The Pelkus Gate
by GOYEN, Jan van, Black chalk and gray wash, 106 x 165 mm
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.