View of Kasteel Nijenrode along the River Vecht, Seen from the North-east

Inscriptions

signed and dated, in brown ink: lower right, Jleupenius (JL in ligature); next to this (partially effaced), 166[5]
inscribed on verso by the artist: lower centre, in brown ink, nienrhoode bij maersen […] 1665
inscribed on verso of mount: centre left, in black chalk, 516 Z; below that, in an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century hand, in graphite, Riddermatige Hofstad Neyenrode / van Agteren in ‘t Stigt 1665 / J. Leupenius fecit / N. 6.; lower centre, in a nineteenth-century hand, in pencil, J. Leupenius
stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of De Vos (L. 1450); next to that, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: none visible through lining

Condition

Laid down

Provenance

…; ? anonymous sale, Amsterdam (A.J. van Tetroode), 31 March 1824, Album A, no. 20 (‘De ridderlijke Hofstede Neijenrode. Met dito [Biester]’); …; ? sale, Johannes Hermanus Molkenboer (1773-1824, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (J. de Vries et al.), 17 October 1825 sqq., Album B, no. 32 (‘Gezigt op de Hofstede Nijenroode aan de Vecht, van achteren te zien; meesterlijk met de pen en roet, door J. Lupenius’), fl. 17, to Diederik Jan Singendonck (1784-1833), Utrecht;¹Copy RKD. his sale, Utrecht (H. van Ommeren), 17 January 1834 sqq., Album A, no. 42 (description same as above), fl. 11:5:-, to the dealer J.N. Hulswit, Amsterdam;²Hofstede de Groot notes, RKD. …; collection Jacob de Vos Jbzn (1803-78), Amsterdam (L. 1450); 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. 292, fl. 155, to the dealer R.W.P. de Vries for the Vereniging Rembrandt;³Copy RKD. from whom acquired by the museum (L. 2228), 1888⁴For security reasons, the drawing was transferred from the Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken to the museum, 22 October 1888.

ObjectNumber: RP-T-1888-A-1650

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The artist

Biography

Johannes Leupenius (Amsterdam 1643 – Amsterdam 1693)

Leupenius’s father, the clergyman and linguist Petrus Leupenius (1607-1670), was born in Colchester, Essex, the son of Flemish parents, who for religious reasons had fled to England at the end of the sixteenth century.⁵G. Geerts, Genus en geslacht in de Gouden Eeuw. Een bijdrage tot de studie van de nominale klassifikatie en daarmee samenhangende adnominale flexievormen en pronominale verschijnselen in Hollands taalgebruik van de zeventiende eeuw, Brussels 1966 (Bouwstoffen en studiën voor de geschiedenis en de lexicografie van het Nederlands, vol. 10), p. 96. In 1622 Petrus was back in the Netherlands and enrolled as a student at the University of Leiden. He was subsequently appointed as a clergyman in ‘s-Hertogenrade (1633), Hattem (1637) and Amsterdam (1642). In 1634 he married Sara Bekou (before c. 1615-1678), the daughter of the Flemish ‘beaytrapier’ (textile merchant) Pauwels Bekou (c. 1570-1634). Johannes Leupenius was their third son. He was baptized on 10 May 1643 in the Zuiderkerk in Amsterdam, together with his twin sister Suzanne (1643-before 1683).⁶Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, DTB 93, p. 32.

Unlike his father and his older brother Paulus (1636-1676), Johannes did not pursue a religious career, but worked as a land surveyor and cartographer for the city council of Amsterdam. From circa 1670 until his death, he made several maps, including Map of the Coast between Calais and Cadiz (1676) (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-67.829),⁷Hollstein, X (1954), p. 54, no. 7. Map of the Hoogheemraadschap of the Krimpenerwaard (1683) (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-AO-14-5B) and an atlas of 1693 with twenty-eight coloured maps and drawings of buildings and mills in Oostzaan in the Stadsarchief, Zaanstad (inv. no. 50.2901). In 1677 Johannes married the twenty-two-year-old Maria Minuit (1655-1750), a daughter of the wine merchant Esaias Minuit (?-?).⁸Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, DTB 503, p. 577. The couple moved in with his parents, who were living in the house In de Witte Gans at Prinsengracht 142. Between 1667 and 1691, they had six children, of which two died in infancy.

