CS0349 JAN JOSEFSZ. VAN GOYEN (Leiden 1596 – 1656 The Hague) The Ferry Signed and dated, lower centre: I V:GO…EN 1625 Oil on panel, 17¾ x 36⅝ ins. (45.1 X 93 cm) PROVENANCE H. Charles Erhardt, 151 Clapham Road, London His deceased sale, Christie’s, London, 19 June 1931, lot 29 (130 gns. to the following) With Julius Singer, Prague Dr. Erwin Langweil (1880-1954), Prague, from whom confiscated in 1943 as Reichseigentum and presented to, Böhmosch-Mährische Landegalerie, Prague, from where recovered in 1950 and placed in the following, Strahov Refectory Collecting Point Národni Galerie, Prague, 1961 (inv. no. D0-6031) Restituted to the heirs of Dr. Erwin Langweil, represented by Mondex Corporation of Toronto, Canada, 29 October 2018 Private collection, United Kingdom, 2019 EXHIBITED Prague, The National Gallery, Sbirka starého uměni, 1960, no. 277. Prague, The National Gallery, Sbirka starého uměni. Seznam vystavených děl, 1971, no. 266. Bratislava, 1981, no. 13. Tokyo, Metropolitan Art Museum; Kyoto, Municipal Museum of Art, Bruegel and Netherlandish Painting from the National Gallery, Prague, 20 March-7 May 1990, no. 48. LITERATURE H. van de Waal, Jan van Goyen, Amsterdam, 1941, p. 11, illustrated. A. Bengtsson, Studies on the Rise of Realistic Landscape Painting in Holland 1610-1625, Stockholm, 1952, p. 72. E. Filla, Jan van Goyen, Prague, 1959, illustrated. J. Šip, Dutch Painting, Prague, 1961, no. 45 J. Šip,’ Úvaha o realism v krajinářstvi tvorbě Nizozemi‘, Výtvarné uměni, XIV, 1964, p. 175. J. Šip, Holandské krajinářské 17. Stoleti, Prague, 1965, no. 44. A. Dobrzycka, Jan van Goyen, Posen, 1966, pp. 29, 87 and 153, no. 18, illustrated. H.-U. Beck, Jan van Goyen 1596-1656, Ein Oeuvreverzeichnis, Amsterdam, 1973, II, p. 113, no. 235, illustrated. J. Šip, Holandské maliřstvi 17. Stoleti v pražské Národni galerii, Prague, 1976, p. 226, illustrated. The son of a shoemaker, Jan van Goyen was born and brought up in the city of Leiden. After studying with several minor artists, he completed his training in Haarlem under the pioneering landscape painter Esaias van de Velde (1587-1630). Although he was only with van de Velde for a short period of time from 1617-1618, his influence was crucial for the formation of van Goyen’s early style. For the best part of a decade following his return to Leiden, van Goyen painted landscapes that closely resemble those of his teacher. This lively panel, painted in 1625, exemplifies van Goyen’s work from his early Leiden period. The artist has taken his subject from a simple scene of everyday life in seventeenth-century rural Holland. A ferry carrying four passengers and three cows crosses a calm expanse of water. Using a pole, the ferryman draws the boat towards the reed-fringed bank, where a little group of people are patiently waiting to make the return crossing. An old man with a walking stick and a basket on his back, accompanied by a dwarf carrying a basket and a jug, trudges along a track towards the viewer. Behind them, the track winds up a hill, past a dilapidated cottage and disappears from view. On the far bank appear a cluster of rustic dwellings and a church, villagers going about their daily business, and some roaming pigs. Around 1623 van Goyen began exploring the river landscape theme, inspired by the work of his erstwhile teacher. Although by this time, Esaias van de Velde had moved to The Hague and van Goyen had settled in Leiden, he was apparently well aware of developments in the older master’s work during this period. In 1622, van de Velde painted a large and grandly conceived river landscape with a cattle ferry. This large river landscape, which is now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (Fig. 1), represents an important milestone in the evolution of Dutch landscape painting. Never before had a Dutch painter depicted his native landscape in such a monumental manner, and with it, van de Velde inaugurated a long and vigorous tradition in the portrayal of Dutch river landscapes. Its significance was evidently not lost on van Goyen, who, together with Salomon van Ruysdael, would go on to develop the genre further in subsequent years, making repeated use of the ferryboat motif. Fig. 1. Esaias van de Velde, The Cattle Ferry, oil on panel, 75.5 x 113 cm, signed and dated 1622, The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Inv. no. SK-A-1293. In the present painting, van Goyen adapted his former teacher’s masterpiece to suit his own purposes. Although the general design of the river landscape, with the foreground ferry seen broadside, flanked on either side by village houses and trees, recalls van de Velde’s composition, van Goyen has exaggerated the horizontal aspect of the landscape, while reducing the recession into space. In such details as the curiously stylised trees, and the quaintly ramshackle buildings, as well as in the palette of warm green and brown, with accents of blue and red, he consciously imitated his former teacher’s manner. Nevertheless, there are also discernible differences between the styles of the two painters: van Goyen’s handling of paint is looser and more spontaneous than his master’s and he displays a greater love of anecdotal detail. Van Goyen revisited the ferry boat motif quite often during his early Leiden years. Beck lists several dated paintings from 1623-24i, five from 1625ii, including the present work, and another from 1626iii. The present painting is one of the largest and most ambitiously conceived of this group. A comparable example is the River Landscape with Ferry and Windmill, in the Bühle Collection, in Zurich, and another large painting, a River Landscape with Rowboat and Bridge, is in the Kunsthalle, Bremen. This early interest in depictions of water transport presages the significant role that river landscapes would play in the artist’s later oeuvre. BIOGRAPHY Born in Leiden in 1596, Jan Josefsz. van Goyen was the son of a shoemaker. The Leiden historian J. J. Orlers records that he studied successively with five teachers and travelled in France from 1615-16 before returning to Haarlem, where he became a pupil of Esaias van de Velde. He married Annetje Willemsdr. van Raelst at Leiden in 1618 and is recorded there throughout the 1620s. The artist probably moved to The Hague in 1632 and became a citizen of the city two years later. We know that van Goyen became acquainted with the marine painter, Jan Porcellis, by 1629, as he is recorded selling him a house in that year. Sometime in 1634, he was painting at the house of Isaack van Ruisdael, the brother of Salomon. During the “tulipomania” of 1636-7, van Goyen speculated in tulip bulbs and suffered heavy losses. He was named hoofdman of The Hague Guild in 1638 and 1640. In 1649, his two daughters were both married: Maria to the still life painter, Jacques de Claeuw and Margarethe to Jan Steen. In 1651, van Goyen was commissioned to paint a panoramic view of The Hague for the city’s Town Hall for which he received the sum of 650 guilders. He died in The Hague on 27 April 1656 and was buried in the Grote Kerk. i H.-U. Beck, Jan van Goyen 1596-1656, Ein Oeuvreverzeichnis, Amsterdam, 1973, vol. II, pp. 105 and 107, nos. 215A & 219; vol. III, pp. 168, 229 & 170, nos. 224, 229 & 244a. ii Ibid., vol. II, pp. 112-115, nos. 233-235, 237 & 239. iii Ibid., vol. II, p. 1117, no. 243. .