Mountain Landscape with a River Valley

Jan van Aken, c. 1652

Rivierdal met rechts op de voorgrond rustende reizigers.

  • Artwork typedrawing
  • Object numberRP-T-1889-A-2028
  • Dimensionsheight 96 mm x width 150 mm
  • Physical characteristicsblack chalk, with grey wash; later additions in pen and brown ink; framing line in brown ink

Jan van Aken

Mountain Landscape with a River Valley

? Amsterdam, c. 1652

Inscriptions

  • inscribed: lower right, probably in a late seventeenth-century hand, in brown ink (same colour as framing line), J. van Aken

  • inscribed on verso: upper right, in red chalk or red ink (partially concealed), II; lower left, in a nineteenth-century hand, in pencil, J. v. Aken f.

  • stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: none

Condition

Some rubbed-off grey ink in lower right and lower left corner; abrasion at upper right

Provenance

…; collection Jacob de Vos Jbzn (1803-78), Amsterdam; his widow, Abrahamina Henrietta de Vos-Wurfbain (1808-83), Amsterdam; sale, Jacob de Vos Jbzn, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 22 May 1883 sqq., no. 637, with one other drawing (inv. no. RP-T-1889-A-2029), fl. 15, to Georg Carl Valentin Schöffer for the Vereniging Rembrandt;1Note RMA. from whom, to the museum (L. 2228), 1889

Object number: RP-T-1889-A-2028

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The artist

Biography

Jan van Aken (? Amsterdam c. 1614 – Amsterdam 1661)

According to a tradition of unknown origin, he was born in 1614 in Amsterdam. Houbraken described him as a ‘een Paardeschilder, maar in ’t klein’ (‘painter of horses, on a small scale’).2A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, III (1721), p. 183. His oeuvre consists of more than forty drawings and twenty-one landscape etchings, including a series of horses after Pieter van Laer (1599-1642)3F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, I (1947), nos. 1-6. and four Rhine landscapes after sketches by Herman Saftleven (c. 1609-1685), one of which is dated 1648.4Ibid., nos. 18-21. The nature of Van Aken’s relation to both artists remains unexplored.

Among the examples of dated drawings include two from 1652: Valley with Ruined Bridge in the Special Collections, Universiteit Leiden (inv. no. PK-T-AW-3), and Rocky Landscape with Figures on a Road by a Stream in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1836,0811.1).5A.M. Hind, Catalogue of Drawings by Dutch and Flemish Artists Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, 5 vols., coll. cat. London 1915-32, III (1926), no. 1. Only a handful of paintings can be securely associated with the artist, for instance a pair from the early 1650s, Dune Landscape with Travellers and Gypsies (1650) in a private collection,6R. Hirsch, Seventeenth-century Painters of Haarlem, exh. cat. Allentown (PA) (Allentown Art Museum) 1965, no. 96. and Mountainous River Landscape (165(?)) in the Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie, Warsaw (inv. no. M.Ob.437 MNW), previously published as signed and dated 1650.7H. Benesz and M. Kluk, Early Netherlandish, Dutch, Flemish and Belgian Paintings, 1494-1983, in the Collections of the National Museum in Warsaw and the Palace of Nieborów: Complete Illustrated Summary Catalogue, 2 vols., coll. cat. Warsaw 2016, no. 5.

What is generally assumed to be this artist, a certain ‘Jan van Aken’, brother-in-law of a Lammert van den Velden, living at the corner of the Nieuwbrugsteeg, was buried in the Oudezijds Kapel on 25 March 1661.

Annemarie Stefes, 2019

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, III (1721), p. 183; R. van Eijnden and A. van der Willigen, Geschiedenis der vaderlandsche schilderkunst, 4 vols., Haarlem 1816-40, I (1816), pp. 214-15; F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis, 7 vols., Rotterdam 1877-90, V (1882-83), p. 203; A.D. de Vries, ‘Biografische aanteekeningen betreffende voornamelijk Amsterdamsche schilders, plaatsnijders, enz. en hunne verwanten (I)’, Oud-Holland 3 (1885), p. 58; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, I (1906), p. 8; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, I (1907), p. 158 (entry by E.W. Moes); F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, I (1947), pp. 5-9; W.L. Strauss (ed.), The Illustrated Bartsch, New York and elsewhere 1978-, I (1978), pp. 267-79, nos. 1-21; W. Schulz, Herman Saftleven (1609-1685): Leben und Werke, mit einem kritischen Katalog der Gemälde und Zeichnungen, Berlin 1982, pp. 72, 113-14; A. Beyer et al. (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992-, I (1992), p. 700; 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. 57; https://rkd.nl/explore/artists/774

Entry

The present drawing is of the same type and format as inv. no. RP-T-1897-A-3396. The size of this pair – executed in a somewhat coarser style than the other drawings by Van Aken in the Rijksmuseum’s collection, less elegant and less ornamental in their respective contours – is smaller than inv. nos. RP-T-1889-A-2029 and RP-T-1897-A-3397. The black chalk is more clearly visible, serving not only for the initial sketch but also to define forms. Also belonging to this group of small drawings are sheets in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1895,0915.1090),8A.M. Hind, Catalogue of Drawings by Dutch and Flemish Artists Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, 5 vols., coll. cat. London 1915-32, III (1926), no. 5. the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (inv. no. 21627),9A. Stefes, Niederländische Zeichnungen, 1450-1800, 3 vols., coll. cat. Hamburg 2011 (Die Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, vol. 2), p. 67, no. 1. and the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (KdZ 125).10E. Bock and J. Rosenberg, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin: Die niederländischen Meister: Beschreibendes Verzeichnis sämtlicher Zeichnungen, 2 vols., coll. cat. Berlin 1930, I, p. 68, II, pl. 55.

The figures were partially reworked with pen and brown ink, possibly by the same late seventeenth-century hand that added the artist’s name at lower right. The drawing in Berlin bears a similar inscription datable to the last third of the seventeenth century (as can be deduced by the old-fashioned ‘e’).

Annemarie Stefes, 2019

Citation

A. Stefes, 2019, 'Jan van Aken, Mountain Landscape with a River Valley, Amsterdam, c. 1652', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200116901

(accessed 9 December 2025 06:49:58).

Footnotes

  • 1Note RMA.
  • 2A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, III (1721), p. 183.
  • 3F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, I (1947), nos. 1-6.
  • 4Ibid., nos. 18-21.
  • 5A.M. Hind, Catalogue of Drawings by Dutch and Flemish Artists Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, 5 vols., coll. cat. London 1915-32, III (1926), no. 1.
  • 6R. Hirsch, Seventeenth-century Painters of Haarlem, exh. cat. Allentown (PA) (Allentown Art Museum) 1965, no. 96.
  • 7H. Benesz and M. Kluk, Early Netherlandish, Dutch, Flemish and Belgian Paintings, 1494-1983, in the Collections of the National Museum in Warsaw and the Palace of Nieborów: Complete Illustrated Summary Catalogue, 2 vols., coll. cat. Warsaw 2016, no. 5.
  • 8A.M. Hind, Catalogue of Drawings by Dutch and Flemish Artists Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, 5 vols., coll. cat. London 1915-32, III (1926), no. 5.
  • 9A. Stefes, Niederländische Zeichnungen, 1450-1800, 3 vols., coll. cat. Hamburg 2011 (Die Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, vol. 2), p. 67, no. 1.
  • 10E. Bock and J. Rosenberg, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin: Die niederländischen Meister: Beschreibendes Verzeichnis sämtlicher Zeichnungen, 2 vols., coll. cat. Berlin 1930, I, p. 68, II, pl. 55.