Cottage industry: some Haarlem landscapes of the early seventeenth century

Apollo, August, 2003 by Walter Liedtke

The publication of a previously unknown picture by Salomon van Ruysdael (1600/03-70) might be postponed to a suitable occasion, such as another exhibition of Dutch landscape painting, or a new edition of Stechow's monograph on the artist. (1) But the discovery of a Van Ruysdael dated 1628 (Fig. 1) deserves more immediate notice, since Haarlem landscapes of about 1625-30 comprise a watershed in the genre's development, and dated examples are comparatively rare. (2) Some comment on the meaning of these images is also in order. Recent scholarship on the subject has run off in different directions, and (like seventeenth-century maps of Haarlem) it is not always obvious which side should be placed on top.

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Stechow catalogues two paintings by Van Ruysdael inscribed 1626, six of 1627, five of 1628, five of 1629, and two of 1630. (3) Dated paintings by the artist's close associate in Haarlem, Jan van Goyen (1596-1656), are about three times more numerous for each of the same years, and about sixty pictures by him bear dates ranging from 1620 to 1625. (4) However, scholars generally agree that it was only from 1627 onward (for example, in Fig. 2) that Salomon's more prolific contemporary adopted the naturalistic innovations of another Haarlem artist, Pieter de Molijn (1595-1661), by whom we have a village nocturne and a princely hunting scene of 1625; a Village kermis (Dessau) and the pioneering Dune landscape (Braunschweig), both dated 1626; and only a few landscapes dating from the late 1620s, including the dynamic composition of 1629 in New York (Fig. 3). (5) A now familiar, but still surprising predecessor of De Molijn's landscape dated 1626 is the Landscape with a road and farmhouse of 1625 (Berlin) by the short-lived Amsterdam artist Pieter van Santvoort (1604/5-35). With regard to these two modest pictures, Stechow's conclusion has become a credo; in the words of Peter Sutton in 1987: 'the first two artists to create landscapes that were unified in terms of both composition and tonal values [were] Pieter van Santvoort in 1625 and Pieter de Molijn in 1626. (6)

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Impressive though these pictures are, their celebration as artistic milestones strikes an anachronistic note, suggesting that painters like De Molijn and Van Santvoort made breakthroughs in the manner of Picasso and Braque. Sutton himself notes that 'the legitimacy of Santvoort's claim to a pioneering role may be questioned', considering that 'no other work by the artist affirms his precociousness'. (7) The emphasis on particular paintings is also inconsistent with that placed by Stechow and later authors on prints and drawings, which in their use of washes and highlights, toned paper, and colour printing blocks (see Fig. 4) anticipate the small, oil sketch-like pictures of the late 1620s in more than composition and flowing lines. (8) Finally, when we review all the known paintings from the period, imagine how many others must be lost or unrecorded, and consider the dates that have been overlooked, misread, (9) worn away or not inscribed in the first place, then it may be wondered whether one should speak, with Stechow, of 'the epoch-making importance of Molijn's landscape of 1626 in Braunschweig', (10) when it is probably an accident of survival that makes this unassuming masterwork seem to represent a new departure.

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Michael Kitson offered essentially the same criticism of Stechow's survey thirty-five years ago, noting that Dutch Landscape Painting 'fails to answer the question it should have been uniquely fitted to answer: who did what first?' Kitson restates the question and provides an answer worth quoting at length:

What was the role of the individual in a situation apparently dominated more by common endeavour than personal initiative? In practice what must have happened was this. A new idea--say, a new method of treating a river view, a change in the proportion of sky to ground, a new relation between tone and colour--was introduced gradually, perhaps by a minor artist. Other artists then saw its possibilities and developed it further. Its inventor no doubt did the same. Simultaneously, the pressure of public taste, acting strongly through the open market, would have affected the issue, deciding in some cases which innovations should flourish and which not. (11)

In this passage Kitson anticipates many later comments about market demand, 'product innovation', and so on. Small landscapes like the one published here were turned out quickly and sold cheaply, which is not to say that their quality and originality were unappreciated in their day. Materials, techniques, and conventions of composition were determined with an eye to economical execution as well as to convincing descriptions of the local environment. (12)

A course in art historical methodology could be taught using nothing other than the literature on Dutch landscapes dating from about 1600-1635. The topics might range from shopworn hypotheses to stillborn speculations, like the notion that the Haarlem landscapists may have imitated the muted tones of images projected by early models of the camera obscura. (13) The idea that inexpensive pigments--ochres and umbers rather than lead-tin yellows and ultramarine blues--could account for the brown decades of Dutch landscape painting would appear to merit consideration, (14) but is called into question by comparison with 'monochrome' still lifes made at the same time and place. A 'breakfast piece' painted by Pieter Claesz in about 1630 may be similar in palette to a contemporary landscape by Van Goyen or De Molijn, but certainly required much more time to achieve its refined effects. Furthermore, Van Ruysdael's roadway and river views of the early 1630s often rival Haarlem still lifes with regard to meticulous detail and subtle observation. The common denominator is not time or materials but a matter of taste.