View of a River Town with a Bridge / Jan van Goyen

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Record Details

Accession Number
2008/2.199.5
Title
View of a River Town with a Bridge
Artist
Jan van Goyen
Artist Nationality
Dutch
Artist Life Dates
1596-1656
Medium and Support
black chalk, gray wash on paper
Object Creation Date
17th century
Object Creation Place
Europe (continent)
Netherlands (nation)
South Holland (province)
Hague, The (inhabited place)
Creation Place 1
Europe (continent)
Creation Place 2
Netherlands (nation)
Creation Place 3
South Holland (province)
Creation Place 4
Hague, The (inhabited place)
Style/Group/Movement
Baroque
Dimensions
29 cm x 34 cm (11 7/16 in. x 13 3/8 in.)
Century
17th century
Primary Object Classification
Drawing
Primary Object Type
landscape
Physical Description
This small sketch presents a view along a waterway that passes beneath a double-arched bridge. The triangular sail of a small boat is visible just before the bridge, moored to the quai next to some sheds. A tall church with a central steeple rises on the right bank in the foreground, and two other tall buildings punctuate the middle ground and distance. The chimneys and rooflines of humbler dwellings appear on the left bank. Despite the urban setting, only a few figures may be glimpsed, including a man crossing the bridge on horseback.
Subject Matter
Jan van Goyen avidly sketched his surroundings in his native Holland. As one of the leading landscape painters of the seventeenth-century, his drawing was as essential part of his practice in developing subjects and compositions for his paintings. Many of his sketches, often in small sketchbooks that would fit easily into a pocket, are rapid notational indications of a scene that capture only its essential outlines. This drawing is more fully developed than such sketches, but less elaborated than van Goyen's detailed drawings for paintings. He probably made the drawing on site, working swiftly and masterfully with black chalk, and later returned to the drawing to add touches of wash to create the shadows in the water and along the riverbanks.
Rights
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Technical Details

Image Size
3309 x 2214
File Size
219 KB
Record
2008/2.199.5
Link to this Item
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/musart/x-2008-sl-2.199.5/2008_2_199.5.jpg

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Full citation
"View of a River Town with a Bridge; Jan van Goyen." In the digital collection University of Michigan Museum of Art. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/musart/x-2008-sl-2.199.5/2008_2_199.5.jpg. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed March 29, 2024.
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