J. Goudstikker, Amsterdam: exhibited The Hague, 1916, cat. IV, no. 12: Rotterdam, 1917, cat. VI, no. 17; Amsterdam, 1917, cat. VII, no. 24, illustrated; Arnhem, 1918, cat. VIII, no. 12, illustrated.
K. & V. Waterman, B.V., Jan van Goyen 1596-1656: Conquest of Space.  Paintings from Museums and Private Collections, Amsterdam, 1981, p. 88, illustrated.
Enschede, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Jubileum Tentoonsteling van Nederlandsche 17e. Eeuwsche schilderijen uit Particuliere Verzamelingen, June 1935, no. 14.

The son of a cobbler, Jan van Goyen was born and brought up in the city of Leiden.  After studying with several minor artists, he completed his training with the pioneering landscape painter Esaias van de Velde (1587-1630) in Haarlem.  Although he was only with van de Velde briefly from 1617-1618, his influence was crucial for the formation of van Goyen’s early style.  Back in Leiden, in the first half of the 1620s, Jan van Goyen produced colourful little paintings, crammed with figures and lively incident, closely resembling those of his teacher.  From about 1626/27, his style underwent a rapid transformation. Together with the Haarlem landscapists Salomon van Ruysdael (1602/03-1670) and Pieter de Molijn (1595-1661), and the marine artist Jan Porcellis (c. 1584-1632), van Goyen pioneered a new type of ‘tonal’ landscape, concentrating on modest subjects drawn from the Dutch countryside.  By the late 1620s, he had perfected his new manner of painting, characterised by simple compositions, with relatively few figures, and a severely restricted range of colours.  Riverscapes, village scenes and dune landscapes become the predominant themes of this period. 

In 1628, van Goyen was on the cusp of realising his own mature style.  In this river landscape of that year, he has largely broken away from the example of his teacher Esaias van de Velde and found his own voice.  The multiplicity of motifs and colours that characterised his earlier paintings has given way here to a simple oblique design and a more restrained palette of browns, greens and greyish-blue.  The view is taken from low down on the water, and some three-quarters of the composition is given over to a dramatic, stormy sky.  The somewhat stylised trees, on the other hand, are still reminiscent of Esaias van de Velde.  In the next few years, van Goyen increasingly focused upon the naturalistic representation of nature and restricted the use of colour in his scenes to even greater extent. 

In a River Landscape with an approaching Storm, van Goyen has found his subject in a scene of everyday life in seventeenth-century rural Holland.  A placid expanse of water retreats gently from right to left, filling the entire foreground.  A ferry carrying several passengers and two cows pushes on from a narrow spur of land on the left.  Its destination is the opposite bank, where several cottages hug the tree-lined shore, and a sailing vessel and a rowing boat are moored alongside.  The whole scene is brought alive by the dramatic lighting: slanting rays of the late afternoon sun strike the houses and the boats on the far bank in a blaze of light, causing them to stand out boldly against the sullen grey sky and cast reflections on the water below. 

The use of copper as a support is a great rarity in van Goyen’s oeuvre.  Typically, at this date, he preferred to use oak panels, but perhaps the opportunity to paint on a copper panel came his way, and he decided to give it a try.  The artist’s rapid manner of painting, using thinly applied passages of fluid paint, with impasto highlights in ochre, white and pink, is seen here to splendid effect.  The stability of the metal has also resulted in the painting coming down to us in unusually good state.  However, van Goyen seems rarely, if ever, to have employed this medium again.  Unlike artists with a meticulously detailed technique, perhaps his loose style of painting did not profit greatly from the smooth surface of the metal, or perhaps it was simply uneconomic.  Panels made of copper were expensive and were, therefore, usually employed by artists whose paintings commanded high prices.  Although van Goyen was unusually prolific, his paintings did not generally fetch high prices and he frequently experienced financial problems.  His contemporaries, it seems, did not place a high value on the very qualities that we so admire in van Goyen today, mostly notably his assured, spontaneous technique.

BIOGRAPHY

The son of a shoemaker, Jan Josefsz van Goyen was born in Leiden in 1596. According to the Leiden historian Jan Jansz Orlers, from 1606 onwards he studied successively with the Leiden painters Coenraet van Schilperoort, Isaac Claesz van Swanenburg (1537/8-1614) Jan Adriansz de Man, a glass-painter named Clock, and Willem Gerritsz in Hoorn.  After spending a year travelling in France, he completed his training in 1617-18 with the landscape painter Esaias van de Velde in Haarlem.  On 5 August 1618, he married Annetje Willemsdr. van Raelst in Leiden, where he bought a house in 1625, and where he is often mentioned in documents dating from 1627 to 1632.  We know that van Goyen had become acquainted with the marine painter Jan Porcellis by 1629, as he is recorded selling him a house in that year. 

In 1632, van Goyen moved to The Hague.  Apart from sketching trips to a variety of locations in The Netherlands and beyond, he lived there for the rest of his life.  He acquired his citizenship of The Hague in 1634, and was hoofdman (headman) of the painters’ guild in 1638 and in 1640.  In August 1634, he was fined by the painters’ guild of Haarlem for producing pictures in the house of Isaack van Ruisdael (1599-1677), the brother of Salomon, in Haarlem.  During the “tulipomania” of 1636-7, van Goyen speculated in tulip bulbs and suffered heavy losses.  Van Goyen had three daughters, one of whom, Maria, married the still-life painter Jacques de Claeuw (1623-1694 or later) and another, Margarethe, married the painter Jan Steen (c. 1625/26-79).  In 1651, van Goyen was commissioned to paint a panoramic view of The Hague for the burgomaster’s room in the city’s Town Hall for which he received the sum of 650 guilders. 

Van Goyen was an extremely prolific artist: his oeuvre comprises more than 1,200 paintings and about 1,500 drawings.  He obliged later art historians by dating paintings and drawings in virtually every year of his career from 1620 to 1656, making it possible to follow his artistic development closely.  Despite his productivity, he had financial worries throughout his life.  In addition to painting, he was active as an art dealer, broker and appraiser, and invested in property, but apparently with little success.  At the time of his death on 27 April 1656, he was heavily in debt.  The artist attracted many followers and imitators.  Jan Steen was one of his pupils, and, according to Arnold Houbraken, he also taught Nicolaes Berchem (1620-83) and Arent Arentsz, called Cabel (1585/86-1632).