GOYEN, Jan van

Jan van Goyen painted beach scenes many times during his career. Scenes like that depicted in the present painting could be witnessed almost every day near the coastal towns of seventeenth-century Holland. They were recorded by other Dutch painters, too.

At seaside villages, the beach was something akin to the market square. Here, small fishing boats return from a long day on the water, and villagers gather to greet them, see the catch, buy fish, or talk among themselves.

In his late paintings Van Goyen was interested in capturing in his paintings the states of weather, and the effects of clouds in response to meteorological conditions. In this picture clouds are massing prior to a storm, with threatening darker clouds moving in from the left, while the estuarial sea beneath, painted in balmy tones of brown, remains calm.

In 1646 van Goyen made numerous drawings of Scheveningen, a fishing town on the North Sea coast, which he then used for paintings. His lively beach painting still offers the impression of spontaneous transcription, but he dramatized his drawings by raising the dunes and accentuating the cloud pattern. Most astounding is the apparent veracity of light filtered through packed clouds. Van Goyen’s rather monochrome drawings could only approximate such a life-like atmosphere, and he must have created it in the studio from a remembered, mental image. Such painting, from the mind, was considered at least as important as drawing from life.

The subject and composition of this picture recall Jan van Goyen’s many views of Nijmegen, but the fort here, with its Romanesque bell tower, improbable portals, and asymmetrical fa�ade, is surely imaginary. The work is remarkable for the warmth of its brown and yellow tones, with rose and salmon colours throughout the cloudy sky.

This painting demonstrates the artist’s interest in picturesque medieval architecture. The fanciful castle depicted here is imaginary.

In a dune landscape a goatherd tends his flock. A man hangs over the fence, looking at the goats. Further back four men converse and on the right at the top of the dune, there are three people and a dog.

This painting demonstrates that Van Goyen preferred simplicity: simplicity of subject, palette and composition.

The earliest works of van Goyen are so close to Esaias van der Velde’s that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish their hands. Like Esaias, he used both a round and an oblong format for small views of Dutch villages and country roads, crowded with illustrative details. The atmospheric treatment in these colourful early works is insignificant, the foliage is ornamental, and there are glittering highlights reminiscent of the Mannerists. In the late 1620s van Goyen shifted to simpler motifs - a few cottages along a village road or in the dunes, like in this painting - and he achieved unification and depth by a leading diagonal and by a tonal treatment that subdues the local colour and is expressive of atmospheric life. His palette turned monochromatic, with browns, pale greens, and yellows.

The picture shows an estuary landscape with figures in rowing boats off a jetty.

Several low cottages and a haystack are nestling beneath a huge, windswept oak. The winding tracks of cartwheels, which draw the eye of the beholder to a group of figures are resting by the side of the muddy road, thatched roofs, rotting fences. It was during his apprenticeship in Haarlem that van Goyen was motivated to paint this and similar views of villages. The popularity of this motif can be explained by a trend among scholars and writers to extol country life.

Jan van Goyen was born in Leiden and trained in the studios of a succession of local artists. His most influential teacher, however, was Esaias van de Velde in whose Haarlem studio he spent a year before establishing . himself as an independent painter in his native town. Subsequently van Goyen worked in The Hague and Haarlem.

In his earliest landscapes - his first dated painting is from 1618 - van Goyen employed the highly coloured, strongly linear technique of Esaias van de Velde, but progressively his paintings become less colourful and less crowded with figures. He shared this move towards a deliberately restricted palette of blues, greys, greens and blacks, and simple compositions, with the Haarlem landscape painters, Pieter Molijn and Salomon van Ruysdael. In the work of all three painters the sky assumes greater and greater importance, as in this painting in which it occupies almost three-quarters of the picture surface. The clouds are painted thinly over the prepared ground of the panel which gives a warm undertone. In this view of Haarlemmer Meer, a vast inland lake which was not drained until the nineteenth century, the Great Church at Haarlem can be seen on the horizon in the far right-hand corner. This atmospheric study of clouds and still water was painted in the last year of the artist’s life.

