Willem Romeyn (Haarlem c. 1624 - Haarlem in or after 1695)

He was listed in the records of the Guild of St Luke in Haarlem on 29 August 1642 as a pupil of Nicolaes Berchem (1621/22-1683), and in 1644 he became member of the guild.²²Miedema 1980, II, p. 543. Unlike his teacher, Romeyn definitely went to Rome, where he is registered in 1650 in the parish records of San Lorenzo in Lucina as ‘Guglielmo Romano’, living in the Strada Paolina, as did the French painters Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), Gaspard Dughet (1615-1675) and Claude Lorrain (1604/05-1682).³³Hoogewerff 1942, p. 123. The following year Romeyn is documented as living in the Strada della Croce. He might have joined the ‘Bentvueghels’ (the society of Dutch and Flemish artists in Rome), although, if so, his ‘bent-name’ is not recorded. He seems to have travelled to or from Rome via Lyon, as is documented by the inscription ‘te Lions’ on the verso of a drawing, Arch with a Well in a Ruined Wall, in a private collection.⁴⁴A. Stefes, ‘Traces Traced: Methods of Transfer Found in Drawings by Karel Dujardin, Willem Romeyn and Jan de Bray’, Delineavit et Sculpsit 45 (2019), fig. 10.

By the end of 1651, Romeyn must have returned to Haarlem, where he married Geertje Jans (?-1683). Their first son, Johannes, was born in Haarlem on 26 August 1652; a second son, Dirck, was born on 3 December 1658.⁵⁵https://rkd.nl/artists/67899. Romeyn reappears regularly the records of the Haarlem Guild of St Luke, for which he served as warden (‘vinder’) in 1659, 1660 and 1677.

Romeyn’s earliest known painting, Resting Herdsman and Cattle, dated 1644, which appeared on the art market in 1977,⁶⁶Sale, Amsterdam (Sotheby’s Mak van Waay), 26 April 1977, no. 109. mirrors the Italianate mode promoted by his teacher, Berchem, and reflects the kind of subject-matter in which Romeyn specialized for both paintings and drawings his entire career. No securely dated drawings from Romeyn’s training or Italian period are known, the earliest example being the Arch of Drusus, Rome, dated 1655, in the Albertina, Vienna (inv. no. 9861).⁷⁷P. Schatborn, with J. Verberne, Drawn to Warmth: 17th-century Dutch Artists in Italy, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001, p. 147, fig. A. There is a disproportionately high number of extant drawings dated in his last years, between 1692 and 1695, many of which are variations of earlier drawings featuring Italianate monuments and staffage.

Contemporary reproductive engravings after Romeyn’s inventions were made by the brothers Cornelis Visscher (1628/29-1658) and Jan de Visscher (1633/36-after 1692).

Annemarie Stefes, 2019

References
A. van der Willigen, Les artistes de Harlem: Notices historiques avec un précis sur la Gilde de St. Luc, Haarlem/The Hague 1870, pp. 252-53; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, II (1910), pp. 467-68; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXVIII (1934), p. 563 (entry by R. Juynboll); H. Gerson, Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Amsterdam 1942, pp. 30, 166, 250, 262, 331, 545; G.J. Hoogewerff, Nederlandsche kunstenaars te Rome, 1600-1725. Uittreksels uit de parochiale archieven, The Hague 1942, pp. 123-24, 126; G.J. Hoogewerff, De Bentvueghels, The Hague 1952, p. 77; L.J. Bol, Holländische Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts nahe den großen Meistern: Landschaften und Stilleben, Braunschweig 1969, pp. 260-61; H. Miedema, De archiefbescheiden van het St. Lukasgilde te Haarlem, 1497-1789, 2 vols., Alphen aan den Rijn 1980, II, pp. 543, 659, 661, 671, 675, 682, 698, 935, 1040, 1041, 1061-64; F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, XL (1992), p. 90, no. 73, and XLI (1992), p. 88, nos. 122-23; P. Schatborn, with J. Verberne, Drawn to Warmth: 17th-century Dutch Artists in Italy, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001, pp. 147-51; 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. 644; J. Turner and R.-J. te Rijdt (eds.), Home and Abroad: Dutch and Flemish Landscape Drawings from the John and Marine van Vlissingen Art Foundation, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Paris (Fondation Custodia) 2015-16, p. 118; https://rkd.nl/artists/67899