Roelant RoghmanAmsterdam 1627 – Amsterdam 1692

Rocky Landscape with a Waterfall and Two Figures Resting

oil on canvas

40 x 47 3/8 inches (101.6 x 120.3 cm.)

A dark northern landscape features a rocky ravine with waterfall and rushing stream. Tall pine trees and fallen logs appear on both sides of the gorge. Staffage figures appear on a knoll in the foreground and walking along a path to the sunlit distance at the upper left. With its waterfall, craggy cliffs and tall pine trees, this mountain landscape is characteristic of Roelant Roghman’s art. Although none of Roghman’s landscapes are dated, he journeyed to the Alps in the mid 1650s, visiting France, Germany, and probably Switzerland. Roghman was in Augsburg in 1657 but back in his native Amsterdam by 1658. While little is known of his life, he came from an artistic family; his uncle was the accomplished mannerist landscapist and still life painter, Roeland Savery (1576/78-1639), for whom he was probably named and under whom he may have first studied, and he was the brother of the talented female printmaker, Geertruyd Roghman. The chronicler of artists’ lives, Arnold Houbraken, informs us that Roghman was a friend of Rembrandt (q.v.) and Gerbrandt van den Eeckhout (1621-1674), both of whose dark and painterly landscapes offer points of comparison with Roghman’s style. However, while Roghman is often grouped with the Rembrandt School, he is not known to have been a pupil of the master, and his vision of landscape was original and independent. In these regards he may be compared to the great imaginary landscapist, Hercules Seghers (1589/90-1633/38).

A prolific draftsman and engraver, Roghman not only produced an extensive series of 241 black chalk drawings of the castles and villas of the Netherlands in 1646/47, but also executed a large group of signed ink and wash drawings in a very free technique and in approximately the same format depicting mountains with crags, cataracts or rushing streams, boulders, tall trees and solitary travelers. Some of these sheets resemble the present painting in conception and design; see for example the Mountain Landscape with Stream, in the Witt Collection, London, no. 343. However there is no known preparatory drawing proper for the painting and most of these sheets seem to be freely invented compositions based on recollections of his travels rather than studies made from nature. (For a discussion of his drawings, see W. Th. Kloek and J. W. Niemeijer, De Kasteel tekeningen van Roelant Roghman, Alphenaanden Rijn, 1990, and William Robinson, Seventeenth Century Dutch Drawings. A Selection from the Maida and George Abrams Collection, 1991, under cat. 62). Roghman’s landscape paintings also appear to be imaginary but again effectively evoke the expansive scenery of the Alps. The present painting may be compared to two large mountain landscapes in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (nos. A4218 & A760), and to other similar paintings: in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Poitiers, (see Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Hollandse schilderijen uit Franse Musea, 1970-71, cat. 30, ill.); formerly with Bruno Meissner (see exh. cat., Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Masters of 17th Century Dutch Landscape Painting, 1987, cat. 79), exhibited at Montreal (Musée des Beaux Arts, Rembrandt and his Pupils, 1969, cats. 106 and 107); and in the Bottenwieser Collection, Berlin, 1927.

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