watermark: none

...; donated by Jonkvrouwe Agnes Henriette Beels van Heemstede-van Loon (1829-1902), Amsterdam, with 273 other drawings, to the museum (L. 2228), 1898

Object number: RP-T-1898-A-3513

Credit line: Donated by Jonkvrouwe Agnes Henriette Beels van Heemstede-van Loon, Amsterdam

The present drawing and inv. no. RP-T-1898-A-3514, picturing the Amsterdam naval docks from different viewpoints, were both done on 26 July 1666. De Bray still lived in Haarlem at this time. While in Amsterdam, he was attracted to the man-made island of Kattenburg, north-east of central Amsterdam. Kattenburg was part of an initiative in 1650 to create facilities for the growing industry of seafaring, both commercial and military. For the present drawing, De Bray sketched the site from the north, with ’s Lands Zeemagazijn (‘National Sea Arsenal’) serving as backdrop motif. This classical building designed by Daniel Stalpaert (1615-1676) was constructed in 1655-56, on commission of the admiralty of Amsterdam. Situated on the western end of the island, it served as an arsenal, to store canons, sails and other ship gear.¹¹S. de Meer, ’s Lands Zeemagazijn, Zutphen 1994, pp. 12, 15-39. In 1791, it survived a fire.²²Ibid., pp. 48-50. Since 1972, it houses the Nederlands Scheepvaartmuseum, its present address being Kattenburgerplein 1. To the left, the site is framed by ’s Lands Timmerwerf, being the admiralty’s dockyards, with its domed tower seen in the background.³³The little cupola was demolished in the nineteenth century, cf. ibid., p. 14.

Although eventually calling himself an architect (in 1678), in this sketch of 1666, De Bray was less focussed on the architecture than on the activities taking place. In the right background, two ships are put in dry dock, while in the foreground, two figures are busy lifting large planks of wood. De Bray started sketching the scene with graphite before giving it a more definite vision with pen and brown ink. In doing so, he occasionally corrected his first draft, for instance by reducing the size of the workers whose originally larger outlines are still visible as pentimenti. Immediately after finishing the sketch in graphite, pen and ink, De Bray dated the drawing with brown ink. He seems to have added the signature in graphite at a later moment, using a different type of graphite than that of the preliminary sketch.

A third sketch of the docks by De Bray was part of the Atlas Wurfbain, but its present whereabouts are unknown.⁴⁴Sale, Atlas Wurfbain, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 20 November 1899 sqq., no. 186 (‘Gezicht in het dok waarin eenige afgetakelde oorlogschepen liggen. Met de pen en met spijkerinkt. Gemerkt en 1666 gedateerd. Een soortgelijke teekeing bevindt zich in het Prenten-Cabinet. 8 ½ = 15’), fl. 5 ½, to Gebr. Hamburger (copy RKD); see also J.W. von Moltke, ‘Jan de Bray’, Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 11/12 (1938-39), pp. 421-523, no. Z 184. J. Giltaij, Jan de Bray (1626/1627-1697). Schilder en architect, Zwolle 2017, p. 301 erroneously associated this provenance with inv. no. RP-T-1898-A-3513, even though it had entered the collection already in 1898 as a gift of jonkvrouwe Agnes Henriette Beels van Heemstede-van Loon.

Annemarie Stefes, 2019

J.W. von Moltke, ‘Jan de Bray’, Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 11/12 (1938-39), pp. 421-523, no. Z 185; S. de Meer, ’s Lands Zeemagazijn, Zutphen 1994, p. 36; J. Giltaij, Jan de Bray (1626/1627-1697). Schilder en architect, Zwolle 2017, pp. 46, 300-01, no. T73

A. Stefes, 2019, 'Jan de Bray, View of the National Sea Arsenal from the North, and a Shipyard in Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 1666-07-26', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200119026