Aan de slag met de collectie:
Landschap met houthakkers aan een rivieroever
Jan van Aken, ca. 1652
Heuvelachtig landschap met houthakkers aan de oever van een rivier.
- Soort kunstwerktekening
- ObjectnummerRP-T-1897-A-3396
- Afmetingenhoogte 96 mm x breedte 151 mm
- Fysieke kenmerkenzwart krijt, met penseelpunt en grijze en zwart inkt, en penseel en grijze inkt; kaderlijnen in donderbruine inkt (boven- en linkerrand) en bruine inkt (onder- en rechterrand)
Ontdek verder
Identificatie
Titel(s)
Landschap met houthakkers aan een rivieroever
Objecttype
Objectnummer
RP-T-1897-A-3396
Beschrijving
Heuvelachtig landschap met houthakkers aan de oever van een rivier.
Opschriften / Merken
- signatuur, linksonder, pen in bruin: ‘van aken’
- merk, verso rechtsonder: ‘L. 2643’
- annotatie, verso midden onder, in potlood: ‘S.F. -Lr.M.N 53./ Jan van Aken f. omtrent 1652/ LL’
Onderdeel van catalogus
Vervaardiging
Vervaardiging
tekenaar: Jan van Aken, Amsterdam (mogelijk)
Datering
ca. 1652
Zoek verder op
Materiaal en techniek
Fysieke kenmerken
zwart krijt, met penseelpunt en grijze en zwart inkt, en penseel en grijze inkt; kaderlijnen in donderbruine inkt (boven- en linkerrand) en bruine inkt (onder- en rechterrand)
Afmetingen
hoogte 96 mm x breedte 151 mm
Dit werk gaat over
Onderwerp
Verwerving en rechten
Credit line
Aankoop met steun van de Vereniging Rembrandt
Verwerving
aankoop 1897
Copyright
Herkomst
…; sale, Abraham Rademaker (1676-1735, Amsterdam and Haarlem), Amsterdam (C. van Essen), 24 October 1735 sqq., fl. 1, to Sybrand Feitama II;{According to Feitama s.a. [1746], fol. 1: ‘_6 kleine Landschapjes, gekocht op Ab. Rademakers verkooping A° 1735 a 1 gl_’.} collection Sybrand Feitama II (1694-1758), Amsterdam;{According to Feitama s.a. [1746], fol. 1.} his sale, Amsterdam (B. de Bosch et al.), 16 October 1758 sqq., Album M, no. 53 (‘Een duin en Watergezichtje by een Dorpje met Oostind. inkt en Zwart kryt, h. 3 ¾, br. 6 d. [95 x 152 mm]’), with one other drawing, fl. 17, to Johann Edler Goll von Franckenstein (1722-85), Amsterdam and Velzen;{Copy RKD.} …; collection William Pitcairn Knowles (1820-94), Rotterdam and Wiesbaden (L. 2643); his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 25 June 1895 sqq., no. 6, with two other drawings, fl. 5, to the dealer F. Muller for the Vereniging Rembrandt;{Note RMA.} from whom, to the museum (L. 2228), 1897
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Jan van Aken
Landscape with Figures Chopping Wood on the Banks of a River
? Amsterdam, c. 1652
Inscriptions
inscribed: lower left, in brown ink, J van aken (the ‘J’ partially effaced)
inscribed on verso: lower centre, possibly by Goll van Franckenstein, in pencil, S.F. - Lr. M. N 53. / Jan van Aken f. omtrent 1652 / LL
Technical notes
watermark: none
Condition
Two spots of abrasion at left
Provenance
…; sale, Abraham Rademaker (1676-1735, Amsterdam and Haarlem), Amsterdam (C. van Essen), 24 October 1735 sqq., fl. 1, to Sybrand Feitama II;1According to Feitama s.a. [1746], fol. 1: ‘6 kleine Landschapjes, gekocht op Ab. Rademakers verkooping A° 1735 a 1 gl’. collection Sybrand Feitama II (1694-1758), Amsterdam;2According to Feitama s.a. [1746], fol. 1. his sale, Amsterdam (B. de Bosch et al.), 16 October 1758 sqq., Album M, no. 53 (‘Een duin en Watergezichtje by een Dorpje met Oostind. inkt en Zwart kryt, h. 3 ¾, br. 6 d. [95 x 152 mm]’), with one other drawing, fl. 17, to Johann Edler Goll von Franckenstein (1722-85), Amsterdam and Velzen;3Copy RKD. …; collection William Pitcairn Knowles (1820-94), Rotterdam and Wiesbaden (L. 2643); his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 25 June 1895 sqq., no. 6, with two other drawings, fl. 5, to the dealer F. Muller for the Vereniging Rembrandt;4Note RMA. from whom, to the museum (L. 2228), 1897
Object number: RP-T-1897-A-3396
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt
The artist
Biography
Jan van Aken (? Amsterdam c. 1614 – Amsterdam 1661)
According to a tradition of unknown origin, he was born in 1614 in Amsterdam. Houbraken described him as a ‘een Paardeschilder, maar in ’t klein’ (‘painter of horses, on a small scale’).5A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, III (1721), p. 183. His oeuvre consists of more than forty drawings and twenty-one landscape etchings, including a series of horses after Pieter van Laer (1599-1642)6F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, I (1947), nos. 1-6. and four Rhine landscapes after sketches by Herman Saftleven (c. 1609-1685), one of which is dated 1648.7Ibid., nos. 18-21. The nature of Van Aken’s relation to both artists remains unexplored.
