

(accessed 1 June 2025 09:53:39).

Footnotes

  • 1Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, DTB 704, p. 92.
  • 2Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, DTB 1058, p. 48.
  • 3Sale, Vienna (Dorotheum), 15 December 2009, no. 12.
  • 4Bartsch 20-25. His etchings B. 1 and 2 apparently are based on drawings by Meyering and the Monogrammist MVO (formerly called Michiel van Overbeek), private collection, illustrated in S. Alsteens and H. Buijs, Paysages de France dessinés par Lambert Doomer et les artistes hollandais et flamands des XVIe et XVIIe siècles, Paris 2008, nos. 104, 105; cf. ibid. p. 331 (n. 15); the etchings’ inscriptions only state that Glauber made and published the prints (‘J. Glauber fe. (et ex.)’); most likely, B. 3 and 4 were also after the Monogrammist MVO’s design. Two more etched views of the Grande Chartreuse, north of Grenoble, in vertical format, B. 5 and 6, could have been made after designs by Meyering, as was suggested by A. Zwollo, Hollandse en Vlaamse veduteschilders te Rome, 1675-1725, Assen 1973, p. 20.
  • 5F.W.H. Hollstein et al., German Engravings, Etchings and Woodcuts, c. 1400-1700, 85 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1954-, X (1975), nos. 31-69; A. Roy, Gérard de Lairesse 1640-1711, Paris 1992, pp. 405-9.
  • 6A. Stefes, Niederländische Zeichnungen, 1450-1800, 3 vols., coll. cat. Hamburg 2011 (Die Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, vol. 2), no. 358
  • 7I. Veenstra and T. van Kooten, Onderweg in het landschap. Tekeningen uit de verzameling van het Kröller-Müller Museum, 1600-1900, exh. cat. Otterlo (Kröller-Müller Museum) 1996, p. 30.
  • 8A. Beyer et al. (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992-, LVI (2007), p. 70 (entry by E. Schavemaker).
  • 9C. Kämmerer, Die klassisch-heroische Landschaft in der niederländischen Landschaftsmalerei, 1675-1750, Berlin 1975 (PhD diss., Freie Universität), pp. 59, 105, 168 (n. 132), 174.
  • 10F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, VII (1952), no. 10.
  • 11It was probably drawn in a darker tone of red chalk, less orange and more purple in character, and with more rigid hatching.
  • 12A. Zwollo, Hollandse en Vlaamse veduteschilders te Rome, 1675-1725, Assen 1973, p. 22.
  • 13F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, VII (1952), no. 24: ‘A. Genoels f. Romae’. For Genoels’ influence on Glauber, cf. C. Kämmerer, Die klassisch-heroische Landschaft in der niederländischen Landschaftsmalerei, 1675-1750, Berlin 1975 (PhD diss., Freie Universität), p. 99.