Statue and plinth sculpted in the round from one block of stone

The pedestal, with a recessed panel on each of its four sides, is original to the work.

…; garden 103 Nieuwe Herengracht, Amsterdam, first documented c. 1900;¹¹Captured in two photographs from around 1900. See fig. a and a photograph by Mendes da Costa for the firm Van Leer, published in De Prins der Geïllustreerde Bladen, 25 September 1909, p. 151 (ill.).…; sale collection Richard Heino Erdmann (1877-1960), country house Terra Nova, Loenen aan de Vecht (Mak van Waay), 15 May 1961, no. 39, fl. 1,083, to the museum

Object number: BK-1961-50

The naked sun god, Apollo, is leaning with his left hand on a tree stump and in his right hand holds a bow draped inside his cloak. He wears a crown (of laurel leaves?) on his head and a leafy branch of the tree stump behind him covers his genitals. The statue and its pendant portraying Aurora, the goddess of the dawn (present whereabouts unknown), had adorned the garden at number 103 Nieuwe Herengracht in Amsterdam. That is confirmed by a photo taken around the turn of the century (fig. a).²²Published in De Prins der Geïllustreerde Bladen, 25 September 1909, p. 151. At the time, the garden statues stood a few metres in front of the doorway to the rococo summerhouse that was built in the garden round 1746 for the building’s then occupant, the Portuguese-Jewish merchant Aron Joseph de Pinto (1710-1758). The initial design drawings for the interior of this pavilion are attributed to Jan van Logteren (1709-1745), at the time the leading sculptor-architect of Amsterdam, and the stucco artists, the Huslij brothers, with whom he often worked.³³For the summerhouse, see C.C.G. Quarles van Ufford, ‘Het mooiste tuinhuis van Amsterdam staat te Ukkel: De achttiende eeuwse bouwactiviteiten van Aron de Joseph de Pinto op Nieuwe Heerngracht 103’, Jaarboek van het Genootschap Amstelodamum 65 (1973), pp. 109-36. Van Logteren was unable to realise the building of the pavilion himself, as he died in 1745.

In 1902 the house at 103 Nieuwe Herengracht was acquired by the chef J. Stranders, who rented the premises out for parties and functions. He had a larger party venue built in 1909 on the site of the summerhouse and sold the old pavilion to the Belgian banker Léon Janssen, who had it re-erected in Wolvendael park in Ukkel (near Brussels). A photo from around 1902 showing the pavilion in its original place testifies to the fact that the Apollo and Aurora statues discussed here had already disappeared from that location.⁴⁴C.C.G. Quarles van Ufford, ‘Het mooiste tuinhuis van Amsterdam staat te Ukkel: De achttiende eeuwse bouwactiviteiten van Aron de Joseph de Pinto op Nieuwe Heerngracht 103’, Jaarboek van het Genootschap Amstelodamum 65 (1973), pp. 109-36, esp. fig. 4. They only re-emerged in 1961, at a sale of some of the statues from the gardens of country house Terra Nova in Loenen aan de Vecht, from the estate of the Amsterdam merchant Richard Heino Erdmann.⁵⁵Sale collection Richard Heino Erdmann, Terra Nova, Loenen aan de Vecht (Mak van Waay), 15 May 1961, nos. 39 (Apollo) and 40 (Aurora). For Terra Nova, see E. Munnig Schmidt and A.J.A.M. Lisman, Plaatsen aan de Vecht en de Angstel: Historische beschrijvingen en afbeeldingen van kastelen, buitenplaatsen, stads- en dorpsgezichten aan de Vecht en de Angstel – van Zuilen tot Muiden, Alphen aan de Rijn 1997, pp. 162-63. There, the Rijksmuseum procured only the Apollo figure. It is not known why the pendant, Aurora, was not acquired – perhaps the quality or condition was below par.

