Yar Gul | University of Debrecen
The desperate Dutch rebellion to overthrow the repressive Spanish regime and form a Dutch republic of their own saw an unexpected golden age of science, art, and military power rarely seen in the world. ‘Whether this Dutch ‘miracle’, as K.W. Swart puts it, deserves such a title given the rapid expansion of colonialism and slavery that accompanied it remains up for debate’ The Dutch West India Company’s advancement resulted from an age accompanied by a science, art, and culture boost. It was a crucial time for the recognition of the work of the men of talent. The likes of René Descartes, Christiaan Huygens, Anton van Leeuwenhoek, and Baruch Spinoza achieved worldwide fame. Artists were not left behind either. The artistic mastery of Rembrandt, Bartholomeus van der Helst, and Johannes Vermeer gained immortal reminiscence in the Dutch history books. Though heavily influenced by Bartholomeus van der Helst and Bartholomeus Breenbergh, Groenewegen was a relatively unknown landscape painter adopting the Italianate style, whose work reflected the calm and serene rural landscapes of the Dutch Republic and Italy. His paintings, though scarce and poorly documented, reflect the artistic expression of the time and the turmoil-free life in the countryside of the chaotic republic.
Imagine that the first detail of his life - his birth year - is a mystery. He was born between 1590 and 1600, into a patrician family to Catholic parents, Anthony Huygsz van Groenewegen and Anna Jansdr. Bugge in the canal-ringed city of Delft in the western Netherlands. Pieter Anthonisz van Groenewegen was among the Dutch miracle's relatively unknown and alien personalities.
Very little is known regarding his early life, which is evident by the disparity in his birth year and the absence of any baptismal record. He travelled to Italy in 1615 as an adult, which indicates he could not have been born in the starting year of the new century but instead, is more likely to have been born a decade earlier in 1590. Another supplement to the enigma is the non-existence of any portrait or physical descriptions of him. A portrait in the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen evidences his time in Rome, but an inquiry into archives yields no results. Dutch historians often found him enigmatic. It is unclear whether the economic inequality or the religious difference that prevailed affected his fame.
To pursue an artistic career, many Dutch artists travelled to Italy, particularly Rome, for artistic training, classical and Renaissance art inspiration, and prestige. They would first try to join the local guild of Rome’s Accademia di San Luca so they would have the relevant paperwork to show at the time of arrival in Italy. Sojourn to Italy became a ritual for young artists from the Dutch Republic after the 1604 publication of Karel van Mander’s book Schilder-Boeck. The itinerary, seen by some as treacherous, and often coming with dangers, would exhaust the budding creatives of their resources. Thus, artists would spend years reaching Italy. They would put their artistic talents to work to finance their way. Many of them never reached their destination, and when they did, some even outrightly rejected the idea of returning. Like many others before and after him, Groenewegen went to Rome in 1615 to pursue an artistic career. He drew inspiration from Roman ruins, Italian landscapes, and fellow painters, which can be seen in his surviving paintings. Dutch historian Johannes Hoogewerff believed he lived with Leonardo (the Delft native Leonard Bramer) in Bocca de Leone during his initial stay in Rome.
Influenced by his youthful journey to Italy in 1615, Groenewegen soon became a member of Bentvueghels (Dutch for ‘Birds of a Feather’), a former artists society of Dutch and Flemish painters in Rome that was often at odds with the Academy of Saint Luke. The group gathered for social and intellectual purposes. It concluded with the group marching to the church of Santa Costanza, also known as the Temple of Bacchus, later banned by Pope Clement XI in 1720. Upon initiation, members were given nicknames that were often classical gods and heroes or were witty or semi-obscene in relevance to the general work of the society. Perhaps because of living on the street Bocca de Leone, Groenewegen was given the nickname of Leeuw, meaning Lion. Other members of the society were given similar trivial names like Biervlieg (beer fly), Barba di Becco (goat's beard), and Il Bamboccio (ugly puppet), to name a few.
In 1626, he returned to his birth city of Delft and became a member of the Academy of Saint Luke's local guild. By this time, he had already learned much through his experiences and his time in Rome influenced the paintings he commissioned later on back in his hometown. For the following decades, he remained a member of the local city guild and commissioned paintings that may have provided him a livelihood. With the help of the local government, the guild had the power to regulate certain types of trade within the city. Therefore, guild membership was a requirement for a painter to take on novices or sell paintings to the public. Similar rules existed in Delft, where only guild members could sell paintings in the city or have a shop. Churches funded them initially, but churches were no longer a part of the guild life after the Protestant Reformation, and new venues for painting sales were founded. Artists often relied on patrons, commissions, and the sale of their works. Landscape painting was robust at the time, and many, including Rembrandt, enjoyed considerable wealth and fortune. But it does not give us any clue about van Groenewegen’s financial well-being.