Johannes was also an amateur draughtsman and printmaker. Though undocumented, he is traditionally said to have studied with Rembrandt around 1660.⁹Sumowski, Drawings, VII (1983), p. 3451. However, the approximately twenty-five landscape drawings attributed to Johannes are more likely to have been inspired by landscape drawings by Rembrandt’s early friend and colleague Jan Lievens (1607-1674), who moved from The Hague to Amsterdam by 1659.¹⁰A.K. Wheelock, Jr, ‘Jan Lievens; Bringing New Light to an Old Master’, in A.K. Wheelock, Jr, with S.S. Dickey et al., Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Milwaukee (Milwaukee Art Museum)/Amsterdam (Rembrandthuis) 2008-09, p. 22. The connection with Lievens is strengthened by Johannes’s signature on his drawing of 1667 in the famous album amicorum of Jacob Heyblocq (1623-1690) in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague (inv. no. KW 131 H 26:277).¹¹K. Thomassen and J.A. Gruys (eds.), The Album Amicorum of Jacob Heyblocq: Introduction, Transcriptions, Paraphrases & Notes to the Facsimile, 2 vols., Zwolle 1998, no. 192. According to the accompanying poem, Leupenius was a former pupil of Heyblocq at the Amsterdam Grammar School. It is signed and dated ‘ILeupe / 1667 / Filius / PLeupe / nii’ with the ‘IL’ written in the same manner as the monogram of Lievens.

Marleen Ram, 2019

References
J. Immerzeel, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1842-43, II (1843), p. 190; 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, IV (1860), p. 966; A.D. de Vries, ‘Biografische aanteekeningen betreffende voornamelijk Amsterdamsche schilders, plaatsnijders, enz. en hunne verwanten (II)’, Oud Holland 3 (1885), p. 159; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, II (1906), p. 30; M.D. Henkel, ‘Leupenius (Leupe), Johannes’, in U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXIII (1929), pp. 145-46; B.P.J. Broos, ‘Leupenius, Johannes’, in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols., London/New York 1996, XIX, p. 258; M. Ram, ‘New Drawings by Johannes Leupenius’, Master Drawings 58 (2019), no. 2, pp. 207-25

Entry

The drawing belongs to a group of approximately twenty-five drawings with landscape motifs that were executed by Leupenius in the second half of the 1660s. They recall Rembrandt’s landscape drawings of the 1650s, but their similarity to the drawing style of Jan Lievens (1607-1674) is more striking. It is presumed that the latter started making landscape drawings after his return to Amsterdam in 1644, though most of his sheets are dated to the 1660s.¹²G. Rubinstein, ‘The Drawings of Jan Lievens’, in A.K. Wheelock, Jr, with S.S. Dickey, Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Milwaukee (Milwaukee Art Museum)/Amsterdam (Rembrandthuis) 2008-09, p. 75. Leupenius, who could have seen these highly accomplished works in his hometown, seems to have adopted certain characteristics of Lievens’s draughtsmanship, particularly the rendering of the shaded parts in the foliage with short, diagonal strokes, which sometimes flow into careful parallel hatching.

Unlike the more traditional views of Kasteel Nijenrode seen from the south-east, Leupenius positioned himself a little bit further down the River Vecht and drew the castle from behind. It must be summer. The lush foliage of the trees conceals the view, with only the octangle tower and its cupola (built in 1632) clearly visible. The drawing is one of the last depictions of this originally medieval castle before it was demolished by the French troops in 1673.

There are three other drawings of Kasteel Nijenrode traditionally ascribed to Leupenius. A stylistically and compositionally closely related drawing in the Albertina, Vienna (inv. no. 10105),¹³Sumowski, Drawings, VII (1983), no. 1556; M. Bisanz-Prakken, Rembrandt and his Time: Masterworks from the Albertina, Vienna, exh. cat. Milwaukee (Milwaukee Art Museum) 2005-06, no. 82; W. Beelaerts van Blokland and C. Dumas, De kasteeltekeningen van Abraham Rademaker, Zwolle 2006, p. 103 (n. 561). was executed in the same year and probably also depicts the castle, now almost completely hidden behind trees. A second sheet belongs to the heirs of the late C.P. van Eeghen of The Hague.¹⁴Sumowski, Drawings, VII (1983), no. 1566x. According to Sumowski, the cursory drawing style of that sheet suggests a study made in situ, whereas the Amsterdam drawing is probably a composed studio work. However, because of its unusual composition and the naturalistic rendering of the light on the foliage, it is more likely that the present sheet was initially made as a drawing from life and only later worked up in the studio, adding, for instance, the heavy repoussoir on the left. A third drawing in Museum Flehite, Amersfoort (inv. no. AC 12-168-1),¹⁵W. Beelaerts van Blokland and C. Dumas, De kasteeltekeningen van Abraham Rademaker, Zwolle 2006, p. 79 (fig. 114). depicts Kasteel Nijenrode from the south-east. It is very close to Leupenius’s etching of the same castle (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-46.456),¹⁶Hollstein, X (1954), p. 54, no. 1. which is part of a series of six etchings of country houses along the Amstel and the Vecht of circa 1668-1671. According to Dumas, this drawing is either a copy by Aert Schouman (1710-1792) after the print or Leupenius’s preliminary study in black chalk that has been reworked by Schouman.¹⁷W. Beelaerts van Blokland and C. Dumas, De kasteeltekeningen van Abraham Rademaker, Zwolle 2006, p. 77; C. Dumas, ‘Improving Old Master Drawings by Aert Schouman’, in A. Boschloo (ed.), Aemulatio: Imitation, Emulation and Invention in Netherlandish art from 1500 to 1800: Essays in Honor of Eric Jan Sluijter, Zwolle 2011, p. 463.

