Roelant Roghman

View of the Bulwark De Westerbeer, with the Mill De Beer, near the Haarlemmerpoort, Amsterdam

Amsterdam, c. 1650

Inscriptions

  • inscribed: upper left, in brown ink, retraced in black chalk, 3

  • inscribed on verso: lower left, in a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century hand, in brown ink, b (?) n° 3

  • stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of the Vereniging Rembrandt (L. 2135); below that, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228); below that, with the mark of De Vos (L. 1450)

Technical notes

Watermark: Foolscap; cf. Laurentius 2007, nos. 493-94 (The Hague: 1647)

Provenance

…; collection Jacob de Vos Jbzn (1803-82), Amsterdam (L. 1450); his widow, Abrahamina Henrietta de Vos-Wurfbain (1808-83), Amsterdam; his sale, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 22 May 1883 sqq., no. 446, with two other drawings, fl. 41, to Georg Carl Valentin Schöffer,1Copy RKD. for the Vereniging Rembrandt (L. 2135); from whom acquired by the museum (L. 2228), 18872For security reasons, the drawing was transferred from the Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken to the museum in 1887.

ObjectNumber: RP-T-1887-A-1385

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

Context

The artist

Biography

Roelant Roghman (Amsterdam 1627 - Amsterdam 1692)

He was the son of Hendrick Lambertsz Roghman (1602-1647/57) and Maria Saverij and was baptized on 25 March 1627 in Amsterdam’s Nieuwe Kerk. His father worked as an engraver,3F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols, Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, XX (1978), pp. 61-64, nos. 1-3. as did two of his five siblings: his sisters Geertruyt (1625-c. 1651/57) and Magdalena (16324Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, DTB 41, p. 174 (13 January 1632); erroneously given as 13 January 1637 in W. Kloek and J.W. Niemeijer, De kasteeltekeningen van Roelant Roghman II, Alphen aan den Rijn 1990, p. 9 and subsequent literature.-after 1669).5F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols, Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, XX (1978), pp. 53-60, nos. 1-23; pp. 65-66, nos. 1-2; E. Kloek et al. (eds.), Vrouwen en kunst in de Republiek: Een overzicht, Hilversum 1998 (Utrechtse historische cahiers, vol. 19), pp. 160-61. Through his mother, Roelant was a grandson of Jacob Savery I (1566-1603) and a great-nephew of Roelant Savery (1576-1639), after whom he was named. It is not known under whom he trained, but it is likely that he was influenced by the example of his grandfather and great-uncle. Although sometimes grouped with the pupils of Rembrandt (1606-1669), Roghman never actually studied with him. They were friends, however, and according to Houbraken, Rembrandt refused to accept Jan Griffier (1645/52-1718) as an apprentice because he was already studying with his friend Roghman.

Roghman was a prolific draughtsman, whose earliest dated works are two drawn views of tollhouses on the River IJ, both dated 1645, in the Van Eeghen collection, Stadsarchief, Amsterdam (inv. nos. 10055/28) and 10055/29).6B. Bakker (ed.), De verzameling Van Eeghen: Amsterdamse tekeningen, 1600-1950, Zwolle 1988 (Publikaties van het Gemeentearchief Amsterdam uitgegeven door de Stichting H.J. Duyvisfonds, vol. 16), 1988, nos. 28-29. Among the works possibly made even earlier is a pen-and-wash drawing in the Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden (inv. nos. C 1798), clearly influenced by Roelant Savery.7W. Kloek and J.W. Niemeijer, De kasteeltekeningen van Roelant Roghman II, Alphen aan den Rijn 1990, figs. 15-16.

