Support The single, horizontally grained oak plank was thinned to approx. 0.6 cm, trimmed slightly at the top and upper left, and cradled. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1616. The panel could have been ready for use by 1629, but a date in or after 1635 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, thin, off-white ground extends up to the edges of the support at the top and upper left, and over the bottom, lower left and right edges, and barely fills the grain of the wood. It consists of white pigment with a minute addition of very small orange and black pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. An initial lay-in of the landscape and the old oak was made with semi-transparent brownish paint, consisting of finely ground red, orange, ochre-coloured and black pigment particles, as well as slightly larger white and black pigment particles and a minute amount of blue. This undermodelling was left uncovered in many areas, such as the main tree, which was left in reserve when the sky was applied directly on top of the ground. Some of the leaves were later added over the sky. A cross-section shows that the dark sky consists of two layers: the first being a finely ground light blue containing mainly white and some blue pigment particles, followed by a dark blue composed of large white, blue and black pigment particles and a small amount of orange and red pigments. The sky has a very smooth surface, with some impasto in the tree and parts of the landscape.
Anna Krekeler, 2022

Fair. Two old cracks on the left and right have been repaired and the retouchings covering them are slightly discoloured. On top of the higher parts of the grain of the wood the paint is somewhat abraded and the varnish has yellowed and appears whitish.

…; collection Eduard August Veltman (1878-1964), Bloemendaal, 1936, 1938;¹¹Tentoonstelling van oude kunst in het Frans Halsmuseum van 4 tot en met 26 april 1936, exh. cat. Haarlem 1936, p. 19, no. 27; Meesterwerken uit vier eeuwen, 1400-1800: Tentoonstelling van schilderijen en teekeningen uit particuliere verzamelingen in Nederland bijeengebracht gedurende de veertigjarige regeering van H.M. Koningin Wilhemina, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boymans) 1938, p. 29, no. 117.…; purchased from the dealer D.A. Hoogendijk, Amsterdam, by Johannes Carl Hendrik Heldring (1887-1962), Oosterbeek, near Arnhem, in or before 1953;²²A.J. de Lorm, 17e eeuwse meesters uit Gelders bezit, exh. cat. Arnhem (Gemeentemuseum) 1953, p. 18, no. 48. his sale, London (Sotheby’s), 27 March 1963, no. 10, to the museum, with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

Object number: SK-A-4093

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

This picture is one of only half a dozen landscapes by Adriaen van Ostade, four of which bear dates ranging from 1639 to 1645.⁴⁴For an overview of Adriaen van Ostade’s landscape production see B. Haak, ‘Adriaen van Ostade, Landschap met oude eik’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 12 (1964), pp. 5-11. To the five mentioned there a sixth landscape can be added, no. 13 in the 13 October 2009 auction at Christie’s, Amsterdam. It is tempting to see his brief foray into this genre in the light of a suit brought against him on 30 March 1640 by Salomon van Ruysdael for a claim of 14 guilders for ‘board and painting fees’.⁵⁵The document in question was first published by A. Bredius, ‘Een en ander over Adriaen van Ostade’, Oud Holland 56 (1939), pp. 241-47, esp. p. 244. It is not known whether Adriaen van Ostade, who had already been working independently for some time, or his younger brother Isack had been rooming with Van Ruysdael and receiving lessons from him, and thus incurring the debt.⁶⁶Schnackenburg suggests that it was Isack van Ostade who received instruction from Van Ruysdael; B. Schnackenburg, Adriaen van Ostade, Isack van Ostade: Zeichnungen und Aquarelle: Gesamtdarstellung mit Werkkatalogen, I, Hamburg 1981, p. 34. However, that this contact with one of the foremost landscape artist in Haarlem had something to do with Adriaen’s sudden interest in this subject matter seems a distinct possibility.

