- 31
Gerrit Battem Rotterdam circa 1636 - 1684
Description
- Gerrit Battem
- a mountainous river landscape with boats being unloaded, a hill-top church and a village in the distance
- signed in gouache, lower left: Battem
- watercolor and gouache, within black ink and gold framing lines
Provenance
Possibly sale, Amsterdam, H. de Leth, 10 November 1762, lot 45, to de Leth;
Jonas Witsen, his sale, Amsterdam, Terwen et al, 16 August 1790 ff, Kunstboek A, lot 19, to Yver;
possibly C. Ploos van Amstel, his sale, Amsterdam, van der Schley et al, 3 March 1800, lot 74, to van der Schley;
Jan de Groot, his estate sale, Amsterdam, van der Schley et al, 10 December 1804, part II, Kunstboek H, lot 1, p.81;
P. Langerhuizen, his sale, Amsterdam, Frederik Muller & Cie., 29 April 1919, lot 46, pl. 6, reproduced;
A.W.M. Mensing, his sale, Amsterdam, Mensing & Fils, 27-29 April 1937, lot 32;
sale, Amsterdam, Christie's, 25 November 1992, lot 593;
sale, Amsterdam, Christie's, 9 November 1998, lot 94
Literature
Catalogue Note
Gerrit Battem came from a family of landscape painters. His uncles were Philips Koninck and Abraham Funerius, and Jacob de Villeers, painter of mountainous panoramas such as this, was his step-father. Furnerius, a pupil of Rembrandt who, like Battem, was born and died in Rotterdam, is thought to have been his teacher, but nevertheless, Koninck's work was also highly influential.
Although Gerrit Battem produced about forty oil paintings, his finest works are highly finished gouaches, about fifty-eight of which are landscapes. None bears a date, and, as the scenes are painted in an eclectic style which changed little over the course of Battem's career, only a broad chronology has been established. Hans Verbeek, however, believes the landscapes to date from 1665-1684, placing the majority in the 1670s.
This scene appears to have been inspired by the Rhenish landscapes of Herman Saftleven (1609-1685), which Battem would have seen whilst living in Utrecht in 1667-69. Similar examples are in the Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, the Musée du Louvre, and in the Abrams Collection (for further information, see W. W. Robinson, Bruegel to Rembrandt, Dutch and Flemish Drawings from the Maida and George Abrams Collection, Cambridge, Mass. 2002, exhibition catalogue, cat. nos. 74-5, pp. 174-7).