In 1646/47, Roghman embarked on his most ambitious project, the series of some 250 castle drawings, of which the Rijksmuseum owns 49 individual sheets. Besides travelling through the Dutch provinces to make castle drawings and topographical views, he also visited Brussels and the region around Cleves.8Cf. drawings such as The Pond at Boschvoorde near Brussels, Brussels, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België (inv. no. 4060/3065; S. Hautekeete, Tekeningen van Rembrandt en zijn leerlingen in de verzameling van Jean de Grez, exh. cat. Brussels (Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België) 2005, no. 32.); and a View of Cleves, which appeared in the Valkema Blouw sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 2 March 1954, no. 389. A number of alpine landscapes – including one in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (inv. no. MB 221), dated 16549W. Kloek and J.W. Niemeijer, De kasteeltekeningen van Roelant Roghman II, Alphen aan den Rijn 1990, p. 29 (fig. 41). For more drawings with identifiable locations in the Swiss Alps, cf. W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-92, X (1992), p. 5066. – suggest that he must have travelled to the Alps that year,10Cf. different views of the natural passageway in the Pierre Pertuis near Tavannes in the Jura (e.g. Dresden, Kupferstich-Kabinett, inv. no. C 1770; W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-92, X (1992), no. 2243, with further examples). presumably passing through France. A trip further south may be documented by a View of San Giacomo a Rialto in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (KdZ 2617), traditionally attributed to the artist,11W. Kloek and J.W. Niemeijer, De kasteeltekeningen van Roelant Roghman II, Alphen aan den Rijn 1990, fig. 7. That drawing has alternatively associated with Willem Schellinks (1623-1678; by Frits Lugt, cf. W. Schulz, Die holländische Landschaftszeichnung, 1600-1740: Hauptwerke aus dem Berliner Kupferstichkabinett, exh. cat. Berlin (Kupferstichkabinett) 1974, p. 72) and Jan Baptist Weenix (1621-1659; by Stijn Alsteens, cf. note on that drawing’s mount). Stylistically, however, its broad style relates with drawings by Roghman of circa 1650, for instance, inv. no. RP-T-1887-A-1385, whereas Weenix and Schellinks both worked with more delicate lines. and a signed drawing in the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Sailing Boat at a Moorage, could have well been made in Venice.12Inv. no. KK 5329; B. van den Boogert, Goethe & Rembrandt: Tekeningen uit Weimar uit de grafische bestanden van de Kunstsammlungen zu Weimar, aangevuld met werken uit het Goethe-Nationalmuseum, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 1999, pp. 94-95. In 1657, Roghman stayed in Augsburg, where he had a set of six etched alpine landscapes published by Melchior Küsel (1626-1684)13F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols, Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, XX (1978), pp. 78-81, nos. 25-32; cf. W. Kloek and J.W. Niemeijer, De kasteeltekeningen van Roelant Roghman II, Alphen aan den Rijn 1990, p. 4, n. 18. and contributed a drawing to an album amicorum (inv. no. RP-T-1898-A-3991). No later than 1658, he was back in Amsterdam, where he is documented during the 1660s. In 1672, his opinion was sought on the authenticity of a group of Italian paintings in a legal dispute between Gerrit Uylenburgh (c. 1625-1679) and Friedrich Wilhelm, Elector of Brandenburg (1620-1688).

Roghman’s rare paintings feature mostly mountain scenes and were probably done after his trip to the Alps. Of his circa fifty etchings, mostly landscapes, one depicts the Breach of the St Anthony’s Dike,14F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols, Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, XX (1978), p. 90, no. 39. a famous incident in 1651 that was also recorded by Jan Asselijn (c. 1610-1652), for example in his painting in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. SK-A-5030), Willem Schellinks (1627-1678) and Jacob Esselens (1626-1687).

Roghman apparently never married and from 1686 lived in Amsterdam’s Oudemannenhuis (Old Men’s Home). His last dated drawing is from 1657, but according to Houbraken, he continued to produce art well into his old age. He died on 3 January 1692 and was buried in the St Anthonis Kerkhof, Amsterdam.