With his linear style it is no surprise to discover that van Goyen was an indefatigable draughtsman. More than 800 drawings and several sketchbooks, all in his favourite medium of black chalk and wash, are known today. Many are quick sketches made from nature during his travels in the north Netherlands and Germany, which in the studio were transformed into imaginative landscapes. His rapid painting technique enabled him to be a prolific artist: more than twelve hundred paintings from his hand survive.

With Salomon van Ruysdael, van Goyen was a founder of the Haarlem school of Dutch landscape painting. A tireless draughtsman, he left many sketches made from nature; it is possible his paintings were inspired by real-life impressions rather than invented in the studio. Yet they do have metaphysical content. The fresh foliage on the old sturdy tree and the peasants bustling around the lopsided shack prompt thoughts of the continuation of a way of life established over centuries, regardless of daily hardships.

This small landscape, signed and dated 1643, may have been far less horizontal than its present format suggests, as it seems to have been cut down.

The main subject of this painting, which depicts two travellers resting by a pair of old oaks and a third heading off down the hill, is the twisted trunks of the oaks standing out starkly against the sky.

Jan van Goyen was the Dutch painter who most effectively captured the water-drenched atmosphere of Dutch seascapes, the daily activities of fishermen on the flat shores of Holland, and the great rolling clouds on its wide, low horizons. The simplicity of composition, the use of near monochrome, for the most part shades of brown and grey and the greyish skies heavy with rain-clouds which play an important part in his seascapes all differentiate van Goyen’s paintings from those of his contemporaries who generally preferred to paint stormy seas complete with ships of war, and the buildings of a port in the background. Van Goyen concentrated on the sea itself and only made use of such subsidiary details - boats, fishermen or seamen - as were absolutely necessary to indicate the environment.

The painting is signed as VG on the boat at the left side.

This large panel is one of the new type of landscapes that Van Goyen created between 1628 and 1630. Unlike his early landscapes of around 1625 with their many anecdotal details and varying compositions, these later landscapes are characterized by a unifying diagonal composition and a tonal unity consisting of a limited range of colours - ochre, green, grey and brown. In the present panel the main motifs are grouped along a diagonal leading from the right foreground to the horizon on the left.

The painting depicts a river landscape with a village on the far shore, and a rowing boat with four figures.

The painting is signed with monogram and dated lower right on the ferry: VG 1654.

Jan van Goyen was inspired by the church and tower at Warmond when he painted this scene. He drew them in situ in his sketchbook (now at Bredius Museum). Later, he worked up the sketch at his studio to create this sun-drenched river landscape featuring these picturesque buildings.

Both the subject and the compositional type are found frequently in the artist’s oeuvre from the late 1620s to about 1640. Although rich in observations made outdoors, landscapes like this one are products of the studio.

In Holland in the seventeenth century it was customary for painters to specialize in one field, or even one subject. Painters who specialized in figure painting sought the help of another artist for the execution of a landscape, while the landscape painter would often ask a colleague to paint the human or animal figures or still-lifes that he wanted to include in his composition; it was very seldom that anyone who had established his name in a certain field was prepared to undertake a different kind of work. In fact specialization was carried to such lengths that some artists did not paint landscapes in general but restricted themselves to seascapes, twilight landscapes, townscapes or churches.

Such small paintings were produced comparatively quickly and in large numbers at quite modest prices. It is characteristic of the situation that Jan van Goyen, a famous painter of Dutch seascapes, was obliged to deal in tulip bulbs to make ends meet; moreover, he often got more for his tulips than for some of his paintings. During his youth Van Goyen was the pupil of Esaias van de Velde, and painted a great variety of landscapes in warm, brownish tones. Gradually, however, his interest became centred on the sea, the greyish, cloudy coast and the flat coastal plains under an enormous sky. It was in this type of scene that he created his masterpieces.

The Pelkus Gate (Pellekussenpoort, erected 1371), was a freestanding tower on the towpath of the river Vecht between Utrecht and Muiden on the Zuiderzee. The gate which once belonged to the old Pellekussen family, disappeared by the eighteenth century. It was the subject of perhaps a dozen paintings by Jan van Goyen in which the painter treated the landscape and the buildings rather freely, adding invented motifs to them.

