Jan van Goyen's sketchbook, 1650-1651 Front cover (detail): Jan van Goyen (1596-1656) A town with windmills seen from a distance, 1650-1651 Black chalk and grey wash 96 x 156 mm., no. 13 Jan van Goyen's sketchbook, 1650-1651 22 - 30 January 2021 Mireille Mosler, Ltd. exhibiting at Jill Newhouse Gallery 4 East 81st Street #1B New York, NY 10128 By appointment +1917.362.5585 | [email protected] | www.mireillemosler.com Jan van Goyen was ambitious in his yearning for prosperity and recognition. Son of a cobbler in Leiden, he was apprenticed at the young age of ten to local painters. After a year of travelling through France, Van Goyen's received his formative training from the landscapist Esaias van de Velde in Haarlem in 1617. Haarlem, center of monochrome still lifes, put Jan van Goyen forward as the first and leading painter of Dutch tonal landscapes. Eventually, Van Goyen moved to the court city, The Hague, where he became head of the Guild of Saint Luke. Regardless his substantial artistic output, Van Goyen was also active as an art collector, dealer, auctioneer, appraiser, tulip and real estate investor. Surrounded by artists, he let the adjoining house to acclaimed fellow landscapist Paulus Potter. Two of Van Goyen's daughters married respectively his student, the genre painter Jan Steen and still life painter Jacques de Claeuw. Van Goyen's portrait by acclaimed colleague Gerard ter Borch confirms his prominent position among the Dutch artworld elite. Van Goyen travelled the length and breadth of the Netherlands recording details of landscape and topography in black chalk. A small sketchbook tucked into his pocket, the draughtsman in search of inspiration could quickly delineate sand dunes and architectural structures in the vicinity of his hometown or accompany him on extended journeys. Back in his studio, the sketches would provide endless inspiration, combining different motifs into imaginary landscape compositions. These drawings not only functioned as preliminary studies for motifs in paintings, Van Goyen at times also reworked them into larger, more finished drawings, typically monogrammed and dated, and intended for sale. Never attempting to depict accurate views, Van Goyen's preliminary studies unfold as topographical elements in his composite landscapes. Gerard ter Borch (1617-1681) Portrait of Jan van Goyen, ca. 1652–53 Oil on panel, 20 x 16 cm. Liechtenstein. The Princely Collections, Vaduz- Vienna. Inv. GE893 The following twenty-seven drawings originate from a now dispersed sketchbook fifty-four-year-old Van Goyen took along on his trip to Kleve. The first drawing in the sketchbook, showing two wanderers under a rainbow on their way to Kleve, inscribed 7 June 1650, establishes the date and goal of Van Goyen’s journey.1 Following the path of the artist through his sketches, he travelled along the rivers Rhine and Waal to Tiel, Nijmegen, and Emmerich. At his destination, he spent a considerable amount of time depicting Kleve and outskirts on numerous sheets. The return trip took the artist through Arnhem via Renkum and Bodegraven. The remaining pages in the sketchbook are likely filled after his return to The Hague with shorter trips, including a visit to Amsterdam, where he recorded the damage caused by the infamous breach of the Saint Anthony’s dike at Houtewael, on 5 March 1651, and the old Town Hall, destroyed by fire the following year. Although numbered by a later hand, it is unclear how many drawings were originally in the album. When Abraham Bredius (1855-1946), director of the Mauritshuis, exhibited the album in 1895 in the museum, it seemed to have some 170 leaves. 2 After it was shown a second time in the Mauritshuis in 1918, the Amsterdam dealer Anton Mensing (1866-1936) removed the drawings from their binding and eliminated the essence of the sketchbook. By the late 1950s, the New York dealer Karl Lilienfeld (1885-1966) sold the drawings separately, sadly disseminating the sketchbook.3 1 Present whereabouts unknown. Last reported on the art market in the sale of Carel Goldschmidt (1904-1989, Christie’s, New York, 11-12 January 1995, lot 220. 2 Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1939), the first academically trained art historian in the Netherlands, catalogued and described 190 drawings, possibly including double-sided drawings. As a facsimile of the album does not exists, this is the information Beck relied on while compiling his catalogue raisonné. https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/177354. 