Annemarie Stefes, 2018

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, I (1718), pp. 173-74; III (1721), p. 358; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, II (1910), p. 464; R. Juynboll, ‘Roelant Roghman’, in U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXVIII (1934), p. 518, with earlier literature; W.T. Kloek, ‘Een berglandschap door Roelant Roghman’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 23 (1975), no. 2, pp. 100-01; F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols, Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, XX (1978), pp. 67-93; H. Gerson and B.W. Meijer (eds.), Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der Holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Amsterdam 1983 (rev. ed.; orig. ed. 1942), pp. 27, 49, 130, 186, 293, 307, 356, 403; W. Kloek and J.W. Niemeijer, De kasteeltekeningen van Roelant Roghman II, Alphen aan den Rijn 1990, pp. 1-14; W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-92, X (1992), pp. 4989-5174; 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. 642

Entry

The drawing belongs to a series of six views drawn along the ramparts of Amsterdam, apparently made during the course of one day.15W.T. Kloek, ‘Met Roelant Roghman naar de Haarlemmerpoort’, in J.E. Abrahamse (ed.), De verbeelde wereld. Liber amicorum voor Boudewijn Bakker, Bussum 2008, pp. 65-75 (figs. 2-6). Linked by style and subject-matter, four of the related sheets are in the British Museum, London (inv. nos. SL,5214.98, SL,5214.99, SL,5214.100 and SL,5214.101),16A.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, IV (1931), nos. 14-17 (as depictions of windmills outside a city); subsequently misidentified on the museum’s website as possibly representing scenes near Zaandam. and the fifth is in the Stadsarchief, Amsterdam (inv. no. 010097006426). None of these drawings is signed, but on grounds of style, Roghman’s authorship has never been contested. Somewhat reminiscent of the artist’s castle drawings of 1646-1647, they reveal a greater freedom in the handling of chalk and wash and were probably made circa 1650.17W.T. Kloek, ‘Met Roelant Roghman naar de Haarlemmerpoort’, in J.E. Abrahamse (ed.), De verbeelde wereld. Liber amicorum voor Boudewijn Bakker, Bussum 2008, p. 75.

Like his friend Rembrandt (1606-1669), Roghman strolled along the city walls of Amsterdam, then fortified with twenty-one bulwarks, sixteen of which were crowned by windmills that combined both a military and a commercial function.18Ibid., pp. 67, 72. The present sheet depicts the bulwark known as De Westerbeer (‘The Western Bear’), with its grain mill De Beer (‘The Bear’),19For the mill, cf. http://www.molendatabase.org/molendb.php?step=details&tbnummer=13121# (accessed 23 May 2017); the same mill is represented in a print dated 1617 by Reinier Nooms (1623/24-1664; e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-20.581); Hollstein LVI (2001), p. 91, no. 25. By 1832, the grain mill was replaced by a smock mill, which burnt down in 1861. which was situated north of the Haarlemmerpoort (Haarlem Gate).20Cf. www.bolwerken.amsterdam.nl/3 (accessed 23 May 2017). In the right foreground, in front of the mill, a woman is spreading laundry to dry in the sun. Discernible along the bulwark to the south, in the left distance, is the Haarlemmerpoort, with its distinctive clock tower built between 1615 and 1618 after a design by Hendrick de Keyser (1565-1621).21C. Commelin, Beschryvinge van Amsterdam, zynde een naukeurige verhandelinge van desselfs eerste oorspronk uyt den Huyse der Heeren van Amstel, en Amstellant, haar Vergrooting, Rykdom, en Wyze van Regeeringe, tot den Jare 1691, 2 vols., Amsterdam 1726, p. 221. All the principal topographical motifs of the present composition appear in the background of one of the London sheets (inv. no. SL,5214-101), which shows the same view from a vantage further north, from the bulwark De Bocht, dominated in the foreground by the grain mill called De Verrevanger (‘The Replacement’). Since Roghman came from a family of millers,22W. Kloek and J.W. Niemeijer, De kasteeltekeningen van Roelant Roghman II, Alphen aan den Rijn 1990, p. 1. it is to no surprise that he found such subject-matter attractive.

