Landscape with Cattle

Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been removed.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends up to the current edges of the support. The first, greyish-brown layer consists of brown pigment particles with an addition of white, red and ochre-coloured pigment particles. The second ground is also greyish brown, but is thinner and lighter, and contains a higher amount of white 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 laid out with an undermodelling in translucent greyish-dark brown paint. The sky was then applied wet in wet, leaving the landscape, including the tops of the group of higher trees, in reserve. Small details along the outlines of the landscape, such as the foliage of the trees, extend over the sky. The cattle and the milkmaid were reserved in the landscape and were built up from dark to light. Finally the darkest shadows and highlights were added. The paint was loosely applied, often leaving the ground exposed, for example in the standing cow’s back and in the grazing sheep’s head. The paint surface is smooth, with some visible brushwork in the cows’ heads.
Anna Krekeler, 2022

Good. The varnish has yellowed and saturates moderately.

…; ? anonymous sale, Leiden (L.B. Coclers and J. Janson), 4 November 1783, no. 30 (‘Twee Landschapjes met Koeijen, Kalveren, Schapen en Geytjes, breed 13, hoog 10½ duim [34 x 27 cm]’), fl. 47;¹¹For the pendant see SK-C-161.…; sale, Dorothea Henriette Marie Louise de Pagnier (1751-1836, Utrecht), dowager of Baron Vincent Maximiliaan van Tuyll van Serooskerken (1747-1794, Utrecht), Utrecht (G.H. Stevens), 28 July 1836, no. 12 (‘Op den voorgrond zijn twee leggende melkbeesten en eene staande, met schapen en eene geit, waarbij eene boerenwoning en een melk-meisje, welke huiswaarts gaat […] verder in alles als het voorgaande, waarvan het de pendant uitmaakt’), with pendant, no. 11 (‘Op eenen heuvelachtigen grond ziet men eene leggende en staande koe met eenige schapen, waarbij eene leggende geit die door haar jong wordt gezogen, op den tweeden grond eene boeren-woning tusschen het geboomte; in het verschiet eene rivier en verder stoffagie’), fl. 276, to Albertus Brondgeest, for Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), Amsterdam;²²Lijst van schilderijen, beelden en teekeningen van Adriaan van der Hoop te Amsterdam, NHA, ARS, no. 388 (copy in Rijksmuseum Research Library), p. 17, no. 155: ‘Twee klijne, maar zeer bevallige, heldere en zuivere landschappen met koebeesten door A. Klomp, gekocht te Utrecht in de veyling van 28 July [1836] van het kabinet van de Douar.e Barones van Tuyll voor f. 150:- en f. 126:- met onkosten, aan A. Brondgeest… 329.44’. by whom bequeathed to the City of Amsterdam, with 223 other paintings, 1854;³³Taxatie van schilderijen, teekeningen en beeldhouwwerken gedaan door Pieter E.H. Praetorius en Gerrit de Vries Jz., executeuren van het testament van A. van der Hoop [...] 29 april 1854, NHA, ARS, no. 388 (copy in Rijksmuseum Research Library), p. 2, nos. 155, 156: ‘Twee stuks Landschappen met Vee, fl. 400’. from which on loan to the museum, with pendant SK-C-161, since 30 June 1885⁴⁴Provenance from 1836 to the present reconstructed in A. Pollmer, ‘Catalogus van de schilderijen in de verzameling van Adriaan van der Hoop’, in E. Bergvelt et al., De Hollandse meesters van een Amsterdamse bankier: De verzameling van Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), exh. cat. Amsterdam (Amsterdams Historisch Museum; Rijksmuseum) 2004-05, pp. 135-95, esp. p. 158, nos. 91, 92.

