Abraham Rutgers

View along the River Vecht, near Maarssen, with a Docking Station, Three Figures in the Foreground and the Country Estate of Vechthoven in the Distance

Maarssen, c. 1682 - c. 1699

Inscriptions

  • inscribed on verso: lower left, in brownish-red ink, n o74; above that, in pencil, J x S; centre right, in pencil, Rutgers; below that, in pencil, N 6 (effaced)

  • stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of Pitcairn Knowles (L. 2643); lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

Watermark: None visible through lining

Condition

A small tear lower left, and some stains throughout

Provenance

…; collection William Pitcairn Knowles (1820-94), Rotterdam and Wiesbaden (L. 2643); his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 25 June 1895 sqq., no. 573, fl. 24, to the dealer H.J. Valk for the Vereniging Rembrandt; from whom on loan to the museum, 1895; from whom, fl. 29.15, to the museum (L. 2228), 1901

ObjectNumber: RP-T-1901-A-4536

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The artist

Biography

Abraham Rutgers (Amsterdam 1632 - Amsterdam 1699)

He came from a long line of Mennonite textile merchants, who left Antwerp because of religious persecution, settling first in Haarlem and later in Amsterdam.1On Abraham Rutgers and his grandson Antoni, see I.H. van Eeghen, ‘Abraham en Antoni Rutgers. De kunstzin van grootvader en kleinzoon’, Jaarboek Amstelodamum 67 (1975), pp. 174-88; and for information on various other members of the family, see https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Rutgersfamily&oldid=109376. Abraham followed in the family profession, working as a silk merchant in Amsterdam. He copied drawings by, and was close friends with, fellow silk merchant and amateur artist Jacob Esselens (1626/28-1687), to whose children he was appointed guardian just before Esselens’s burial on 15 January 1687.2For copies after Esselens, see J.W. Niemeijer, ‘Varia Topografica, IV. Een album met Utrechtse gezichten door Abraham Rutgers’, Oud-Holland 79 (1964), p. 129, fols. 42 and 74; and for the documents relating to Rutgers’s appointment as guardian to his children, see I.H. van Eeghen, ‘Abraham en Antoni Rutgers. De kunstzin van grootvader en kleinzoon’, Jaarboek Amstelodamum 67 (1975), p. 176. He also collaborated with Ludolf Bakhuizen (1630-1708), who added figures to at least one of Rutgers’ drawings, a sheet now in the Albertina, Vienna (inv. no. 10015).3E. Munnig Schmidt, ‘Abraham Rutgers en Ludolf Backhuysen samen op het ijs’, Jaarboekje van het Oudheidkundig Genootschap “Niftarlake”, 2006, p. 57.

Most of all, however, Rutgers is known for his topographical views along the Vecht, near Utrecht, drawn with distinctive brown ink hatching and strong, diagonally receding compositions. Besides three large albums of his drawings, one in the collection of the Museum Simon van Gijn, Dordrecht (inv. no. SIK 10), and two that in 2018 appeared on the Haarlem art market,4Sale, Haarlem (Bubb Kuyper), 1 June 2018, no. 5996. consisting of drawings described as principale (drawings after life), inventieve (imaginary scenes) and copijen (copies after other artists), another large group was preserved in the Atlas Munnicks van Cleeff, now part of the John and Marine van Vlissingen Art Foundation.

Abraham’s cousin was Agneta Blok (1629-1704), the famous patron, horticulturalist and collector who commissioned artists to record the plants she grew in her garden at Vijverhof, her estate on the Vecht. There were close ties between the two families. Abraham’s father, banker and cloth merchant David Rutgers II (1601-1668), was Agneta’s uncle, and his mother was Susanna de Flines (1607-1677), the aunt of Agneta’s second husband, Sybrand de Flines (1623-1697). Abraham’s grandson Antoni Rutgers the Younger (1695-1778) was a collector and marchand amateur, whose collection of drawings was sold at auction in Amsterdam on 1 December 1778.

Jane Shoaf Turner, 2019

References
U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXIX (1935), p. 239; J.W. Niemeijer, ‘Varia Topografica, IV. Een album met Utrechtse gezichten door Abraham Rutgers’, Oud-Holland 79 (1964), no. 2, pp. 127-34; I.H. van Eeghen, ‘Abraham en Antoni Rutgers. De kunstzin van grootvader en kleinzoon’, Jaarboek Amstelodamum 67 (1975), pp. 174-88; E. Munnig Schmidt, ‘Abraham Rutgers en Ludolf Backhuysen samen op het ijs’, Jaarboekje van het Oudheidkundig Genootschap “Niftarlake”, 2006, pp. 57-58; J. Turner and R.-J. te Rijdt (eds.), Home and Abroad: Dutch and Flemish Landscape Drawings from the John and Marine van Vlissingen Art Foundation, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Paris (Fondation Custodia) 2015-16, p. 132, under nos. 54-56 (text by J. Shoaf Turner)

Entry

The view depicted is the same as that in inv. no. RP-T-1897-A-3482, as well as several others, including a drawing from the Atlas Munnicks van Cleeff (inv. no. MCS/856), formerly in the Dutch Royal Collection and since 2012 in the John and Marine van Vlissingen Art Foundation; one inscribed bijt Swarte Varken aen de Vegt, of which a reproduction is in the Utrechts Archief (inv. no. 202337); one, with figures by Ludolf Bakhuizen (1630-1708), in the Albertina, Vienna (inv. no. 10015);5M. Bisanz-Prakken, Drawings from the Albertina: Landscape in the Age of Rembrandt, exh. cat. New York (Drawing Center)/Fort Worth (Kimbell Art Museum) 1995, no. 65. and two drawings in the Van Gijn album in the Museum Simon van Gijn, Dordrecht (inv. no. SIK 10, fols. 45-46).

