Artist: Jan Van Goyen
Date: 1644
Size: 46 x 66 cm
Technique: Oil On Panel
The motif of the square defensive tower, also known as a redoubt, fascinated Van Goyen for some years. It features in several paintings made between 1640 and 1652, generally with a cannon and a beacon standing in front of it, as in this painting.1 Towers like this stood at various places in the country. They dated from the Eighty Years’ War (1568-1648) and served primarily as sentry or lookout posts, or both.2 Since the fortress of Schenkenschans has been recognized among the buildings in the background of this and several related works with the same subject, it is assumed that the towers depicted by Van Goyen stood in the frontier region along the Rhine.3 The composition of this work displays close similarities to a painting dated 1644 in Boston.4 The date on the Amsterdam version is not very legible, but should probably also be read as 1644.5 The inscription was apparently not always spotted in the earliest publications on the painting.6 The 1644 date accords well with the dendrochronology, which gives 1643 as the most likely year for the panel to have been ready for use.7 It is noteworthy that both planks that make up the support of the present painting are from the same tree as one of the planks of the panel of Van Goyen’s View of Rhenen from the West in Hamburg.8 Gerdien Wuestman, 2007 See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 92.
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