The drawing in Vienna is signed and dated 1665 at the lower right, presumably the same year as the present work, though the last digit of the Rijksmuseum sheet has been effaced. There also seems originally to have been a number inscribed in ink, possibly ‘No 6’ (the number that is annotated on the verso). This same number is inscribed after the date on the Vienna sheet. Virtually the same inscription, again with the addition of ‘No 6’, is found on the verso of a drawing of the same castle by Abraham Rutgers (1632-1699) from after 1673 in the Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris (inv. no. 4376).¹⁸M. van Berge-Gerbaud, Rembrandt et son école: Dessins de la Collection Frits Lugt, exh. cat. Paris (Institut Néerlandais)/Haarlem (Teylers Museum) 1997-98, p. 214, under no. 96 (n. 1). All three sheets with depictions of the same castle must once have been in the same collection, and were probably kept in an album of topographical representations.

Bonny van Sighem, 2000/Marleen Ram, 2019

Literature

Hollandsche teekenkunst in de Gouden Eeuw, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1935, no. 87; M.D. Henkel, Teekeningen van Rembrandt en zijn school, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1942 (Catalogus van de Nederlandsche teekeningen in het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam, vol. 1), no. 3, pl. 152; E.B.J. Postma, Nijenrode in prent. Met een beknopt overzicht van zeven eeuwen historie, Breukelen 1972, pp. 28-29, repr.; C. van Hasselt, Rembrandt et ses contemporains: Dessins hollandais du dix-septième siècle, Collection Frits Lugt, Institut Néerlandais, exh. cat. New York (Pierpont Morgan Library)/Paris (Institut Néerlandais) 1977-78, p. 145, under no. 98 (n. 7); B.P.J. Broos, Rembrandt en tekenaars uit zijn omgeving, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1981 (Oude tekeningen in het bezit van de Gemeentemusea van Amsterdam waaronder de collectie Fodor, vol. 3), p. 202, under no. 59; W. Schulz, Herman Saftleven (1609-1685): Leben und Werke, mit einem kritischen Katalog der Gemälde und Zeichnungen, Berlin 1982, p. 297; P. Schatborn and E. Ornstein-van Slooten, Landschappen van Rembrandt en zijn voorlopers, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 1983, no. 65; W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-92, VII (1983), no. 1555, with additional earlier literature; M. Schapelhouman and P. Schatborn, Land & water. Hollandse tekeningen uit de 17de eeuw in het Rijksprentenkabinet/Land & Water: Dutch Drawings from the 17th Century in the Rijksmuseum Print Room, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet) 1987, no. 71; M. Bisanz-Prakken, Die Landschaft im Jahrhundert Rembrandts: Niederländische Zeichnungen des 17. Jahrhunderts aus der Graphischen Sammlung Albertina, exh. cat. Vienna 1993, p. 94, under no. 53; M. van Berge-Gerbaud, Rembrandt et son école: Dessins de la Collection Frits Lugt, exh. cat. Paris (Institut Néerlandais)/Haarlem (Teylers Museum) 1997-98, pp. 184, under no. 81 (n. 4), 214, under no. 96 (n. 1), 216, under no. 96 (n. 5); B.C. van den Boogert et al., Buiten tekenen in Rembrandts tijd, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 1998, pp. 56 (fig. 5), 65; M. Bisanz-Prakken, Rembrandt and his Time: Masterworks from the Albertina, Vienna, exh. cat. Milwaukee (Milwaukee Art Museum) 2005, p. 176, under no. 82; J. Shoaf Turner, Dutch Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library: Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, 2 vols., coll. cat. New York 2006, p. 96, under no. 124 (n. 2); A. Stefes, Niederländische Zeichnungen, 1450-1800, 3 vols., coll. cat. Hamburg 2011 (Die Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, vol. 2), p. 345, under no. 594 (n. 1)

Citation

B. van Sighem, 2000/M. Ram, 2019, 'Johannes Leupenius, View of Kasteel Nijenrode along the River Vecht, Seen from the North-east, Breukelen, 1665', in J. Shoaf Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.54427

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