Although he did not enlarge on this, Fischer was perhaps under the impression that the statues had a connection with the construction of the Amsterdam summerhouse, because he ascribed them, with reservations, to Jean-François Maes (1707-1759), who had made several signed stucco reliefs for the pavilion’s interior in 1747.⁶⁶P.M. Fischer, ‘Eighteenth-Century Dutch Sculpture, Apollo 96 (1972), pp. 396-405, esp. p. 400 and fig. 9. However, that attribution is unfounded, since as far as we know Maes undertook only funerary sculpture, decorative carving and stucco work and, in his oeuvre, no concrete stylistic relation with the garden sculpture can be detected.⁷⁷See, for this sculptor, for example K. Heyning, ‘Decoratief beeldhouwwerk in Den Haag tijdens het rococo’, in R. Baarsen et al., Rococo in Nederland, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001-02, pp. 24-35, esp. pp. 29-32. Moreover, it is highly doubtful that the works came about in the same context as the summerhouse. They did not form an integral part, nor do the statues and the simple decoration of the concomitant pedestals tie in with the florid rococo ornamentation of the garden pavilion. The figures have more in common with the robust classicist style that prevailed at the start of the eighteenth century.

Leeuwenberg catalogued the Apollo as ‘circle of Jan van Logteren’, but dated it quite late, around 1730.⁸⁸J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, p. 272. The figure is more akin to the earliest work of his father, Ignatius van Logteren (1685-1732), and there would seem to be sufficient reason to add it to his early oeuvre. For instance, Apollo’s idealized, feminine facial features and wavy, fly-away hair are almost identical in form and execution to those of a bust of the same god made and signed by this sculptor and dated 1714. That work once stood in the garden at 414 Keizersgracht in Amsterdam (fig. b).⁹⁹P.M. Fischer, Ignatius en Jan van Logteren: Beeldhouwers en stuckunstenaars in het Amsterdam van de 18e eeuw, Alphen aan de Rijn 2005, fig. 119. The same type of head is also found in an IVL-monogrammed work – again an Apollo – in the park at Loppem castle (near Brugge) which also has a torso with comparable, somewhat angular shaped muscles as the present work. In the Apollo from the Keizersgracht and a pendant Atalanta, Fischer believed he recognized two early works by Van Logteren from the first quarter of the eighteenth century, on account of ‘their very calm demeanour, their un-baroque garments, neither wind-blown nor exhibiting complicated drapery’ which were very similar to six designs made around 1700 by a youthful Ignatius van Logteren.¹⁰¹⁰P.M. Fischer, Ignatius en Jan van Logteren: Beeldhouwers en stuckunstenaars in het Amsterdam van de 18e eeuw, Alphen aan de Rijn 2005, p. 289 and figs. 311 and 312. For the drawings, see ibid., fig. 97. The features Fischer mentions are in fact even more applicable to the present statue, confirming their attribution to Van Logteren. And lastly, this sculptor also used the positioning of Apollo’s legs for the statue of Summer (BK-NM-8673) dating from around 1712-13 which today is also in the Rijksmuseum.

In conclusion, the statues of Apollo and Aurora must have been made at least thirty years before the rococo summerhouse of 1745. It is not known exactly when they ended up in the garden of 103 Nieuwe Herengracht, but probably after 1728. A document from that year actually mentions only one ‘statue and pedestal in the garden’, so not a pendant pair.¹¹¹¹C.C.G. Quarles van Ufford, ‘Het mooiste tuinhuis van Amsterdam staat te Ukkel: De achttiende eeuwse bouwactiviteiten van Aron de Joseph de Pinto op Nieuwe Heerngracht 103’, Jaarboek van het Genootschap Amstelodamum 65 (1973), pp. 109-36, esp. pp. 122 and 135. If Jan van Logteren was indeed involved in the design of the garden pavilion, it is possible that he supplied the works to De Pinto from his stock, or that De Pinto bought them from the estate after Jan’s death. An advertisement in the Amsterdamse Courant reveals that in 1742 Jan van Logteren had access to his deceased father’s works and traded in them.¹²¹²Amsterdamse Courant, 22 March 1742. F. Scholten, ‘Twee teruggevonden bozzetti by Ignatius van Logteren (1685-1732)’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 53 (2005), pp. 126-39, esp. p. 133.

Bieke van der Mark, 2025

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 370, with earlier literature

B. van der Mark, 2025, 'attributed to Jan van Logteren, Apollo, Amsterdam, c. 1700 - c. 1715', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200116063