Support The panel consists of two horizontally grained, butt-joined oak planks (approx. 23.6 cm and 18.1 cm), approx. 1 cm thick. The bottom edge has been trimmed slightly. The reverse is bevelled at the top and bottom and on the left, and has distinct, regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1637. The panel could have been ready for use by 1648, but a date in or after 1654 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, very thin, smooth, off-white ground extends up to the edges of the support and primarily fills the grain of the wood.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. The composition was largely built up from the back to the front and from light to dark. A translucent brown paint was used as a first lay-in for the landscape and the ruin on the left. The sky was added next, leaving the ruin in reserve. The sky and the landscape in the background were densely applied, using mainly opaque, white paint, and, like the river, brushed on wet in wet. The foreground with its darker, more translucent colours was thinly executed. The ruin was finished with different shades of grey and decorated with small trees and bushes. Figures, boats and other details were placed on top of the landscape and water. The paint surface is rather smooth with just a few visible brushstrokes and some impasto in details and at contours.
Anna Krekeler [publication date 2026]

Fair. The paint layer has local, small losses and is abraded along the wood grain. There is discoloured retouching in the landscape in the left foreground. The varnish has severely yellowed, is partially matte and saturates poorly.

Flat-bottom ebony frame.¹¹P.J.J. van Thiel and C.J. de Bruyn Kops, Framing in the Golden Age: Picture and Frame in 17th-Century Holland, Zwolle 1995, p. 38, note 9, p. 77, fig. F3.

…; ? collection Jean-François van der Straelen (1731-1801), Antwerp; ? his son, Jean-Baptiste van der Straelen (1761-1847), Antwerp; ? his son-in-law, Pierre-Théodore Moons (1803-1860), Antwerp, or Ludovicus Adriaen Frans Moons (1769-1844), Antwerp; ? his nephew, Pierre-Théodore Moons (1803-1860), Antwerp; his son-in-law, Théodore-François-Xavier van Lerius (1819-1880), Antwerp; his sale, Antwerp (A. van Dael et al.), 19 February 1885, no. 251, as Dirk van Hoogstraten, fl. 200, to the museum²²NHA, ARS, IS, inv. 165, no. 332 (5 March 1885); NHA, ARS, Kop., inv. 289, pp. 32-33, no. 97 (6 April 1885). For the reconstruction of the line of inheritance see Goovaerts in the catalogue for the sale, Théodore-François-Xavier van Lerius, Antwerp (A. van Dael et al.), 19 February 1885, pp. V-VII.

Object number: SK-A-989

This picture was acquired by the museum in 1885 as a work by Dirck van Hoogstraten.⁷⁷See Provenance. Since this artist is not known to have painted landscapes, his name was soon abandoned. The suggestion that it was made by the Fleming Daniel van Heil was equally short-lived for stylistic reasons. In lieu of a satisfactory attribution, this River Landscape was presented in the 1903 collection catalogue as the work of the Monogrammist DVH. It was not until the 1960s that the painting was linked with Dirck Verhaert,⁸⁸W. Bernt, The Netherlandish Painters of the Seventeenth Century, III, London 1970 (unpag.). under whose name it was first included in the museum’s catalogues in 1976.

This scene is representative of Verhaert’s oeuvre because of the rendering of the mountains in the background and the ruins in the foreground and the monochrome palette. The figures are relatively small with indistinguishable faces. The vegetation and buildings merge so gradually that it seems as if the fortifications along the river and the city in the background rise out of the earth, an effect that is partially enhanced by the muted colour scheme.

Verhaert rarely dated his landscapes, and the only two that he did are from the 1630s.⁹⁹Both collection of Dr E. Shapiro, London, 1953; photos RKD. While the earliest, from 1634, signed with the monogram ‘DVrH’, already features ruins, it still relates to the work of Cornelis van Poelenburch. By contrast, the other picture, of a year later, moves more in the direction of the monochrome hilly views that Verhaert continued to produce for the rest of his career. Dendrochronology established that the panel of the Rijksmuseum River Landscape was most probably available only by 1654.

In comparing this painting with the artist’s last known dated work from 1675,¹⁰¹⁰See Biography. the composition is more complex due to the irregular rock formations and exhibits greater contrasts of colour. The present picture could be considered part of Verhaert’s mature characteristic style, which reached its full development around 1655.

Richard Harmanni [publication date 2026]

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

C. Hofstede de Groot, ‘Kritische opmerkingen omtrent eenige schilderijen in ’s Rijksmuseum, I’, Oud Holland 17 (1899), pp. 163-70, esp. p. 165; L.J. Bol (intro.), Goede onbekenden: Nederlandse schilderijen uit de 16e en 17e eeuw zonder signatuur of met een (nog) niet verklaard monogram gemerkt, exh. cat. Dordrecht (Dordrechts Museum) 1959, p. 12, no. 31

1887, pp. 81-82, no. 689 (as attributed to Dirk van Hoogstraten or possibly Daniel van Heil); 1903, p. 182, no. 1647 (as Monogrammist DVH); 1976, p. 569, no. A 989

Richard Harmanni, 2026, 'Dirck Verhaert, River Landscape, c. 1635 - c. 1650', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20026856