Lot 605: JORIS VAN DER HAAGEN

JORIS VAN DER HAAGEN DORDRECHT CIRCA 1615 - 1669 THE HAGUE A PANORAMIC VIEW IN THE BETUWE, LOOKING TOWARDS NIJMEGEN Black chalk and gray wash, on two joined sheets of (faded) blue paper 222 by 727 mm; 8 3/4 by 28 5/8 in

J.K. van der Haagen, De Schilders van der Haagen en hun werk, Voorburg 1932, p. 75, no. 75T

A. Vorenkamp, Leeuwarden, by 1925;
M.J.W. van der Haagen, The Hague;
by descent until sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 26 November 1984, lot 77;
sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 15 November 1995, lot 31

Although these two sheets do not join exactly, and may originally have been linked by another narrow strip of paper, the relative positions of the landmarks in this grand view support Van der Haagen's proposal that the two sheets together form a single panorama. In the distance to the left is the town of Elst, in the middleground, just left of center, nestles the castle of Doorwerth, while on the horizon towards the right we see the silhouette of Nijmegen.

Joris van der Haagen was one of a number of seventeenth-century Dutch landscape artists who were attracted by the expansive vistas of the lower Rhine region, near the modern Dutch-German border. Perhaps the most notable of the various drawings that he made in the area is the large view of the Elterberg, in the Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam.υ1

1. Inv 1912:13. See M. Schapelhouman and P. Schatborn, Land & Water, Dutch Drawings from the 17th Century in the Rijksmuseum Print Room, Amsterdam 1987, no. 73, reproduced.