Abraham Rutgers

Sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby Mak van Waay, 16 January 1985, lot 168;
Jacobus A. Klaver, Amsterdam (bears his mark, not in Lugt, on the backing),

Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet, Tekeningen van oude meesters. De verzameling Jacobus A. Klaver, 1993 (catalogue by Marijn Schapelhouman and Peter Schatborn), no. 89

Unframed. Window mounted in japan paper. There is the slight remains of some old paper backing on the verso of the left edge. There are some light fox marks scattered across the sheet, but the media is still strong and the drawing makes a very good impression.
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Rutgers is documented as having been a textile merchant by profession, and must therefore have been one of several notable Dutch draughtsmen of the 17^th century who were amateurs, rather than professional artists. Notwithstanding, he was a highly distinguished landscape artist, with a very original approach to composition and a finely tuned sense of space and atmosphere.

An album of drawings executed by Rutgers in 1686-87, now in the Museum Mr. Simon van Gijn in Dordrecht, is divided into three sections, titled Principale, Inventive & Copien, which can be translated as "drawings from life," "drawings from the imagination," and "copies."¹ Many of the copies seem to have been after drawings by Rutgers' friend Jacob Esselens, himself a merchant and amateur draughtsman, to whose children Rutgers served as guardian after Esselens' death. This superb drawing is, however, very clearly a "drawing from life." The location depicted is the village of Jisp, in the province of Noordholland, which Rutgers drew on two different occasions, from different vantage points. The second drawing, showing the same canal but from the opposite direction, is in the Stichting Archief Honigh, Zaandijk.²

Though it was not insignificant as a whaling community, Jisp was a small and relatively humble village. In this modest setting, the four elegant figures in the left foreground seem slightly out of place, and indeed closer examination shows that the ink in which they are drawn is slightly different from that of the rest of the drawing, suggesting the artist may have added them at a later moment, to elaborate his composition. Otherwise, the two drawing of Jisp, which are amongst the earliest detailed representations of the region, provide an invaluable documentary record of the appearance and construction of the densely packed wooden buildings typically found in this type of Noordholland village during the second half of the 17^th century. Amongst the interesting details that the drawings reveal is the fact that the front doors, visible in the present drawing, were only used on important occasions such as weddings and funerals, and the rest of the time the residents came and went through side doors, opening onto passageways between the houses. Also, we see here that at least some of the houses have thatched roofs, which helps date the drawing. As early as 1647, the construction of new thatched roofs had been banned in Jisp, and in 1664 the village was badly damaged by an extensive fire. It seems highly unlikely that any thatched roofs still existed in Jisp after the fire, so the drawing can be dated with some confidence to before 1664.³

This highly atmospheric drawing is not only instantly recognisable as the work of Rutgers, thanks to its distinctive, dramatic composition and typical figure types, but it is also a definitive example of that quintessentially Dutch genre, the winter landscape. It was one of three exceptional drawings by the artist in the Klaver Collection.⁴

1.  J.W. Niemeijer, 'Varia Topographica IV Een album met Utrechtse gezichten door Abraham Rutgers,' in Oud Holland, 79, 1964, pp. 127-29

2.  See G.J. Honig, 'Jisp in wintertooi,' in De Zaende I, 1946, p. 379, reproduced between pp. 365-365

3.  The architectural aspects of the drawing are further discussed in the Amsterdam 1993 exhibition catalogue entry, with references to additional sources.

4.  The other two sold, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 10 May 1994, lots 1 and 22