Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 174 cm × width 232 cm
outer size: depth 13 cm (support incl. frame)
weight 54 kg
Joris van der Haagen
Mountainous Landscape with a Ruin
c. 1650 - 1669
Inscriptions
- signature, bottom right (J, V and H ligated): JVHagen
Technical notes
Support The coarse, open-structured support consists of two pieces of similar plain-weave canvas with a horizontal seam at approx. 58 cm from the bottom, and has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been removed. The canvas has very probably been trimmed, as the composition continues on the current tacking edges and no imprints of an original strainer can be found.
Preparatory layers The single, beige ground extends up to the current edges of the support. It consists of brownish-beige pigment particles with an addition of minute black, brown and orange pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the current edges of the support. The composition was built up from the back to the front. The sky was painted first, leaving reserves for the hill and greenery. The tops of the trees in the middle and on the right were added over the sky and the landscape, as were the two towers and all the figures. A few centimeters of the hill and greenery were also rendered over the sky, extending beyond their reserve. The tree trunk in the foreground was initially planned to be thinner and taller. Various warm and transparent glazes were used in the foreground.
Michel van de Laar, 2022
Scientific examination and reports
- infrared photography: M. van de Laar, RMA (no image available), 12 March 2008
- technical report: M. van de Laar, RMA, 12 March 2008
- paint samples: M. van de Laar, RMA, SK-C-373/1, 22 May 2008
Condition
Poor. Many of the greens have turned dark brown. The paint of the sky is considerably abraded and there are many darkened retouchings throughout. The varnish has yellowed and is uneven. There are several large scratches in the varnish in the foreground.
Provenance
…; transferred from the old Town Hall on Dam Square to the new Town Hall in the Prinsenhof, Amsterdam, 1808;1 recorded in the ‘clerk’s room’, Town Hall, Amsterdam, 1841, 1843;2 on loan from the City of Amsterdam to the museum since 2 October 18853
Object number: SK-C-373
Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Joris van der Haagen (Arnhem or Dordrecht c. 1615 - The Hague 1669)
No record has yet been found of the baptism of Joris van der Haagen, who was a son of the painter Abraham van der Haagen and Sophia Ottendr van der Laen. It is assumed that he was born between 1613 and 1617, which were the dates of birth of two other children. The family moved from Dordrecht to Arnhem in that period, probably with a brief stop along the way.
It seems likely that Van der Haagen trained first with his father, none of whose works has survived. After the latter’s death Joris and his mother went to The Hague, and in 1640 he built a house there on Amsterdamse Veerkade. In 1642 he married the widow Magdalena Thijmandr de Heer. The following year he paid 18 guilders to enrol in the Guild of St Luke; he was charged the highest fee because neither he nor his wife were born in The Hague. Van der Haagen acquired his burgess rights in 1644. He was made a warden of the guild in 1652-53, so was evidently a respected member of the city’s artistic community. In 1656 he became one of the founders of the Confrerie Pictura artists’ society but was never one of its officials. In 1660 he was teaching one Jan Jansz Schmidt, about whom nothing further is known.
Van der Haagen rarely dated his pictures, so it is difficult to follow his stylistic development. His earliest work bearing the year of execution is a drawing made in The Hague woods in 1644 or 1647.4 The first known dated painting is from 1649: a panorama outside the Rijnpoort near Arnhem.5 His last two commissions are from 1669, not long before he died. These consisted of an overmantel in the offices of the Schiedam water board, in collaboration with Ludolf de Jongh,6 and a likeness of an unidentified woman, the present whereabouts of which are unknown.7 The only other portrait he made was of himself in a trompe-l’oeil niche with a landscape in the background.8 His remaining oeuvre, both drawn and painted, comprises landscapes, city views, panoramas and other topographical works. Many of the latter are set in The Hague and Arnhem. Amsterdam is one of the few places where his activities are recorded in notarized documents from 1650 and 1657. His trips abroad were mainly to the German border region, especially the area around Cleves.
Van der Haagen regularly asked others to paint the figures in his landscapes and urban scenes. In addition to Ludolf de Jongh, signatures show that he worked together with Nicolaes Berchem and Dirck Wijntrack.9 Other suspected collaborations are based on attribution of the staffage, not always reliably, to artists like Paulus Potter, Adriaen van de Velde, Pieter de Hooch, Johan le Ducq and Cornelis van Poelenburch.
Van der Haagen fell on hard times in the last ten years of his life, even though he kept on painting into old age. In 1658 he was threatened with the attachment of his house because he was in arrears in settling a debt, and in order to thwart his creditors his mother made his children her heirs. He nevertheless carried on living in his own home until his death on 20 May 1669. He still must have gone through a difficult period, because a few months before he died he was excused duty in the civic guard because of ‘indisposition’. Van der Haagen was buried in the Kloosterkerk in The Hague.
