Sculpted. The marble vase is made up of three parts: the vase, the lid and the knob. Originally the sandstone socle was painted white; it consists of two parts: the bottom plinth with socle (one part) and the upper plinth.

The marble exhibits erosion and sugaring. A crack runs through the lid from the middle to the edge and there a fragment has broken off. The vase has a vertical hairline crack in the foot and elsewhere the foot has been broken and repaired. Some traces of old monochromy remain on the socle.

…; country house Enghuizen near Lochem;¹¹Note RMA. …; from the dealer A. Nijstad, Lochem, to the museum with the other three vases of the ensemble (BK-16445-A, -B and BK-16446-B) and three other vases (BK-16443, BK-16444-A and -B) for a total of fl. 20,000, 1950

Object number: BK-16446-A

These four urn-like garden vases in Louis XIV style came from the garden of what used to be Enghuizen country estate near Lochem.²²For Enghuizen House, see J, Harenberg, Adellijke huizen in het richterambt Doesborgh, Doesburg 1990. The lids and the bodies of the marble vases are decorated with leaf patterns and lobate edges. On the body of the vase, a trapezium-shaped section has been added, framed by a moulding. Overall, the four vases resemble one another and could have comprised an ensemble, yet it is also possible that they formed two separately designed pairs, which were combined into an ad hoc ensemble. For example, on one pair (BK-16445-A and -B) the handles are shaped like female caryatids, whereas on the other pair (the present vase and BK-16446-B) they take the form of female busts arising from acanthus leaves. Moreover, the upper corners of the trapezium-shaped sections in the first pair are curved and the others are straight. The bases of the vases are not identical either: the second pair have an additional convexity above the bottom edge and are slightly larger in diameter than the first pair (110 as against 103 cm). Nevertheless, the similar style of the sculpted decoration is evidence that the vases came from the same workshop. In addition, the (original?) accompanying sandstone socles are all identical. The traces of monochromy indicate that the socles were originally painted white, presumably the same shade of white as the marble vases.

Considering the general shape of the garden vases and the style of the female figures and other ornaments, they will have been made in the Netherlands in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. If they had originated from Enghuizen country estate – which is not the case with Cressant’s vases dating from 1714 which only found their way there in 1819 (BK-16444-A and -B) – they were probably purchased at the beginning of the eighteenth century by the aristocratic Van Heeckeren family, when they replaced the original mediaeval castle with a palatial house with crescent-shaped wings on either side. In 1835 this structure was also pulled down to make way for a resplendent country house in Italian palazzo style. The garden vases survived the bombing of the country house in the Second World War as well as the fire that ultimately destroyed the building in 1948.

Bieke van der Mark, 2025

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 397c, with earlier literature

B. van der Mark, 2025, 'anonymous, Garden Vase, from a Set of Four, Northern or Southern Netherlands, c. 1700 - c. 1725', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200116110