JAN JOSEFSZ. VAN GOYEN | RIVER VIEW NEAR DORDRECHT, WITH THE RUINED TOWER OF HUIS TE MERWEDE IN THE BACKGROUND

Private Collection, England;

with Gebr. Douwes, Amsterdam, in 1987

H.-U. Beck, Jan van Goyen 1596-1656, vol. III (supplement), Doornspijk 1987, p. 87, no. 416a, and p. 124, under no. Z 846/74

Van Goyen's many drawings and paintings of river scenes are almost always based on rapid sketches of real locations, made on the spot, and later worked up in the studio into finished works, which were signed and sold. Only rarely, though, can the exact location represented be identified, but in the present drawing we clearly see in the distance the distinctive ruined tower of Huis te Merwede, on the eastern side of the city of Dordrecht.

The sketch from life that provided the basis for this beautifully preserved and typically lively drawing survives in a sketchbook, now in the Dresden Kupferstichkabinett, which is one of only two such sketchbooks by Van Goyen that remains intact. Based on connections with dated drawings and paintings, Hans-Ulrich Beck concluded that most of the 152 or so drawings in the Dresden sketchbook were made during a trip that Van Goyen seems to have made to Antwerp and Brussels, around 1648 - probably the first time that the artist had travelled so far south. His journey took him through various Dutch and Belgian towns, including Dordrecht, where he made the study on which this drawing is based¹ and, on the preceding two pages, various studies of the buildings of the city of Dordrecht itself.² 

Another finished drawing of the same location is in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris.³ That drawing is dated 1649 and may also be based on the same Dresden sketchbook sheet, but is not as close to it in composition as is the present sheet.  

1.  Beck, op. cit., no. Z 846/74

2.  Ibid., nos. Z 846/72-73

3.  H.U. Beck, op. cit., vol. I (Amsterdam, 1972), p. 60, no 175, reproduced vol. III, p. 52