ObjectNumber: SK-C-162

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest)

Albert Klomp probably painted this picture as a companion piece to another landscape with cattle (see SK-A-161; also fig. a). Works of his were often referred to as pairs in seventeenth-century Amsterdam probate inventories,⁷⁷The Getty Provenance Index lists various examples, such as the inventory of Pieter Bollart, 13 August 1667: ‘In de groote binnecamer, 2 schilderijen met koeyen, van Clomp’ (In the large inner room, 2 paintings of cows by Klomp); the one of Elisabeth Verweij, 19 December 1686, ‘2 dito van clomp’ (2 ditto by Klomp); and the inventory of Elias Bouman, 1 March 1689: ‘2 stukjes van Clomp’ (2 pieces by Klomp), ‘twee landtschapjens met beesjens van Clomp’ (two landscapes with animals by Klomp). GPI, N-2226, N-239, N-250. and as far as is known these two have never been separated. Iconographically, though, there is no reason to hang them beside each other – at most there is a visual relationship.

Clearly inspired by the oeuvre of Paulus Potter, both paintings are of different kinds of cattle with a dune (the present one) and a river background respectively. The compositions have a diagonal structure with dense vegetation on one side and an open landscape on the other. Several elements have been taken from earlier works by both Klomp himself and Potter. The two cows and the solitary sheep on the left in the river scene, for example, are found in exactly the same poses in a much larger, undated picture by Klomp.⁸⁸Sale, London (Sotheby’s), 16 December 1999, no. 385 (ill.). The reclining cow with the goat in front of it, which is the central motif of this dune landscape, is derived from Paulus Potter’s Herdsmen with Cattle of 1651.⁹⁹Woburn Abbey; illustrated in T. Dibbits, I. Verslype and A. Wallert, ‘Paulus Potters Herders met vee: Rijksmuseum versus Woburn Abbey’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 56 (2008), pp. 66-81, esp. p. 66. There are at least two other versions of the latter, including one in the Rijksmuseum which is now regarded as a copy.¹⁰¹⁰SK-A-318. For another copy (or earlier version), present whereabouts unknown, see sale, Paris (Charpentier), 12 December 1953, no. 56; illustrated in T. Dibbits, I. Verslype and A. Wallert, ‘Paulus Potters Herders met vee: Rijksmuseum versus Woburn Abbey’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 56 (2008), pp. 66-81, esp. p. 78. It is not known which of these variants Klomp used, but it is not inconceivable that he had an image of the Potter in his studio, for the same reclining cow and goat feature in several other works of his.¹¹¹¹Among them Landscape with Reclining Animals; illustrated in O. le Bihan, L’or et l’ombre: Catalogue critique et raisonné des peintures hollandaises du dix-septième et du dix-huitième siècles, conservées au Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, coll. cat. Bordeaux 1990, p. 172; Landscape with Cattle, sale, Cologne (Kunsthaus am Museum), 16 October 1991, no. 960, as Aelbert Cuyp (ill.). The fact that this motif still occurs in cattle scenes in the eighteenth century testifies to its popularity.¹²¹²For example by Jan van Gool in his Wooded Landscape with a Shepherdess and her Flock; sale, Amsterdam (Sotheby’s), 22 February 2005, no. 23 (ill.); Monogrammist IL, Landscape with Cattle, SK-C-160. Like the paintings by Klomp, the latter picture came from Adriaan van der Hoop’s collection, where it was still listed as an authentic work by Klomp; see J.W. Kaiser, Beschrijving der schilderijen in het Museum Van der Hoop, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1868, p. 24, no. 59.

There are only a few clues to establish a chronology for these two pictures, which are clear evidence of Klomp’s mastery of the subject. The cows with their slightly impasted heads are more successful than those in his earliest known works of 1657 and 1662. There is a single dated painting to which they can be related. The goat copied from Potter in the present scene also features in a Landscape with Cattle and Herdsmen of 1665.¹³¹³Sale, London (Sotheby’s), 17 April 1991, no. 150 (ill.). For the moment that provides no more than a rough origin in the mid-1660s.

Erlend de Groot, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

1887, p. 93, no. 776; 1903, p. 148, no. 1354; 1976, p. 322, no. C 162

Erlend de Groot, 2022, 'Albert Jansz. Klomp, Landscape with Cattle, c. 1665 - 1688', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.12042