Billowing clouds sweeping across the sky help create the dynamic character of Jan van Goyen’s engaging portrayal of the lively waterways near Dordrecht. While sailboats and dinghies filled with men and women come and go, the most active elements of the painting are the shifting patterns of light and shade passing over this watery domain. Van Goyen captured these atmospheric qualities by employing quick and fluid brushwork, by silhouetting foreground figures and their boats against sunlit waters beyond, and by juxtaposing the distant city profile against the white clouds nestled against the horizon. While Van Goyen clearly depicted all of the distinctive landmarks along the banks of the river Merwede looking toward Dordrecht, the essence of the painting is not its topography, but rather the character of the air and the human activities occurring at the confluence of rivers surrounding this important and historic Dutch city.
Van Goyen was intimately familiar with the location he depicted; he painted about 70 views of Dordrecht and its environs over the course of his long career. The artist clearly reveled in capturing the city’s bustling harbors, filled with tall-masted ships, and its distinctive profile. Although he also painted views of other urban centers, including Leiden, The Hague, Rhenen, Arnhem, and Antwerp, none of these cities captured his imagination as much as did Dordrecht. In this view, Van Goyen portrayed all of Dordrecht’s major towers and spires, including those of the Groothoofdspoort at the far left; the town hall, which is visible to the right of the foreground sailboat; the Nieuwe Kerk, with its tall pointed spire; the massive Grote Kerk; and, just to its right, the Vuylpoort. These structures, individually and cumulatively, signified Dordrecht’s importance within the Dutch Republic as a mercantile, civic, and religious center. Nevertheless, while Van Goyen’s arrangement of the individual buildings is essentially correct, he enlarged the scale of the Grote Kerk and stretched out topographical elements to create a more compelling and panoramic image of the city than existed in reality.
This work, painted in the 1650s, is among the last of Van Goyen’s many views of Dordrecht. The city, situated at the juncture of two major rivers, the Oude Maas and the Merwede, provided the artist a range of possibilities for depicting patterns of daily life on these prominent waterways. Over the years, the artist visited the area a number of times, and he drew his impressions, often in black chalk, in sketchbooks that he carried with him on his travels throughout the Netherlands. Some of these drawings depict the city as seen from a distance, but occasionally Van Goyen focused on individual buildings, such as the Grote Kerk [fig. 1]
[fig. 1] Jan van Goyen, View of the Grote Kerk, in Dordrecht, c. 1648, black chalk, pen, and black ink, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, JvG 7. Many of his quickly rendered drawings also feature boats and human activities taking place on and near the water. He judicially selected from and adapted these drawings to enliven his paintings, with the result that his landscapes are composites of his firsthand experiences. They do not record a specific moment in time, no matter how immediate they may seem. Even though one finds, for example, many of the same compositional elements in different paintings, including ferries loading and unloading passengers, dinghies, fishermen, and sailboats gliding past distant shores, Van Goyen always imaginatively rearranged them in new and varied combinations.
Van Goyen had two preferred locations for his views of Dordrecht: one in the southwest, at the juncture of the Oude Maas and Dordtse Kil, as in the Gallery’s painting of 1644 [fig. 2]
[fig. 2] Jan van Goyen, View of Dordrecht from the Dordtse Kil, 1644, oil on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, and one in the north, at the juncture of the Oude Maas and the Merwede, as is the case here. From each location, Van Goyen could capture boat traffic passing along this interconnected network of rivers, with Dordrecht serving as the backdrop. Similar ferries operated all over the network of waterways in the Low Countries, transporting people, goods, and animals. The strategic location of Dordrecht for waterborne transportation is particularly evident in View of Dordrecht from the North, for from this vantage point one clearly sees the rivers flowing by the city both on the left (the Merwede) and on the right (the Oude Maas) [fig. 3]
[fig. 3] Detail, Nicolaas Visscher II, Hollandiae Pars Meridionalior, vulgo Zuid-Holland (Atlas van der Hagen), Amsterdam, before 1680, copper engraving, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague [fig. 4]
[fig. 4] Joan Blaeu, Plan of Dordrecht, 1652, etching, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. RP-P-AO-14-33-1. From this location Van Goyen could create scenarios that would have occurred on a daily basis, and ones that would have been recognizable to his clientele: large ferryboats filled to the brim with travelers, boarding and discharging passengers at the juncture of these waterways. In this painting, a small rowboat with a man in the bow holding a wooden pole approaches the ferry to deliver some passengers, while a somewhat larger and more fully loaded launch ferries its occupants to their destination, perhaps Zwijndrecht, a nearby village situated along the Oude Maas.
The broad compositional similarities among many of Van Goyen’s views of Dordrecht provide a fascinating framework for assessing his stylistic evolution from the 1630s to the 1650s. A comparison between the Gallery’s two paintings of Dordrecht, executed about a decade apart, is particularly revealing. In 1644, when Van Goyen painted the first of these two works [fig. 2] [fig. 2] Jan van Goyen, View of Dordrecht from the Dordtse Kil, 1644, oil on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, he was in the midst of his tonal phase. He chose a panel support, rendered his quiet scene in a muted range of ochers and grays, and used translucencies of paint to create subtle reflections of boats, buildings, and even the sky across the water’s surface. By the 1650s, his approach had evolved. Here, using the rougher textures of a canvas support, he applied his paints more thickly and vigorously. Compositional elements have become larger and have more lively rhythms, as in the ferry with its billowing sail. Most importantly, Van Goyen added color to his palette and introduced stronger contrasts of light and dark. The blue sky and clouds have become dynamic elements: not only do they evoke a sense of wind and air, but they also draw the eye into the painting’s depth. Van Goyen reinforced this directional thrust by placing the tip of the ferryboat’s sail (with its Dutch pennant) at the very juncture of the large diagonal cloud formations receding into the distance, thus directing the eye toward Dordrecht, the boat’s destination.
The evolution of Van Goyen’s style reflects broader tendencies in Dutch landscape painting around mid-century, particularly as seen in the work of Aelbert Cuyp (Dutch, 1620 - 1691). Not only did these artists know each other’s landscapes, but they also painted comparable views in which Dutch cities, particularly Dordrecht, served as backdrops for depictions of daily life. Their images were inevitably positive and often depicted travelers being transported in wooden ferries alongside local fishermen busy in dinghies. As in this view of Dordrecht, each of their paintings conveys a great deal of local pride, not only in a city’s distinctive character and heritage, but also in the natural beauty of its surroundings.
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.
May 7, 2019