Bakker’s suggestion that Roghman actually accompanied Rembrandt on the latter’s walks to the bulwarks while still a youth was dismissed by Kloek.23B. Bakker (ed.), Landscapes of Rembrandt: His Favourite Walks, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Gemeentearchief)/Paris (Institut Néerlandais) 1998, p. 205; and W.T. Kloek, ‘Met Roelant Roghman naar de Haarlemmerpoort’, in J.E. Abrahamse (ed.), De verbeelde wereld. Liber amicorum voor Boudewijn Bakker, Bussum 2008, p. 75. There are too many differences in detail, for instance, in their respective views of the bulwark De Blauwhoofd, such as a two-master present in Rembrandt’s drawing in the Albertina, Vienna (inv. no. 17560r),24O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), VI, no. 1280 (fig. 1584); B. Bakker (ed.), Landscapes of Rembrandt: His Favourite Walks, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Gemeentearchief)/Paris (Institut Néerlandais) 1998, p. 203 (fig. 2). which is missing from the abovementioned drawing by Roghman in the Stadsarchief, which nonetheless has a similar viewpoint.

Two of the British Museum drawings (inv. nos. SL,5214.99 and SL,5214.100) are inscribed and numbered on the lower edge of their recto in the same old hand as annotated the verso of the present sheet, no 6 b (?).25My thanks to Jane Shoaf Turner for this observation. Since all of the British Museum drawings are laid down, it cannot be established if such an annotation appears on the verso of either of the other two sheets.

Annemarie Stefes, 2018

Citation

A. Stefes, 2018, 'Roelant Roghman, View of the Bulwark De Westerbeer, with the Mill De Beer, near the Haarlemmerpoort, Amsterdam, Amsterdam, c. 1650', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.59902

(accessed 4 May 2025 17:06:22).

