Jan van der Heyden Gorinchem 1637 - 1712 Amsterdam

Jan van der Heyden (1637-1712) and by inheritance to his wife, Sara Tiel on his death in 1712 (mentioned in the will as "8. de Vegt met de Herberg vant Swarte Varke...80" (8. The Vecht with the Inn of the Black Pig. 80 [guilders]);
Sara Tiel, and by inheritance to her son, Samuel van der Heyden, on her death in 1712;
Samuel van der Heyden, and then by inheritance to his sister, Sara, on his death in 1729;
Sara van der Heyden, and then by inheritance to the husband of her niece, Jan Brants, on her death in 1738;
Jan Brants, and by inheritance to his son, Jan Jacob Brants;
Jan Jacob Brants, by whom possibly sold to Alexandre Joseph Paillet through Jan de Bosch Jerz^.1;
Alexandre Joseph Paillet (1743-1814), Paris;
His deceased sale, Paris, Paillet, June 2, 1814, lot 8, to A.J.E. Lerouge, for 672 or 677 francs;
A.J.E. Lerouge (died 1833);
Imported to England by Clifford Waterman Chaplin (a dealer and friend of John Smith) between 1834 and 1842;
Private Collection, M. F...;
His sale, Paris, Galerie Petit, May 21, 1928, lot 25 ('L'Auberge au bord du canal'), through M. Eknayan to Nicolaas Beets;
Nicolaas Beets, Amsterdam, until at least 1935;
H.P. Doodeheefver, The Netherlands, by 1937 (according to H. Wagner, see Literature);
Herberg van der Wacht;
Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, June 24, 1959, lot 82 (as 'The Toll House as Maarsen'; the figures attributed to Adriaen van de Velde), where acquired, through Erik Estorick, by J. Paul Getty for £7,800;
J. Paul Getty, Sutton Place, Surrey, and donated by his estate to the J. Paul Getty Museum, California, in 1978, no. 78.PB.200.

Brussels, Cinq siècles d'art. Exposition Universelle et Internationale, May 24-October 13, 1935, no. 735 ('Auberge au bord du Vescht', where lent by Nicolaas Beets);
Amsterdam, Sint Anthoniswaag, Jan van der Heyden: beschrijving van de tentoonstelling in het Amsterdamsch Historische Museum, 1937, no. 8.

J. Smith, Supplement to the Catalogue Raisonné..., vol. IX, London 1842, p. 647, no. 19;
C. Blanc, Le Trésor de la Curiosité, vol. II, Paris 1858, p. 301 (as with figures by Van de Velde);
C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue raisonné..., vol. VIII, London 1927, p. 417, no. 319 (The bank of a canal with an Inn...);
Probably A. Bredius, "De Nalatenschap van Jan van der Heyden's weduwe", in Oud Holland, 1912, p. 135, no. 8 ('De Vegt met de Herberg vant Swarte Varke'; 'The Vecht with the Inn of the Black Pig');
H. Wagner, Jan van der Heyden 1637-1712, Amsterdam 1971, no. 181 (figures by Van de Velde);
G. Schwartz, "Jan van der Heyden and the Huydecopers of Maarsseveen", in The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal, 1983, pp. 197-220;
G. Schwartz, "The need for art: a critical view", in Dutch Heights, 1987, p. 25;
D. Jaffé, Summary Catalogue of European Paintings in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 1997, p. 59, reproduced;
W.S. Gibson, Pleasant Places: The Rustic Landscape from Brueghel to Ruisdael, Berkeley/ Los Angeles 2000, pp. 109-113, 216 note 105, reproduced plate 7;
P.C. Sutton, Jan van der Heyden (1637 - 1712), exhibition catalogue, Bruce Museum, Greenwich 2006, p. 24.

Jan van der Heyden painted fourteen views of Maarssen and its daughter village Maarsseveen in the 1660s and 1670s, yet no other painter is recorded as having worked there. At this time, the lordship of Maarsseveen was held by the second Joan Huydecoper (1625-1704), a member of an extremely powerful family of Amsterdam burgomasters and a great patron of the arts in that city.¹ The Huydecopers, who owned the building depicted in the present work, and used it as the administrative seat of their heerlijkleid, or manor,² turned Maarsseveen from a sleepy farming village into a highly sophisticated country retreat for the Amsterdam rich. Some of Van der Heyden's paintings of the village were no doubt used by the family for propogandist purposes. Van der Heyden painted the Huydecoper's estate at Goudestein on the river Vecht near Maarssen on numerous occasions; see, for example, the view sold New York, Sotheby's, January 12, 1989, lot 118, or that in London, Apsley House, no. 1501. In Amsterdam Huydecoper appointed Van der Heyden supervisor of both streetlighting and, with his brother Nicolaas, of the city fire pumps; as a result the city bought all of its firefighting equipment from the brothers which, together with the large accompanying salaries, rendered their personal wealth considerable.

The sign shown on the inn displays the arms of the Maarsseveen and here the local officials would meet to administer justice and law. The exact site is today easily identifiable. Van der Heyden chose the spot where the Vecht joins the Dipendaalse Dijk. The Vecht, seen beyond the inn, bends sharply at this point so that, were the barge directly beneath the sign to start in motion, it would disappear to the right before reappearing in front of the distant stone gate, moving right to left. The vaart in the foreground where the women are washing clothes runs for only a few hundred yards north-eastwards where it joins another canal, the Zogwetering. One of the vaart's functions was to drain water from the Zogwetering to the Vecht, via the lock. Today, in place of the inn stands a house. The lock has been modernised but maintains its old shape, and a road now passes along the bank between the water and the building. The stone gate in the distance, which served as the entrance to Otterspoor or Gansenhoef, no longer exists.

1  According to Gary Schwartz ("Jan van der Heyden and the Huydecopers of Maarsseveen", in The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal, 1983, pp. 198-200), Brants sold at least one other painting by Van der Heyden to Paillet through Jan de Bosch Jerz. (View of the Dam in the Louvre, Paris, for which Paillet paid 6,000 guilders) and so this work may have taken the same route to him.

2  P.C. Sutton, op. cit., p. 24.