Elegant Company on a Causeway Leading towards a Country-House

…; sale De Vries et al., Amsterdam (F. Muller), 30 June 1914 sqq., no. 565, as D. Vinckeboons, fl. 150, to Schlüter; from whom to the museum;¹¹Copy RKD. Note RMA. on loan to the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, 1999-2011

ObjectNumber: SK-A-2699

Having been offered at auction ascribed to David Vinckeboons I (1576-1631/33), the present painting entered the museum with an attribution to Esaias van de Velde (1587-1630). On the basis of a similarity with a picture given to Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne (1589-1662) in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg,²²G. Pauli, Kunsthalle zu Hamburg: Katalog der alten Meister, Hamburg 1918, p. 176, no. 182. it was then described as by that artist. More recently, it has been thought to be the work of Sebastiaen Vrancx (1573-1647) with the attribution of the Hamburg painting following suit.³³T. Ketelsen et al., Die Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle, II: Die niederländischen Gemälde 1500-1800, Hamburg 2001, p. 303, no. 182, as attributed to Vrancx. In fact neither work should be considered as by him. In the case of the Rijksmuseum picture the level of execution seems to be no more than competent. Most likely it is the work of a journeyman painter working in the southern Netherlands.⁴⁴W. Stechow, Dutch Landscape Painting of the Seventeenth Century, London 1966, p. 32, note 60, p. 194, fig. 48, described the composition as ‘rather crude’.

The costumes – the collars in particular – are suggestive of a date in the second decade of the seventeenth century. But the support, following Klein’s calculations, was ready for use only towards the middle of the century. That being the case, the Elegant Company on a Causeway seems likely to be a pastiche.

The Hamburg and Amsterdam landscapes are similar in that both depict an elegant company walking on a tree-lined lane which leads to a country house that has a gabled facade beneath a tower topped by an onion shaped spire. The most obvious difference – apart from the elegant companies – is that the outbuildings are on different sides of the main house, and that the maypole is absent from the Rijksmuseum picture, where the subsidiary staffage differs in other respects. Furthermore, the viewpoints are from opposite angles.

Whether the Rijksmuseum picture depends on that in Hamburg or was conceived independently remains an open question. If the latter is the case the coincidences may seem remarkable, particularly as the dimensions nearly correspond. This might suggest that the two paintings are pendants.

The 1934 museum catalogue records that J. Kalf had identified the view as showing – in reverse – Kasteel Heemskerk in the province of North Holland. The house had its name changed in 1620 at the request of its then owner, Jonkkheer Daniel de Hertaing (d. 1625), to Huis Marquette; it still exists. In 1646-47, Roelant Roghman (1627-1692) drew three views of it of which that in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem,⁵⁵H.W.M. van der Wyck, J. Niemeyer and W.T. Kloek, De kasteeltekeningen van Roelant Roghman, 2 vols., Alphen aan den Rijn 1989-90, I, 1990, no. 115. taken from the east, of the front facade and entrance, is the most relevant here. It only has a very faint resemblance to the building depicted in the present picture, in the placement of the onion shaped tower on the roof above the entrance. But the many differences are enough to invalidate Kalf’s thesis. Notably absent, for instance, is a depiction of the remains of a large circular stone fort to the north-east of the house.⁶⁶As depicted by Roghman in a drawing, private collection; H.W.M. van der Wyck, J. Niemeyer and W.T. Kloek, De kasteeltekeningen van Roelant Roghman, 2 vols., Alphen aan den Rijn 1989-90, I, 1990, no. 117.

Both the present painting and that in Hamburg should be seen in the context of the country house poem, which gained popularity in the Netherlands from circa 1610.⁷⁷D. Freedberg, Dutch Landscape Prints of the Seventeenth Century, London 1980, p. 13. Indeed, serendipitously, Huis Marquette was to be the subject of one such poem about the middle of the century.⁸⁸H. van der Putten, ‘De Lusthoven der voornaamste Heeren Gebouwen in Hollandt. Loft dichten op buiten plaatsen in het manuscription Seep’, Amsterdam 1650, online (consulted 11 January 2010).

Brown has dismissed the association of the Elegant Company on a Causeway with Avenue at Middelharnis by the Dutch painter Meindert Hobbema (1638-1709) in the National Gallery, London.⁹⁹N. MacLaren, National Gallery Catalogues: The Dutch School 1600-1900, revised and expanded by C. Brown, 2 vols., London 1991, p. 178, under no. 830, referring to W. Stechow, Dutch Landscape Painting of the Seventeenth Century, London 1966, p. 32, note 60, p. 194 and fig. 48. Dumas discusses other comparable views, whose relationship is likely to be only fortuitous.¹⁰¹⁰C. Dumas, Haagse stadsgezichten 1550-1800. Topografische schilderijen van het Haagse Historisch Museum, The Hague 1991, p. 479, note 24.

Gregory Martin, 2022

1914, p. 546, no. 2454a (as Esaias van de Velde); 1934, p. 290, no. 2454a (as Esaias van de Velde); 1960, p. 333, no. 2598 A1 (as Sebastiaen Vrancx); 1976, p. 590, no. A 2699 (as attributed to Sebastiaen Vrancx)

G. Martin, 2022, 'anonymous, Elegant Company on a Causeway Leading towards a Country-House, Southern Netherlands, c. 1650', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6491