Footnotes

  • 1Copy RKD.
  • 2For security reasons, the drawing was transferred from the Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken to the museum in 1887.
  • 3F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols, Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, XX (1978), pp. 61-64, nos. 1-3.
  • 4Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, DTB 41, p. 174 (13 January 1632); erroneously given as 13 January 1637 in W. Kloek and J.W. Niemeijer, De kasteeltekeningen van Roelant Roghman II, Alphen aan den Rijn 1990, p. 9 and subsequent literature.
  • 5F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols, Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, XX (1978), pp. 53-60, nos. 1-23; pp. 65-66, nos. 1-2; E. Kloek et al. (eds.), Vrouwen en kunst in de Republiek: Een overzicht, Hilversum 1998 (Utrechtse historische cahiers, vol. 19), pp. 160-61.
  • 6B. Bakker (ed.), De verzameling Van Eeghen: Amsterdamse tekeningen, 1600-1950, Zwolle 1988 (Publikaties van het Gemeentearchief Amsterdam uitgegeven door de Stichting H.J. Duyvisfonds, vol. 16), 1988, nos. 28-29.
  • 7W. Kloek and J.W. Niemeijer, De kasteeltekeningen van Roelant Roghman II, Alphen aan den Rijn 1990, figs. 15-16.
  • 8Cf. drawings such as The Pond at Boschvoorde near Brussels, Brussels, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België (inv. no. 4060/3065; S. Hautekeete, Tekeningen van Rembrandt en zijn leerlingen in de verzameling van Jean de Grez, exh. cat. Brussels (Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België) 2005, no. 32.); and a View of Cleves, which appeared in the Valkema Blouw sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 2 March 1954, no. 389.
  • 9W. Kloek and J.W. Niemeijer, De kasteeltekeningen van Roelant Roghman II, Alphen aan den Rijn 1990, p. 29 (fig. 41). For more drawings with identifiable locations in the Swiss Alps, cf. W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-92, X (1992), p. 5066.
  • 10Cf. different views of the natural passageway in the Pierre Pertuis near Tavannes in the Jura (e.g. Dresden, Kupferstich-Kabinett, inv. no. C 1770; W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-92, X (1992), no. 2243, with further examples).
  • 11W. Kloek and J.W. Niemeijer, De kasteeltekeningen van Roelant Roghman II, Alphen aan den Rijn 1990, fig. 7. That drawing has alternatively associated with Willem Schellinks (1623-1678; by Frits Lugt, cf. W. Schulz, Die holländische Landschaftszeichnung, 1600-1740: Hauptwerke aus dem Berliner Kupferstichkabinett, exh. cat. Berlin (Kupferstichkabinett) 1974, p. 72) and Jan Baptist Weenix (1621-1659; by Stijn Alsteens, cf. note on that drawing’s mount). Stylistically, however, its broad style relates with drawings by Roghman of circa 1650, for instance, inv. no. RP-T-1887-A-1385, whereas Weenix and Schellinks both worked with more delicate lines.
  • 12Inv. no. KK 5329; B. van den Boogert, Goethe & Rembrandt: Tekeningen uit Weimar uit de grafische bestanden van de Kunstsammlungen zu Weimar, aangevuld met werken uit het Goethe-Nationalmuseum, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 1999, pp. 94-95.
  • 13F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols, Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, XX (1978), pp. 78-81, nos. 25-32; cf. W. Kloek and J.W. Niemeijer, De kasteeltekeningen van Roelant Roghman II, Alphen aan den Rijn 1990, p. 4, n. 18.
  • 14F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols, Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, XX (1978), p. 90, no. 39.
  • 15W.T. Kloek, ‘Met Roelant Roghman naar de Haarlemmerpoort’, in J.E. Abrahamse (ed.), De verbeelde wereld. Liber amicorum voor Boudewijn Bakker, Bussum 2008, pp. 65-75 (figs. 2-6).
  • 16A.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, IV (1931), nos. 14-17 (as depictions of windmills outside a city); subsequently misidentified on the museum’s website as possibly representing scenes near Zaandam.
  • 17W.T. Kloek, ‘Met Roelant Roghman naar de Haarlemmerpoort’, in J.E. Abrahamse (ed.), De verbeelde wereld. Liber amicorum voor Boudewijn Bakker, Bussum 2008, p. 75.
  • 18Ibid., pp. 67, 72.
  • 19For the mill, cf. http://www.molendatabase.org/molendb.php?step=details&tbnummer=13121# (accessed 23 May 2017); the same mill is represented in a print dated 1617 by Reinier Nooms (1623/24-1664; e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-20.581); Hollstein LVI (2001), p. 91, no. 25. By 1832, the grain mill was replaced by a smock mill, which burnt down in 1861.
  • 20Cf. www.bolwerken.amsterdam.nl/3 (accessed 23 May 2017).
  • 21C. Commelin, Beschryvinge van Amsterdam, zynde een naukeurige verhandelinge van desselfs eerste oorspronk uyt den Huyse der Heeren van Amstel, en Amstellant, haar Vergrooting, Rykdom, en Wyze van Regeeringe, tot den Jare 1691, 2 vols., Amsterdam 1726, p. 221.
  • 22W. Kloek and J.W. Niemeijer, De kasteeltekeningen van Roelant Roghman II, Alphen aan den Rijn 1990, p. 1.
  • 23B. Bakker (ed.), Landscapes of Rembrandt: His Favourite Walks, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Gemeentearchief)/Paris (Institut Néerlandais) 1998, p. 205; and W.T. Kloek, ‘Met Roelant Roghman naar de Haarlemmerpoort’, in J.E. Abrahamse (ed.), De verbeelde wereld. Liber amicorum voor Boudewijn Bakker, Bussum 2008, p. 75.
  • 24O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt (rev. edn. by E. Benesch), 6 vols., London 1973 (orig. edn. 1954-57), VI, no. 1280 (fig. 1584); B. Bakker (ed.), Landscapes of Rembrandt: His Favourite Walks, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Gemeentearchief)/Paris (Institut Néerlandais) 1998, p. 203 (fig. 2).
  • 25My thanks to Jane Shoaf Turner for this observation. Since all of the British Museum drawings are laid down, it cannot be established if such an annotation appears on the verso of either of the other two sheets.