Allegedly a wealthy burgher, in 1633, van Groenewegen lived in ‘Het Gouden Hoofd’ [The Golden Head] on Voldersgracht number one, recently replaced by the monumental Vleeshal Middelburg building. It could have been big enough for his extended family, including his father, who was an attorney, and his newlywed wife. On Tuesday2 August 1633, according to the Gregorian calendar, he married Jannetje Jacobs Ackersloot in his hometown of Delft. Much like her husband, very little is known about her except that she died nearly two years later, on 19 June, 1635. The burial book does not include her husband's name, which is unsurprising given the poorly documented life of this enigmatic artist. Nothing is known about his subsequent marriages, affairs, or prodigies. His familial life is scarce from historical records. He reportedly had a disciple named Eduard Dubois, a landscape and historical painter who may have taught landscape painting at the time.
At the height of its economic and military power, the Dutch Republic took pride in landscape painting and became a symbol of national identity. The artistic trends of his time influenced Groenewegen’s style, he was among the first generation of Dutch Italianate painters, along with Poelenburgh and Breenberg. In the thick of all the hell that broke loose from all sides during the Eighty Years War and the bloodied conflicts of the Thirty Years War, somewhere in his native city, Groenewegen, seemingly untouched by the surrounding turbulence, sat capturing the tranquillity of the countryside, resisting the world of war with his idyllic paintings. He beautifully embodied the peaceful aspects of the countryside landscapes in all of his works. Some of his work on Roman ruins captures the destruction of the Roman edifice, reminiscent of the Colosseum, while others mix the peaceful inhabitants with Roman hill ruins. Inventories dating back centuries mention paintings made by Groenewegen in collaboration with colleagues Esaias van de Velde and Christiaan van Couwenberg, but no satisfying evidence of this can be found. His works appear in Delft Inventories. Johannes Vermeer's father, Reynier Vermeer, who had registered in Delft’s guild as a master art dealer and had been a friend of Groenewegen, reportedly dealt in his paintings. Vermeer’s painting A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal features different parts of his mountainous landscape painting, shown at Vermeer’s Delf as a part of the exhibition and discovered by Hoogsteder and Gregor Weber over two decades ago. His paintings provide more context on the infamous Johannes Vermeer work presented yearly at the Rijksmuseum.
Groenewegen lived during the so-called golden age, but it seems he could not get anything from it in terms of fame and recognition. He went on to do landscape painting for the rest of his life, unaffected by all the beauty and ugliness of the republic, living the last years of his life in the Hague, where he joined the newly founded Confrerie Pictura in 1657. It was founded by some forty-eight local artists who were not satisfied by the Guild of Saint Luke and thus an opposition to the Church-funded artists’ club. He could exhibit his works in the meeting room, where another would replace them if they were sold. In 1658, he died in the Hague, but the reason for his death is unknown. Born, lived, and died in the golden age, an alien to the world and a puzzle to his home country, we are left to wonder: What is the true legacy of an artist whose work depicts the tranquility in the chaos, contradiction in beauty? As we go beyond the legacy of a somewhat unknown artist, we are reminded that art has the power to selectively reflect the beauty of chaos and hide the darkness of success. We say farewell to an artist whose brushstrokes faded into the complexities of history and were lost to the flow of time.
Further readings:
B.J.A. Renckens, 'Pieter Anthonisz. van Groenewegen', Oud-Holland 75 (1960), p. 243-248
Montias, John Michael, Artists and artisans in Delft: a socio-economic study of the seventeenth century, (Princeton University Press, 1982)
Renckens, B.J.A. "Pieter Anthonisz. van Groenewegen". Oud Holland – Journal for Art of the Low Countries 75.1 (1960): 248-248., Brill, 01 Jan 1960 <https://doi.org/10.1163/187501760X00519> [accessed 25 February 2025]
‘Pieter Anthonisz van Groenewegen’, Kalden Home, 01 March 2017 <https://kalden.home.xs4all.nl/dart/d-a-groene.htm> [accessed 25 February 2025]
Yar Gul is currently an undergraduate student in a computer science program at the University of Debrecen. He is the recipient of the prestigious Stipendium Hungaricum scholarship. His interest is in the intersection of technology, history and literature, and he is currently working on a science fiction story that imagines his hometown Peshawar in the year 2105.