Richard Harmanni, 2022
References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, III, Amsterdam 1721, p. 203; J. Immerzeel Jr, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters: Van het begin der vijftiende eeuw tot heden, II, Amsterdam 1843, p. 8; C. Kramm, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters: Van den vroegsten tot op onzen tijd, II, Amsterdam 1858, pp. 616-17; F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis: Verzameling van meerendeels onuitgegeven berichten en mededeelingen betreffende Nederlandsche schilders, plaatsnijders, beeldhouwers, bouwmeesters, juweliers, goud- en zilverdrijvers [enz.], IV, Rotterdam 1881-82, pp. 59, 82, 129; ibid., V, 1882-83, passim; A. Bredius, ‘Het schildersregister van Jan Sysmus, Stads-Doctor van Amsterdam’, Oud Holland 12 (1894), pp. 160-71, esp. pp. 168-70; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, I, Leipzig/Vienna 1906, p. 633; F.J. van der Haagen, ‘Joris van der Haagen, kunstschilder: Hoofdman v/h St. Lucasgilde te ’s-Gravenhage, Bijdragen en Mededeelingen der Vereeniging Gelre 18 (1915), pp. 129-45, esp. pp. 129-36; A. Bredius, ‘Korte mededeelingen, VI: Hoe Joris van der Hagen betaald werd’, Oud Holland 35 (1917), p. 128; M.J.F.W. van der Haagen, ‘De samenwerking van Joris van der Haagen en Dirck Wijntrack’, Oud Holland 35 (1917), pp. 43-48; Schneider in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XV, Leipzig 1922, pp. 463-64; J.K. van der Haagen, De schilders van der Haagen en hun werk: Met catalogus van de schilderijen en teekeningen van Joris van der Haagen, Voorburg 1932, pp. 16-52; Gordon in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, XIII, New York 1996, p. 892; Buijsen in E. Buijsen et al., Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw: Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag 1600-1700, exh. cat. The Hague (Haags Historisch Museum) 1998-99, pp. 146-49; E. Löffler, ‘Illustrated Index on Painters Active in The Hague between 1600-1700’, in ibid., pp. 281-362, esp. p. 311; Pijl in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, LXVII, Munich/Leipzig 2010, p. 425
Entry
Jan van der Haagen, a lawyer, descendant and biographer of the artist Joris van der Haagen, tentatively identified this mountainous landscape in 1932 as a view of the Sint-Pietersberg and Lichtenberg Castle near Maastricht. If he is correct, the hill is seen from the south, with the river Maas in the background. The first tower to the left of centre in the distance would then mark the remnants of the castle. Its present remains bear some resemblance to those depicted here.10 It is by no means certain, though, that Lichtenberg Castle was in such a dilapidated state in the artist’s day, that is to say before 1669, the year Van der Haagen died. It is only in 1672 that it is first described as a ruin.11 In 1668 it was still shown in all its glory in a drawing by Josua de Grave.12 The structure is also completely intact in two reliable views Van der Haagen made of the Sint-Pietersberg seen from the south to south-west from the east bank of the Maas.13
The presence of a second tower on the hill is another reason for rejecting the identification of this scene as a view of the Sint-Pietersberg. Jan van der Haagen probably thought that it was the Spreeuwarts Tower, which was demolished between 1670 and 1672 to improve the field of fire for defending Maastricht.14 The one depicted here, though, does not in the least resemble the square structure of the Spreeuwarts Tower as recorded by Van der Haagen in the two other paintings. There are no comparable compositions in his oeuvre. The detailed rendering of the tower in the background would not rule out a borrowing from a topographical model. If that is the case, the location would be a foreign one, since there were no other hills with towers in the province of Limburg.
This is one of the largest landscapes Van der Haagen ever produced; the Statens Museum in Copenhagen has two pendants of a similar size (178 x 210 cm).15 The Rijksmuseum scene has marked contrasts between sketchy and carefully rendered passages: the right-hand side around the river in the background was executed very roughly, while the staffage and the buildings, which are limited to the left half, are depicted in detail. It is clearly visible from the structure of the paint that the shattered tree trunk in the foreground was originally taller and thinner. Van der Haagen evidently had difficulty arranging the landscape into a satisfactory composition. It can be dated around 1650 onwards on the evidence of the cursory design.
Richard Harmanni, 2022
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
Literature
P. Scheltema, Historische beschrijving der schilderijen van het stadhuis te Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1879, p. 14, no. 35; M.J.F.W. van der Haagen, ‘De samenwerking van Joris van der Haagen en Dirck Wijntrack’, Oud Holland 35 (1917), pp. 43-48, p. 44; J.K. van der Haagen, De schilders van der Haagen en hun werk: Met catalogus van de schilderijen en teekeningen van Joris van der Haagen, Voorburg 1932, p. 93, no. 117
Collection catalogues
1887, p. 55, no. 438; 1903, p. 111, no. 1027; 1934, p. 113, no. 1027; 1976, pp. 254-55, no. C 373
Citation
Richard Harmanni, 2022, 'Joris van der Haagen, Mountainous Landscape with a Ruin, c. 1650 - 1669', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.10746
(accessed 21 June 2024 06:43:30).