Based on the sheet on the website of the Utrechts Archief, the present writer identified the pavilion-roofed teahouse (theekoepel) in the ex-Munnicks van Cleeff drawings (the same as in the present sheet) as that of the country estate of Vechthoven, with its low, curved wall between the house and the river.6J. Shoaf Turner and R.-J. te Rijdt (eds.), Home and Abroad: Dutch and Flemish Landscape Drawings from the John and Marine van Vlissingen Art Foundation, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Paris (Fondation Custodia) 2015-16, no. 55 (text by J. Shoaf Turner). The vantage was located further south along the Zandpad from Rutgers’ own country house on the river, Hoogevecht (destr. 1830; for which see inv. no. RP-T-1888-A-1430x(R)).

Vechthoven was sold in 1675 to Isaac Walijns (?-?) by Joan Huydecoper van Maarsseveen II (1625-1704),7See https://www.archieven.nl/nl/zoeken?mivast=0&mizig=210&miadt=39&miaet=1&micode=67&minr=16985593&miview=inv2. whose family had owned and developed most of the property along that stretch of the river.8G. Schwartz, ‘Jan van der Heyden and the Huydecopers of Maarsseveen’, The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 11 (1983), pp. 204-14. A closer view of the teahouse at Vechthoven is preserved in one of the drawings by Rutgers in the Van Gijn album (inv. no. SIK 10, fol. 45).9J.W. Niemeijer, ‘Varia Topografica, IV. Een album met Utrechtse gezichten door Abraham Rutgers’, Oud-Holland 79 (1964), no. 2, p. 129.

The same stretch of the river, with the teahouse of Vechthoven in the distance, can be seen in an engraving by Daniël Stoopendaal (1672-1726), no. 5, of 98 views published in De zegepraalende Vecht, vertoonende verscheidene Gesichten van Lustplaatsen, Heeren huysen en dorpen, Beginnende van Uitrecht en met Muyden besluytende (Amsterdam, 1719).10Hollstein, XXVIII (1984), no. 55.

Depicted in the left foreground of the present work is the kind of wooden docking station with seats that were located along the banks of the Vecht and used by both fishermen and tow-boats. The wooden beams over the seats guided the lines with which the boats were towed.

Jane Shoaf Turner, 2019

Citation

J. Shoaf Turner, 2019, 'Abraham Rutgers, View along the River Vecht, near Maarssen, with a Docking Station, Three Figures in the Foreground and the Country Estate of Vechthoven in the Distance, Maarssen, c. 1682 - c. 1699', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.59745

(accessed 22 May 2025 18:44:10).

Footnotes

  • 1On Abraham Rutgers and his grandson Antoni, see I.H. van Eeghen, ‘Abraham en Antoni Rutgers. De kunstzin van grootvader en kleinzoon’, Jaarboek Amstelodamum 67 (1975), pp. 174-88; and for information on various other members of the family, see https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Rutgersfamily&oldid=109376.
  • 2For copies after Esselens, see J.W. Niemeijer, ‘Varia Topografica, IV. Een album met Utrechtse gezichten door Abraham Rutgers’, Oud-Holland 79 (1964), p. 129, fols. 42 and 74; and for the documents relating to Rutgers’s appointment as guardian to his children, see I.H. van Eeghen, ‘Abraham en Antoni Rutgers. De kunstzin van grootvader en kleinzoon’, Jaarboek Amstelodamum 67 (1975), p. 176.
  • 3E. Munnig Schmidt, ‘Abraham Rutgers en Ludolf Backhuysen samen op het ijs’, Jaarboekje van het Oudheidkundig Genootschap “Niftarlake”, 2006, p. 57.
  • 4Sale, Haarlem (Bubb Kuyper), 1 June 2018, no. 5996.
  • 5M. Bisanz-Prakken, Drawings from the Albertina: Landscape in the Age of Rembrandt, exh. cat. New York (Drawing Center)/Fort Worth (Kimbell Art Museum) 1995, no. 65.
  • 6J. Shoaf Turner and R.-J. te Rijdt (eds.), Home and Abroad: Dutch and Flemish Landscape Drawings from the John and Marine van Vlissingen Art Foundation, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Paris (Fondation Custodia) 2015-16, no. 55 (text by J. Shoaf Turner).
  • 7See https://www.archieven.nl/nl/zoeken?mivast=0&mizig=210&miadt=39&miaet=1&micode=67&minr=16985593&miview=inv2.
  • 8G. Schwartz, ‘Jan van der Heyden and the Huydecopers of Maarsseveen’, The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 11 (1983), pp. 204-14.
  • 9J.W. Niemeijer, ‘Varia Topografica, IV. Een album met Utrechtse gezichten door Abraham Rutgers’, Oud-Holland 79 (1964), no. 2, p. 129.
  • 10Hollstein, XXVIII (1984), no. 55.