Gerbrand van den Eeckhout

Count Jan Pieter van Suchtelen (1751-1836), St Petersburg (L.2332);

Charles Gasc (1822-after 1869), Spain and Paris (L.544)

The drawings of Gerbrand van den Eeckhout vary greatly in style and technique, in some cases reflecting the influence of Rembrandt, with whom Eeckhout is believed to have studied in the late 1630s, in others not at all. This important landscape, in which the artist has worked up a typically delicate and refined underlying chalk drawing with subtle coloured washes and accents of both pen and ink and stronger colour, belongs to a distinct group of landscape drawings by the artist that are among his least Rembrandtesque creations, but also among his most original and impressive.

The view depicted, the port of Arnhem, on the lower Rhine, with the Santberg behind, is one that was extremely popular with the numerous Dutch artists who made the journey to this visually arresting region at the very edge of their country, on the border with Germany.  A drawing by Anthonie Waterloo, now in the Hamburg Kunsthalle, shows more or less exactly the same view, though the composition of that drawing extends much further on the right.¹ The same bend in the river, but seen from closer up and without all the foreground elements, appears in other drawings by Eeckhout, including one in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem, signed and dated 1663², and another, in which the artist stood slightly further back, in the British Museum.³ Several other draughtsmen, including Jacob Esselens and perhaps Jan Lievens, also visited the same spot, which was surely an important embarkation point for those travelling by boat further up the Rhine.⁴ It has frequently been suggested that Eeckhout and Esselens (and according to some also Lievens) travelled to this area together, around 1649/50, but although they certainly did several times depict the same views, there is no concrete evidence for this joint tour. Lievens, for his part, seems to have been there only much later, around 1664.

Technically, this drawing combines a free, and in places very energetic, chalk underdrawing, similar to that seen in the Lugt Collection drawing of The City Walls of Delft with the Mill called The Rose, with a subtle yet daring use of watercolour, a combination of techniques found in a small number of outstanding drawings by Eeckhout, including several depicting locations in this same region.⁵ These include the fine View of the Rhine near Arnhem, signed and dated 1661, in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.⁶

Eeckhout’s landscape drawings, the best of which are, like this one, both technically original and aesthetically satisfying, are extremely rare on the market; the only one that has been sold in modern times is a very small, freely handled drawing of a riverbank, sold in Paris in 2009.⁷

1. Hamburg, Kunsthalle, inv. 22502
2. W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, vol. 3, New York 1980, no. 690
3. Inv. 1848,1125.1; Sumowski, op. cit., no. 691
4. Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland, inv. D.1154 (Esselens); a drawing from the circle of Lievens, in the Lugt Collection (inv. 1016), may indicate that Lievens himself also visitied the same location
5. Paris, Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, inv. 4445; Sumowski, op. cit., no. 670
6. Inv. PD. 283-1963; Sumowski, op. cit., no. 683
7. Sale, Paris, Beaussant et Lefèvre, 10 June 2009, lot 9