Among the examples of dated drawings include two from 1652: Valley with Ruined Bridge in the Special Collections, Universiteit Leiden (inv. no. PK-T-AW-3), and Rocky Landscape with Figures on a Road by a Stream in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1836,0811.1).8A.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, III (1926), no. 1. Only a handful of paintings can be securely associated with the artist, for instance a pair from the early 1650s, Dune Landscape with Travellers and Gypsies (1650) in a private collection,9R. Hirsch, Seventeenth-century Painters of Haarlem, exh. cat. Allentown (PA) (Allentown Art Museum) 1965, no. 96. and Mountainous River Landscape (165(?)) in the Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie, Warsaw (inv. no. M.Ob.437 MNW), previously published as signed and dated 1650.10H. Benesz and M. Kluk, Early Netherlandish, Dutch, Flemish and Belgian Paintings, 1494-1983, in the Collections of the National Museum in Warsaw and the Palace of Nieborów: Complete Illustrated Summary Catalogue, 2 vols., coll. cat. Warsaw 2016, no. 5.
What is generally assumed to be this artist, a certain ‘Jan van Aken’, brother-in-law of a Lammert van den Velden, living at the corner of the Nieuwbrugsteeg, was buried in the Oudezijds Kapel on 25 March 1661.
Annemarie Stefes, 2019
References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, III (1721), p. 183; R. van Eijnden and A. van der Willigen, Geschiedenis der vaderlandsche schilderkunst, 4 vols., Haarlem 1816-40, I (1816), pp. 214-15; F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis, 7 vols., Rotterdam 1877-90, V (1882-83), p. 203; A.D. de Vries, ‘Biografische aanteekeningen betreffende voornamelijk Amsterdamsche schilders, plaatsnijders, enz. en hunne verwanten (I)’, Oud-Holland 3 (1885), p. 58; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, I (1906), p. 8; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, I (1907), p. 158 (entry by E.W. Moes); F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, I (1947), pp. 5-9; W.L. Strauss (ed.), The Illustrated Bartsch, New York and elsewhere 1978-, I (1978), pp. 267-79, nos. 1-21; W. Schulz, Herman Saftleven (1609-1685): Leben und Werke, mit einem kritischen Katalog der Gemälde und Zeichnungen, Berlin 1982, pp. 72, 113-14; A. Beyer et al. (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992-, I (1992), p. 700; 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. 57; https://rkd.nl/explore/artists/774
Entry
The present sheet belongs to the same group of works as the museum’s inv. no. RP-T-1889-A-2028, except that in the present case the composition shows a tranquil Dutch scene with a village on the banks of a river rather than a fantasy mountain landscape. As such, Van Aken demonstrated his ability to assimilate the styles of different artists. Whereas his mountain views reflect the influence of Herman Saftleven (1609-1685), in the present sheet he followed in the footsteps of Jan van Goyen (1596-1656) and Allaert van Everdingen (1621-1675). A variant of the composition is preserved in the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh (inv. no. D 1102), where it was previously given to Van Goyen before being reattributed to Van Aken.11K. Andrews, Catalogue of Netherlandish Drawings in the National Gallery of Scotland, 2 vols., coll. cat. Edinburgh 1985, I, p. 1, II (fig. 2). A similar type of Dutch landscape features in a drawing in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1836,0811.786),12A.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, III (1926), no. 7. as well as in Van Aken’s etching of a dune landscape (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-BI-14).13F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, I (1947), no. 9.