The Pelkus Gate (Pellekussenpoort, erected 1371), was a freestanding tower on the towpath of the river Vecht between Utrecht and Muiden on the Zuiderzee. The gate which once belonged to the old Pellekussen family, disappeared by the eighteenth century. It was the subject of perhaps a dozen paintings by Jan van Goyen in which the painter treated the landscape and the buildings rather freely, adding invented motifs to them.

Surviving sketchbooks of van Goyen reveals that he had captured landscape motifs in countless drawings, which were later used as the basis of his compositions in his studio. In the Rhine at Arnhem, the landmarks of the town - the Groote Kerk with its 100-metre-high tower and the smaller Church of St Walpurgis with its Gothic twin-towered fa�ade - rise out of the rapidly sketched houses.

The painting shows the Valkhof at Nijmegen, with a coach on a ferry on the River Waal. Nijmegen was one of Jan van Goyen favourite views, he painted a large number of Nijmegen views from 1633 to about 1650, but other seventeenth-century Dutch painters also painted this view, e.g. Aelbert Cuyp and Salomon van Ruysdael.

Nijmegen was one of the most important historic and patriotic sites in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century. The capital of the province of Gelderland, it is located on the south side of the River Waal, near the German border. The fortified town had long played an important role in the region as a stronghold of the Batavians, the Romans, Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Empire and finally the Dutch Republic.

Jan van Goyen is well known for his numerous on-site sketches he made while traveling. The artist recorded views in locations all over the northern Netherlands, including Delft where, as in other cities, he was attracted by picturesque architectural motifs.

Jan van Goyen painted between 1633 and 1655 over thirty views of Dordrecht, situated at the junction of the Maas, Waal and Rhine. The present painting is his only close-up view of the town from the north-east. Dominating the scene are the town’s defensive bastions and the Grote Kerk with its massive, truncated tower and four-faced clock. A stiff breeze has whipped up the Maas into choppy peaks. Passengers in the foreground ferry, hunkered down against the wind, are all too familiar with this uncomfortable form of transport.

Throughout his career Jan van Goyen combined quality and quantity. Constantly innovating, he provided the basic patterns for a wide variety of realistic landscapes produced by contemporary competitors in 17th century Holland and by several generations of imitators after him. This river landscape is a magnificent example of an oeuvre, catalogued by Hans-Ulrich Beck, of twelve hundred paintings and eight hundred drawings, which together form a milestone in the history of art. The quality of these individual works of art is measured, not by their “uniqueness” but rather by the amount of creative workmanship that they contain. Production-raising and - as is sometimes maintained - cost-reducing techniques that the artist applied, never led him into the sterile copying of successful scenes.

The present view of Dordrecht is not Van Goyen’s “standard” view of Dordrecht. It is one of thirty known variants of a river landscape with a named city in the background, “composed” in the artist’s studio. Starting with a simple picture-building structure, a view with a strong sense of atmosphere is produced which appears to have been painted from life at a particular point in place and time, though in fact it has been constructed from drawings, combining accurate observation and “dressing up” motifs. Looking out from a vantage point where the Kil and Oude Maas rivers meet, we see on the far side, on a low horizon, the horizontal profile of Dordrecht, identifiable primarily by the Grote Kerk. The illusion of depth is produced by a spit of land in the left foreground where, against the light, a group of people with a dog are watching as a ferry loaded down with cows and passengers is mooring. Whipped-up water, swelling sails on the many small ships and a heavily clouded sky suggest a stiff breeze. Several components in the picture, like the figures, the weather or even the city can perfectly well be replaced by alternatives, without the picture being any less a “face of Holland” that Van Goyen was one the first to model, at times with sky and water only.

The painting is signed with monogram and dated on the ferry boat to the left, 1653. Signature and another date can be seen on the ferry boat to the right, 1644.

The tonal trend of the 1630s continues into the 1640s, bringing still increasing spaciousness and fluidity. Van Goyen’s technique often shows an open interplay of over- and underpaint, and the quick, whirling strokes make the vibration of the moist air almost physically felt. Side by side with river scenes, seascapes with choppy little waves appear. Often we meet wide views over the flat country that are lit by streaks of sunlight. A good number of city views occur, and they are set into the wide context of the Dutch countryside.