3 German born Lilienfeld, who like Hofstede de Groot had studied art history in Leipzig, moved to The Hague in 1911 to become his assistant and was most likely familiar with the sketchbook at the time. In 1926, Lilienfeld became director of the Van Diemen Gallery in New York. Drawings from the sketchbook are now in the collections of The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Amsterdam City Archives, Teylers Museum, Haarlem, Fondation Custodia/Collection Frits Lugt, Paris, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Art Museum, University of Toronto, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA, Art Institute of Chicago, Fogg Museum/Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH, and The National Gallery of Art, Washington, and in numerous private collections. Jan van Goyen (1596-1656) Sketchbook, 1650-1651 Black chalk and grey wash on cream antique laid paper Partial watermark arms of Lorraine 105 by 160 mm. overall dimensions Provenance Possibly Andrew Geddes (1738-1844), London, 1845 His sale, Christie's, London, 8-14 April 1845, lot 361 Private collection, England, 1879 Johnson Neale, London, by 1895 Thomas Mark Hovell (1853-1925), London, June 1918 Thomas Dinwiddy His sale, Sotheby's, London, 3 July 1918, lot 124 (£610) With P. and D. Colnaghi & Obach, London (stock no. A1700) Frederik Muller & Cie, Amsterdam, 15 August 1918 (sold for £800) With Anton Mensing (1866-1936), Amsterdam His sale, Frederik Muller & Co., Amsterdam, 27 April 1937, lot 218 (for 7,200 florins to Hirschmann4) With Adolf Mayer, the Hague and New York With Van Diemen-Lilienfeld Galleries, New York, 1957 4 Most likely Dr. Otto Heinrich Hirschmann (1898-1962), a branch manager at art dealership Van Diemen & Co. and independent art dealer from 1934 onwards. Exhibited The Hague, Mauritshuis, 1895 The Hague, Mauritshuis, 1918 Literature Verslagen omtrent ‘s Rijks Verzamelingen van Geschiedenis en Kunst, Vol. 18, 1895-1896, pp. 64-66 Campbell Dodgson, ”A Dutch Sketchbook of 1650”, Burlington Magazine, Vol. 32, no. 183 (June 1918), pp. 234-240 Abraham Bredius, in response to Campbell Dodgson, “A Dutch Sketchbook of 1650,” Burlington Magazine, Vol. 33, no. 186, (September 1918), p. 112 Campbell Dodgson, “A Dutch Sketchbook of 1650,” Burlington Magazine, Vol. 66, no. 387 (June 1935), p. 284 Hans-Ulrich Beck, ”Jan van Goyens Handzeichnungen als Vorzeichnungen”, Oud-Holland, Vol. 72, 1957, pp. 241-250 Friedrich Gorissen, Conspectus Cliviae, Cleve, 1964, p. 84-86 Hans-Ulrich Beck, Ein Skizzenbuch von Jan van Goyen, The Hague, 1966, p. 5 H. Dattenberg, Niederrheinansichten holländischer Künstler, Düsseldorf 1967 Hans-Ulrich Beck, Jan van Goyen, 1596-1656: Ein Oeuvreverzeichnis. Katalog der Handzeichnungen, Vol. I, Amsterdam 1972, cat.no. 847, pp. 285-315 Hans-Ulrich Beck, Jan van Goyen, 1596-1656: Ein Oeuvreverzeichnis. Erganzungen zum Katalog der Handzeichnungen, Vol. III, Doornspijk 1987, cat.no. 847, pp. 124-125b Edwin Buijsen, ”De schetsboeken van Jan van Goyen”, in: Jan van Goyen, Leiden 1996, pp. 22-37, 80, 130 Ann H. Sievers, Master Drawings from the Smith College Museum of Art, New York 2000, pp. 65-69, nos. 12-13 Additional provenance, literature and exhibition information for each drawing after the sketchbook was dispersed is listed by catalogue entry. 1 Jan van Goyen (1596-1656) Village church with turret, arched gateway and a house, 1650 Black chalk, with brush and gray wash on ivory laid paper 96 x 157 mm. Inscribed ‘5’ Provenance W. Suhr, New York Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth Their sale, Sotheby’s, London, 6 July 1987, lot 15, ill. (£3,000) Christie's, London, private sale, 2014 Private collection, New York Literature H.-U. Beck, Vol I, no. 847/5, p. 287, ill. The end of the Eighty Years' War, the Dutch revolt against the Spanish, marks the beginning of the Golden Age. The 1648 treaty known as the Peace of Munster recognized the Dutch Republic as an independent country no longer under the control of the Holy Roman Empire. Dutch pride and prosperity certainly contributed to the immense popularity of landscape painting, the most popular genre in the seventeenth century. Jan van Goyen's panoramic View on The Hague, a five meters wide painting commissioned by the city in 1650, certainly shows his mastery of the cityscape. It is possible that his connection to the court was the catalyst for his trip east to Kleve, a city under the control of stadholder Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen (1604-1679) since 1647. Maurits, the art loving aristocrat of German origin, commissioned the renovation of Kleve's Schwanenburg castle and the construction of extensive gardens that greatly influenced European landscape design. 2 Jan van Goyen (1596-1656) A small castle with two towers, 1650 Black chalk, with brush and gray wash on ivory laid paper 96 x 157 mm. Inscribed '7' and 'd'kerck te tiel' verso Provenance C.F. Louis de Wild (1900-1987), New York Dr. Leo Steinberg (1920-2011), New York, 1964 Christie’s, New York, 26 January 2012, lot 15 Private collection, New York Literature Hans-Ulrich Beck, Vol. 1, p. 287, no. 847/7 (not ill.) The present drawing of two towers of an unidentified castle is marked with an inscription on the verso: 'd'kerck te tiel', referencing the large church at Tiel, depicted on the succeeding sketch in the album.5 Both sheets were previously in the collection of Dutch born but New York based painting conservator Louis de Wild, who had bought a total of eighty sketchbook drawings from the Van Diemen-Lilienfeld gallery.6 5 Beck, op.cit., Vol.