Probably inspired by the dunes around Haarlem, the Rijksmuseum scene is built up according to a formula already in use since the early 1630s by Dutch landscapists like Esaias van de Velde, Jan van Goyen, Salomon van Ruysdael and Pieter de Molijn: a dark, raised foreground, followed by a light middle ground and a dark, summarily executed background.⁷⁷See B. Haak, ‘Adriaen van Ostade, Landschap met oude eik’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 12 (1964), pp. 5-11, esp. p. 5; A. Ebert, Adriaen van Ostade und die komische Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 2013, p. 88. Staffage plays a very minor role in Van Ostade’s painting. Only after close inspection can a man be made out seated on the far left, with a shepherd and his flock approaching the stone bridge in the middle ground. It has been argued that this structure was derived from Rembrandt’s 1638 Landscape with the Good Samaritan.⁸⁸Cracow, National Museum; illustrated in C. Vogelaar, ‘Landschap met de barmhartige Samaritaan’, in C. Vogelaar and G.J.M. Weber (eds.), Rembrandts landschappen, exh. cat. Kassel (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister)/Leiden (Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) 2006-07, pp. 39-45, esp. p. 40. It has also been suggested that Van Ostade’s elevation of a gnarly oak to principal motif was inspired by Rembrandt’s example,⁹⁹For the most thorough discussion of the dependance of Van Ostade’s landscapes on Rembrandt’s see C. Vogelaar, ‘Landschap met stenen brug’, in C. Vogelaar and G.J.M. Weber (eds.), Rembrandts landschappen, exh. cat. Kassel (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister)/Leiden (Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) 2006-07, pp. 55-64, esp. p. 61. See also B. Schnackenburg, Adriaen van Ostade, Isack van Ostade: Zeichnungen und Aquarelle: Gesamtdarstellung mit Werkkatalogen, I, Hamburg 1981, p. 32, where it is rather oddly claimed that Van Ostade’s landscape in the Rijksmuseum has nothing in common with the work of Van Goyen and Van Ruysdael. although the slanting tree with its dead branches closely resembles those in Van Goyen’s oeuvre, where they are also often the central focus of the composition.¹⁰¹⁰See, for example, Van Goyen’s 1632 landscape in Moscow, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, and his 1633 landscape in the Weeshuis, Haarlem; illustrated in H.-U. Beck, Jan van Goyen 1596-1656: Ein Oeuvreverzeichnis, II, Amsterdam 1973, p. 489, no. 1112, p. 492, no. 1122. On the other hand, one can readily imagine that Rembrandt’s 1638 picture and his Landscape with Stone Bridge in the Rijksmuseum,¹¹¹¹SK-A-1935. inspired the stormy sky and dramatic chiaroscuro in Van Ostade’s scene. The palette of golden yellow, brown and ochre, however, is closer to that employed by Van Ruysdael and the other Haarlem tonal painters than to Rembrandt’s, whose remarkable pinks, oranges and blue-greys are not to be found in this work.¹²¹²As pointed out in C.P. Schneider, Rembrandt’s Landscapes, New Haven/London 1990, p. 163.

The painting does not bear the year of execution. The dendrochronology indicates that the panel was probably ready for use in or after 1635.¹³¹³See Technical notes. The monochrome palette suggests that the picture was made in or slightly after 1639. The two landscapes by Van Ostade that are dated 1639 are also tonal works, whereas he admitted colour into those from 1644 and 1645.¹⁴¹⁴B. Haak, ‘Adriaen van Ostade, Landschap met oude eik’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 12 (1964), pp. 5-11, esp. p. 8. The composition of the present scene is also very similar to one of 1641 by Isack van Ostade in Basel.¹⁵¹⁵Kunstmuseum Basel; illustrated in B. Haak, ‘Adriaen van Ostade, Landschap met oude eik’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 12 (1964), pp. 5-11, esp. p. 9, fig. 5 (the inscriptions for this work and Haak’s fig. 6 are reversed). The similarity to Isack van Ostade’s painting is pointed out in ibid., p. 11.

Jonathan Bikker, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

B. Haak, ‘Adriaen van Ostade, Landschap met oude eik’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 12 (1964), pp. 5-11; B. Schnackenburg, Adriaen van Ostade, Isack van Ostade: Zeichnungen und Aquarelle: Gesamtdarstellung mit Werkkatalogen, I, Hamburg 1981, p. 32; C. Brown, Dutch Landscape, the Early Years: Haarlem and Amsterdam 1590-1650, exh. cat. London (The National Gallery) 1986, p. 211, no. 101; C. Vogelaar, ‘Landschap met stenen brug’, in C. Vogelaar and G.J.M. Weber (eds.), Rembrandts landschappen, exh. cat. Kassel (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister)/Leiden (Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) 2006-07, pp. 55-64, esp. p. 61; A. Ebert, Adriaen van Ostade und die komische Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 2013, pp. 88, 107, 128

1976, p. 429, no. A 4093

Jonathan Bikker, 2022, 'Adriaen van Ostade, Landscape with an old Oak, c. 1639 - c. 1641', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20025953