watermark: Arms of Amsterdam (fragment); similar to Laurentius, II, no. 71 (The Hague: 1662) or no. 225 (Middelburg: 1675))

…; from the dealer D. Dirksen, as ‘Roghman’, fl. 8, to the museum (L. 2228), 1890

Object number: RP-T-1890-A-2342

Owing to its subject-matter, this drawing was traditionally attributed to Roelant Roghman (1627-1691), who made a famous series of castle drawings. The castle itself cannot be identified and might have been from the artist’s imagination rather than based on an actual site. An anonymous modern annotation on the verso suggests a possible attribution to Jan van Kessel, an artist to whom a similar painted composition, Flat Landscape with a Watermill and a Distant View of a City (Bergen op Zoom?), in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn (inv. no. 38.117 ), was previously given.¹⁰¹⁰A.I. Davies, Jan van Kessel (1641-1680), Doornspijk 1992, no. D15 (as doubtful). The rendering of foliage with tiny dots made with the point of the brush is reminiscent of Van Kessel’s drawings, such as his View of Monnickendam from the Buitensingel, in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem (inv. no. R+ 008),¹¹¹¹Ibid., no. d23 as well as various drawings in his sketchbook in the Fondation Custodia, Paris (inv. no. 2006-T.30).¹²¹²J. Giltaij, ‘A Newly Discovered Seventeenth-century Sketchbook’, Simiolus 33 (2007-08), no. 1/2, fols. 61, 75, 80-82. While Van Kessel did indeed produce drawings in a similar format, for instance, Village Church under Trees by Water in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt-am-Main (inv. no. 3474),¹³¹³As suggested by W. T. Kloek, in his undated notes on Roghman, kindly made available in May 2017. there is a heaviness in the present sheet that is hardly comparable to the style of Van Kessel’s drawings. Further, the heavy chalk strokes and the overly large figures, especially those in the boat to the left, are quite naïve. If the curved line at the top of the scene is intended to convey a rainbow, that would also be an unusual feature.

Roghman specialist Kloek suggested a possible connection with the drawings of Esaias van de Velde (1587-1630). While the firm, decisive contours are similar to examples by Van de Velde, such as Village and Windmill to the Left of a River, whose present whereabouts are unknown,¹⁴¹⁴G.S. Keyes, Esaias van den Velde (1587-1630), Doornspijk 1984 (Aetas aurea: Monographs on Dutch and Flemish Painting, vol. 4), no. D 130. in the opinion of this author, he is an unlikely candidate, especially given the composition’s somewhat archaic appearance.

Certainly by the same hand is an unpublished drawing of a similar subject (a manor house surrounded by water) in a private collection in Paris, bearing an old attribution to Anthonie Waterloo (1609-1690) in the hand of the British collector William Esdaile (1758-1837), which features the same kind of oversized, puppet-like staffage (fig. 1). Moreover, in my view, a drawing in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Landscape with a Bridge over a Canal (inv. no. 22821), also formerly kept under the name of Waterloo, but recently tentatively catalogued by me as ‘Jacob van Ruisdael (?)’, may be added to that group of drawings.¹⁵¹⁵A. Stefes, Niederländische Zeichnungen, 1450-1800, 3 vols., coll. cat. Hamburg 2011 (Die Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, vol. 2), no. 897. While Waterloo should likewise be ruled out as possible author, his oeuvre offering no equivalent to the present drawing’s clumsiness, another potential candidate – suggested by Jeroen Giltaij¹⁶¹⁶E-mail to this author, 6 July 2017. – may be the Ruisdael follower Cornelis Gerritsz Decker (1610/20-1678), who reveals a similar naivety in his paintings, such as the monogrammed Farmhouse by a River, which was on the Vienna art market in 1996.¹⁷¹⁷Sale, Vienna (Christie’s), 29 October 1996 sqq., no. 40.

Annemarie Stefes, 2018

A. Stefes, 2018, 'circle of Jan van Kessel, View of a Castle Surrounded by Water, c. 1660 - c. 1670', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200143904