An Architectural Fantasy

Jan van der Heyden (artist)
Dutch, 1637 - 1712
An Architectural Fantasy, c. 1670
oil on panel
Overall: 49.7 x 70.7 cm (19 9/16 x 27 13/16 in.) framed: 69.2 x 90.1 x 6.3 cm (27 1/4 x 35 1/2 x 2 1/2 in.)
Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund
1968.13.1

From the Tour: Dutch Still Lifes and Landscapes of the 1600s
Object 6 of 8

Provenance

Woltgraft family, Kampen.[1] Catellan family, Freiburg im Breisgau, prior to 1816; (sale, Paris, 16 January 1816, no. 6);[2] Charles-Ferdinand de Bourbon, duc de Berry [1778-1820], Paris;[3] by inheritance to his wife, Marie-Caroline-Ferdinande-Louise de Naples, duchesse de Berry [1798-1870]; (sale, Paris, 4-6 April 1837, no. 72); Hazard.[4] Charles Heusch, London, by 1842;[5] F. Heusch, London, by 1854; acquired with Heusch collection by Lionel Nathan de Rothschild [1808-1879], London;[6] by inheritance to his son, Alfred Charles de Rothschild [1842-1918], Halton House, near Wendover, Buckinghamshire; by inheritance to his nephew, Lionel Nathan de Rothschild [1882-1942], Exbury; by inheritance to his son, Edmund Leopold de Rothschild [b. 1916], London; (Thomas Agnew and Sons, London); purchased 12 June 1968 by NGA.

[1] The coat of arms on one of the two wax seals affixed to the back of the panel displays a stork with an eel in his beak and three stars in the chief. This has been identified by C.W. Delforterie (sub-director, Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie, The Hague) as that of the Woltgraft family of Kampen, Overijssel (letter, 25 May 1981, in NGA curatorial files).

[2] John Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters, 9 vols., London, 1829-1842, 5: 396, records that the seller in 1816 was "Madame Catalan," a claim that is reinforced by the design of the second wax seal on the back of the panel, which shows a golden castle in a field of gules, surmounted by a crown. Walter Angst, senior conservator, Smithsonian Institution, has confirmed in conversation (10 June 1981 and 15 January 1982) that this coat of arms is consistent with that of the noble family of Catellan, of Freiburg im Breisgau, and so it seems reasonable to assume that the painting was in their possession sometime before 1816. [For reproduction of the Catellan arms see Johannes Baptist Rietstap, Armorial général illustré, 3rd ed. by Victor and Henri Rolland, Lyon, 1953, 2: pl. 40.] Frits Lugt, Répertoire des catalogues de ventes, The Hague, 1938, 1: no. 8797, gave the seller's name as "Le Rouge," and on the copy of the sale catalogue (Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie [RKD], The Hague), both names are written in and crossed out. It is not currently clear who Le Rouge was, and no evidence now exists to substantiate his ownership of An Architectural Fantasy.

[3] Ink notation in copy of the 1816 sale catalogue (RKD). The picture is described in this catalogue as "La vue d'un superbe château..."

[4] Ink notation in NGA copy of sale catalogue. (In this catalogue, the subject is described as "La maison de plaisance.") The collection was also described as the "Ancienne Galerie du Palais de l'Élysée."

[5] Smith 1829-1842, 9: 675, no. 21, as a "View of a handsome Chateau;" Smith calls the entry an "improved" description of 5: 396, no. 87. In the expanded version, he mentions the telling detail of a man seated on an architectural fragment, "putting a collar on a dog," which allows the picture he describes to be conclusively identified as An Architectural Fantasy. It should be noted, however, that in 1842 there was already confusion about the identity of the painting, which appears in the literature under a variety of titles--confusion that must be at least partly due to Van der Heyden's habit of reusing the same genre elements in different works and of painting several versions of the same scene. Smith suggests that 9: no. 21 is also "probably" the same as 5: no. 21. The latter, entitled A View of the Château of Rosindal, corresponds closely to An Architectural Fantasy in its dimensions and genre elements, in so far as they are described, but it has a different provenance that can be traced through sale catalogues. According to the earliest of these (Blondel de Gagny, Paris, 10 December 1776, 59, no. 154), La vue du Château de Rosindal was painted on copper. An Architectural Fantasy, on the other hand, is painted on wood, and the building in it bears no resemblance to the Château of Rosindal as it was depicted in numerous drawings and engravings. Compounding the confusion, Charles Heusch exhibited a painting entitled Château de Rosindaal at the British Institution, London, in 1838 [no. 91; see Algernon Graves, A Century of Loan Exhibitions, 1813-1912, 5 vols., London, 1914, 1471]. While the painting in his collection may have been the above-mentioned painting on copper, it may equally have been An Architectural Fantasy mistitled, for Waagen does not mention a depiction of Rosindal in his 1854 description of the Heusch collection. He does, however, list the collection as containing two paintings by Van der Heyden, both acquired from the De Berry collection, one a View of a château... on wood (which corresponds in both dimensions and description to An Architectural Fantasy) and the other a ...view of a Broad Street in Cologne (Gustav Friedrich Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain; being an account of the Chief Collection of Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, and Illuminated Mss., 3 vols., London, 1854-1857, 2: 256). Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century..., 8 vols., trans. from the German edition, London, 1907-1927, 8: 426, no. 227, proposed that a third entry in Smith 1829-1842, 5: 385, no. 49, was a variant description of Smith nos. 21 and 87, undoubtedly because similar genre details, including the gentleman giving alms to a beggar, were described in all three entries. Hofstede de Groot's proposal can, however, be rejected, firstly because Smith no. 49 was a vertical painting measuring 18 x 16 in., and secondly because examination of the sale catalogues Smith lists under his nos. 49 and 21 clearly demonstrate that these were two different paintings. Both works are now apparently lost and are not included in the catalogue raisonné by Helga Wagner, Jan van der Heyden, 1637-1712, Amsterdam and Holland, 1971.

[6] The description in Charles Davis, A Description of the Works of Art Forming the Collection of Alfred de Rothschild, London, 1884, no. 34, is a direct transcript of Smith 1829-1842, 9: 675, no. 21.

Information about the Rothschild provenance provided by Michael Hall, in letter dated 27 February 2002 in NGA curatorial files. The picture is included on the 1879 inventory of Baron Lionel de Rothschild, now in the Rothschild Archives, London.

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