On its verso, the present sheet is annotated with a code that refers to the sale of Sybrand Feitama II (1694-1758), to be deciphered as ‘S[ybrand] F[eitama] – L[etter] M. N[°] 53’. Since Goll von Franckenstein purchased the drawing at that sale, he was most likely the author of the inscription, even though the drawing lacks his characteristic collector’s number. Perhaps he numbered only the companion piece (no. 54 in Feitama’s sale), a drawing of February from a series of the Twelve Months by Van Everdingen in the Amsterdam Museum, which bears the Goll number ‘1141’ (inv. no. TA 10169),14Sale, Sybrand Feitama II (1694-1758, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (B. de Bosch et al.), 16 October 1758 sqq., Album M, no. 12; H.-U. Beck, ‘Anmerkungen zu den Zeichnungssammlungen von Valerius Röver und Goll van Franckenstein’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 32 (1981), pp. 121-22. As it is found neither in his grandson’s sale in 1833, nor in earlier sales containing parts of Goll’s collection,15Anonymous sale, Amsterdam (C.S. Roos et al.), 1 March 1819 sqq. and anonymous sale, Amsterdam (J. de Vries et al.) 20 November 1826; cf. ibid., p. 125 (n. 27). we may assume that he sold the drawing soon after its purchase. Next to the code, Goll added a date, ‘omtrent 1652’ (‘approximately 1652’), which either recorded a lost note by Feitama on the drawing’s former mount, or was written by Goll on the basis of Feitama’s dating of two large drawings by Van Aken in his collection ‘A° 1652’.16S. Feitama, Notitie der teekeningen, uit de oudste en latere aanteekeningen, sedert de jaren 1685 en 1690, tot 1746, s.l. (1746), fol. 1: ‘2 Groote Berg- en Watergezichten, geteekend A° 1652’.
Annemarie Stefes, 2019
Literature
K. Andrews, Catalogue of Netherlandish Drawings in the National Gallery of Scotland, 2 vols., coll. cat. Edinburgh 1985, I, p. 1
Citation
A. Stefes, 2019, 'Jan van Aken, Landscape with Figures Chopping Wood on the Banks of a River, Amsterdam, c. 1652', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200116893
(accessed 8 December 2025 23:04:49).Footnotes
- 1According to Feitama s.a. [1746], fol. 1: ‘6 kleine Landschapjes, gekocht op Ab. Rademakers verkooping A° 1735 a 1 gl’.
- 2According to Feitama s.a. [1746], fol. 1.
- 3Copy RKD.
- 4Note RMA.
- 5A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, III (1721), p. 183.
- 6F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, I (1947), nos. 1-6.
- 7Ibid., nos. 18-21.
- 8A.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, III (1926), no. 1.
- 9R. Hirsch, Seventeenth-century Painters of Haarlem, exh. cat. Allentown (PA) (Allentown Art Museum) 1965, no. 96.
- 10H. Benesz and M. Kluk, Early Netherlandish, Dutch, Flemish and Belgian Paintings, 1494-1983, in the Collections of the National Museum in Warsaw and the Palace of Nieborów: Complete Illustrated Summary Catalogue, 2 vols., coll. cat. Warsaw 2016, no. 5.
- 11K. Andrews, Catalogue of Netherlandish Drawings in the National Gallery of Scotland, 2 vols., coll. cat. Edinburgh 1985, I, p. 1, II (fig. 2).
- 12A.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, III (1926), no. 7.
- 13F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, I (1947), no. 9.
- 14Sale, Sybrand Feitama II (1694-1758, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (B. de Bosch et al.), 16 October 1758 sqq., Album M, no. 12; H.-U. Beck, ‘Anmerkungen zu den Zeichnungssammlungen von Valerius Röver und Goll van Franckenstein’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 32 (1981), pp. 121-22.
- 15Anonymous sale, Amsterdam (C.S. Roos et al.), 1 March 1819 sqq. and anonymous sale, Amsterdam (J. de Vries et al.) 20 November 1826; cf. ibid., p. 125 (n. 27).
- 16S. Feitama, Notitie der teekeningen, uit de oudste en latere aanteekeningen, sedert de jaren 1685 en 1690, tot 1746, s.l. (1746), fol. 1: ‘2 Groote Berg- en Watergezichten, geteekend A° 1652’.