This almost monochrome painting shows the Groote Kerk (Great Church) in the background.

In the oeuvre of van Goyen a good number of city views occur, and they are set into the wide context of the Dutch countryside, like this beautiful view of Leiden. In this ‘capriccio’ (the artist placed Leiden’s famous St Pancras Church alongside an imaginary wide, winding river) we see how the horizontal begins to dominate over the diagonals at this time. The subdued colouristic touches of yellows, greens, and browns become more luminous, and the sky brightens up.

In the 1650s van Goyen did not remain uninfluenced by the new classical trend, but he never moved away from the dominant monochromatic tonality of his middle period. Some tectonic accents, with verticals opposing horizontals, enter his compositions. The clouds become more voluminous and his touch a bit more forceful; now and then his skies include vivid blues. But it is largely the deepening of his tonality that enlivens his late work, by strong contrasts of dark accents in the foreground against the luminous openings in the sky and bright reflections on the surface of water.

One of Jan van Goyen favourite views was that of Nijmegen, shown in a magisterial, possibly autumnal image, where a coach is being ferried across the water in the foreground. It was painted with a severely, effectively restricted palette.

About one hundred fifty views of cities (The Hague, Arnhem, Dordrecht, Brussels, Antwerp, Delft, and less well known places) are known in Jan van Goyen’s oeuvre. They are usually seen from a far distance from here. Cityscapes that are similar to the present work in their attention to actual buildings in the background number between about seventy-five and a hundred.

Like Jacob van Ruisdael, Van Goyen painted sky for the most part, in this case a sombre mass of clouds. The landscape, offering a view of the watery area near Haarlem called the Haarlemmermeer, is painted in several closely related shades of brown, ochre-yellow, blue, and green. The tonal colour scheme contributes to the specifically Dutch atmosphere of this landscape, in which sky and water form the most important elements.

According to the latest research, the painting is attributed to Jeronymus van Diest (II) .

During the course of the 1630s van Goyen became the leading master of the tonal phase. His technique grew bolder and more vivacious, the space opened up, and atmosphere predominated. Water begins to play a more important role. This picture shows the characteristics of the thirties, and an all-over airiness that grows in transparency towards the far distance, with its brightened horizon.

The tonal style in Dutch landscape painting of the 1630s continued well into the 1640s, while still developing, especially in the hands of Jan van Goyen. The direction in which van Goyen took landscape reveals a considered logic; as tonal painting was a realistic attempt to capture an atmosphere, its consequence was, in the end, to paint the sky over the flat, low land. Thus, in his “Windmill by a River”, the real subject is the moving skies.

Everything is subordinated to the high sky, a sky that seems to take on the colour of the vast land stretching to a low, distant horizon: a brownish-green with tinges of blue. Only the sky contains more grey - the clouds - and is more transparent in its pictorial treatment. Dunes in the foreground, caught in a splash of sunlight, introduce the distance - suggesting a high viewpoint that gives the view naturalness. The windmill, painted in the greyish-brown colour of the sky, is a discreet spatial reference point.

This early winter landscape with skaters on a frozen lake by Van Goyen shows the influence of his teacher Esaias van de Velde.

Despite his strong reputation, van Goyen was unable to provide for his family on an artist’s income. With varying degrees of success, he also traded tulip bulbs, brokered real estate, and acted as an appraiser for auction houses. Meanwhile his painting evolved, and he produced his best works in the early 1640s at The Hague. Using lighter and brighter paints and, most importantly, unifying the view through a general tone in which the grey-blue hues of sky and water predominate, van Goyen conveys well Holland’s distinctive maritime atmosphere.

In the background the outlines of the large municipal buildings of The Hague (Stadthuis, Groote Kerk and Binnenhof) can be seen. The painting is signed on the boat at the left.

This painting shows the the expertise of Goyen for the winter landscape.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 11 minutes):

Vivaldi: Concerto in F minor RV 297 op. 8 No. 4 (Winter)