Object data
pen and brown ink, with grey wash, over traces of graphite; framing line in brown ink
height 95 mm × width 165 mm
Josua de Grave
View of an Imaginary Italianate Harbor
in or after c. 1667 - 1712
Inscriptions
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signed: lower centre, in brown ink, Josua de Grave : Inventor
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inscribed on verso: in graphite, f 5-5-
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stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)
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inscribed on old mount (removed, but preserved ): centre, in graphite, N. 290.; lower right, in graphite, 28. 67; below that, in brown ink, Josua de Grave Fe; below that, in brown ink, 941
Technical notes
watermark: Strasbourg lily (fragment)
Provenance
…; donated by Maria Lucia van Hoorn (1856-1950), Pieter Herbert Theophile van Hoorn (1862-1931) and Herbertine Christine van Hoorn (1864-1938), Amsterdam, to the museum (L. 2228), 1928
Object number: RP-T-1928-67
Credit line: Gift of M.L. van Hoorn, Amsterdam, H.C. van Hoorn, Amsterdam and P.H.F. van Hoorn, Amsterdam
Copyright: Public domain
Context
After returning from his last military campaign with Stadholder Prince Willem III of Orange (1650-1702) in 1676, Josua de Grave settled permanently in The Hague.1 He continued to travel throughout the Netherlands and make topographical drawings, but he also began to produce paintings and drawings with imaginary Italianate landscapes and gardens, responding to the tastes of the day. The Rijksmuseum’s collection includes nine such drawings, most of which are signed and dated. Only three painted Italianate gardens are known: one was sold at Christie’s, London, in 2004,2 and two are at the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht (inv. nos. 1002030 and 1000889).
De Grave consistently signed this group of drawings Josua de Grave Inventor, perhaps intending to emphasize that these garden views were not of real sites but scenes from his imagination. Breithart suggested that most of the drawings in this group were not original inventions by De Grave but were based on prints or book illustrations. However, he mentioned only one direct relationship between a drawing depicting a View of the Serail of the Turkish Emporer in the collection of Chr. P. van Eeghen (1880-1968)3 and an engraved illustration of the palace of the Turkish emperor in Cornelis de Bruyn’s 1698 Reizen van Cornelis de Bruyn: Door de vermaardste Deelen van Klein Asia.4 However, while the buildings reveal some similarities, the comparison is rather weak. If De Grave based his drawing on the print, he did so only loosely. No other connections between his drawings and contemporary prints were found by the present author.
Carolyn Mensing, 2021
The artist
Josua de Grave (Amsterdam 1643 - The Hague 1712)
He was the son of the French merchant Claude Pietersz de Grave [Graeff] (c. 1597/98-after 1667) and Sara Bols (?-c. 1655) and was baptized in the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, on 2 July 1643.5 De Grave had three brothers and two sisters.6 He grew up in Haarlem, where the family moved soon after his birth. In 1659, at age sixteen, he entered the Haarlem Guild of St Luke,7 but it is unknown with whom he trained. Based on a drawing dated 1663, depicting a landscape in the vicinity of Paris, now in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (KdZ 2480),8 we know that he moved to Paris during or after his training. De Grave lived in Paris until 1668, after which he moved to Maastricht.
In Maastricht he likely met Barend Klotz (?-?) and Valentijn Klotz (c. 1646-1721), two fellow draughtsmen affiliated with the Dutch army.9 Until 1670, the trio resided in Maastricht, where they made around sixty drawings of the city and its surroundings. Only a handful of these drawings are signed (e.g. inv. nos. RP-T-1946-63 and RP-T-1911-100).10 In the following decades, the three artists accompanied the army of the Dutch States-General under the Stadholder Prince Willem III of Orange Nassau (1650-1702) on their various campaigns: to Bergen op Zoom (1671-early 1672), cities around the Dutch ‘waterlinie’ (1672) and various regions in the southern Netherlands and present-day Belgium (1674, 1675 and 1676).
On 3 December 1670, De Grave married Jenneton de Bisson (1645-?) in Maastricht.11 The newlyweds moved from Maastricht to The Hague, joining De Grave’s sister and his brother, Cornelis, who had moved there already.12 After each military campaign, De Grave returned to The Hague, where he settled permanently after the last campaign in 1676 and died in July 1712.13 Several drawings dated between the 1670s and the 1710s record sights around the city. In the final years of his career, he also produced paintings and drawings of (Italianate) gardens and fantasy landscapes (e.g. inv. nos. RP-T-00-148 and RP-T-1895-A-3063).
Josua de Grave often signed his work, using his full name or a variation, such as J. de Grave or Josua de Grave fecit. In many instances, he also included a location and a date. His signature is usually followed by a colon, then the year and the day and month (expressed as a fraction). His handwriting is quite distinct, using elegant, curly (capital) letters and a typical old-fashioned letter ‘e’. His drawings were initially quickly sketched in graphite or black chalk, after which he applied brown ink lines to further work out the composition. He seemed to have relied on a certain formula for most of his drawings, placing the horizon in the centre of the sheet and scattering the main elements around it. He often included trees, foliage or figures closer to the foreground, creating a repoussoir. De Grave drew his trees by outlining the trunks and branches, then scribbling in the leaves using cloud-like shapes.14 In most instances, in addition to the brown ink composition, grey washes are applied sparingly, particularly for the shadows on houses and roofs, foliage and simple cloud formations. Drawings that are more heavily washed are likely to have been worked up by (a) later hand(s).
Carolyn Mensing, 2019
References
R. van Eijnden and A. van der Willigen, ‘Klotz, Valentijn’, in U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XX (1927), pp. 549-50; R.J.G.M. van Hasselt, ‘Drie tekenaars van topografische prenten in Brabant en elders. Valentijn Klotz, Josua de Grave en Constantijn Huygens Jr.’, Jaarboek Oudheidkundige Kring ‘De Ghulden Roos’ 25 (1965), pp. 145-55; M.H. Breitbarth-van der Stok, ‘Josua de Grave, Valentinus Klotz en Bernardus Klotz’, Bulletin Koninklijke Nederlandse Oudheidkundige Bond 68 (1969), pp. 96-98; J.H. van Mosselveld and W.A. van Ham, Tekeningen van Bergen op Zoom. Topografische afbeeldingen van Bergen op Zoom en omgeving uit de zestiende tot en met de achttiende eeuw, exh. cat. Bergen op Zoom (Markiezenhof) 1973-74, pp. 15-18; G. Gordon, ‘Grave, Josua de’, in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols., London/New York 1996, XIII, pp. 323-24
Entry
De Grave’s imaginary drawn landscapes often include a mountainous vista with a meandering rivers, a city view and ruins scattered throughout the sheet. Here, we look upon the vista of an enclosed harbour city, set against a dramatic backdrop with steep mountains and bastions. The city is drenched in sunlight, further emphasized by the darker washes applied in the foreground. A related drawing appeared on the Amsterdam art market in 1949.15
Carolyn Mensing, 2020
Citation
C. Mensing, 2020, 'Josua de Grave, View of an Imaginary Italianate Harbor, in or after c. 1667 - 1712', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.51978
(accessed 26 September 2024 05:21:44).