This extraordinary, previously unrecorded 17th-century view of Windsor Castle by the talented and idiosyncratic Amsterdam artist Abraham Rutgers is an important addition to the small corpus of early views of this famous Royal residence. Furthermore, it is, along with the view of Tonbridge in Kent that is the following lot in this sale, one of a fascinating, recently discovered group of six English views by Rutgers (see Provenance), the emergence of which adds a new aspect to our knowledge not only of Rutgers’ career, but also of the activities of the various Dutch landscape artists who came to England during the course of the 17th century.
Were it not for the artist’s inscription on the verso, the modern viewer would be hard pressed to identify the fortifications that Rutgers has depicted here, so different are they from the familiar profile of Windsor that was created by the extensive alterations made in the 1820s and ‘30s by Jeffrey Wyatville, for King George IV. Yet Windsor Castle, in its previous forms, had been a Royal residence ever since the early 12th century, and was depicted by artists with some regularity from the 16th century on. One of the earliest such images is the beautiful watercolour in the Royal collects ion at Windsor, executed circa 1568 by Joris Hoefnagel1, from which Hoefnagel himself made another, more schematic drawing in pen and ink2 (also in the Royal collects ion) that served in turn as the basis for the engraved view of Windsor in G. Braun and F. Hogenberg’s immense topographical publication, Civitates Orbis Terrarum, published in Cologne in 1575. Subsequently, the Bohemian-born artist Wenceslaus Hollar, who lived and worked in England from 1637 until his death in 1677, made several engraved views of Windsor, the most relevant of which in this context is a view from the south-east (fig. 1).
Looking at the various early views of Windsor and also a modern ground plan of the castle (fig. 2), it is clear that the artist here shows the ramparts to the south side of the Upper Ward, with towards the left the gate – now known as the George IV gate – that leads from the castle onto the Great Park, and the Long Walk. Although one might have expected a visiting artist to be drawn to the more famous and distinctive structures of the ancient Round Tower and St. George’s Chapel, these both lie further to the left. Their omission from this extremely straightforward drawing only heightens the sense of on-the-spot immediacy that this characteristically unusual study conveys.
In an artistic world in which draught.mes n frequently copied works by other artists, it is necessary to ask ourselves whether Rutgers actually visited Windsor, or made his drawing on the basis of an on-the-spot sketch by another draughtsman. The fact that he did regularly copy works by other artists is evident from the titles given to the three sections of an album of drawings that Rutgers made around 1686-87 (now in the Museum Mr. Simon van Gijn in Dordrecht), which loosely translate as ‘drawings from life’, ‘drawings from the imagination’, and ‘copies.’ We also know that Rutgers was close with Jacob Esselens, serving as guardian to Esselens’ children after his death, and that Esselens definitely did come to England, in around 1662.
Yet there is no known drawing, painting or print by Esselens or any other artist of the period that shows Windsor Castle from this far from obvious vantage point, and there are also no known prototypes for any of the five somewhat obscure Kentish views with which this drawing has until now remained, so it seems overwhelmingly likely that Rutgers did in fact visit England himself, and that these do indeed belong to the category of 'drawings from life.' That someone like Rutgers, whose primary profession was that of textile merchant, should have travelled to England is far from surprising. Boat travel between England and the Low Countries was totally routine, and merchants and artists alike frequently made the crossing. In terms of dating, it is most likely that Rutgers would have made his visit after the restoration to the throne of King Charles II in 1660, but before the remodelling of the castle that the architect Hugh May undertook for the King in the second half of the 1670s. Rutgers may even have travelled together with his friend Jacob Esselens, around 1662.
Rutgers was a superb and original draughtsman, whose great skill with pen and brush was complemented by a highly individual approach to composition, frequently, but not always, incorporating dramatic diagonal motifs; see, for example the exceptional View of Gouda, acquired in 2004 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.3 In recent years, the artist’s quality and originality have come to be more fully appreciated. The Getty Museum, for example, acquired in 2008 the artist’s magical view of the village of Jisp (like the View of Gouda previously in the Klaver collects ion)4, and in 2014 a new benchmark for a drawing by Rutgers was established when the superb drawing of Skaters on the River Vecht was sold from the Van Regteren Altena collects ion.5
1. Windsor Castle, Royal collects ion; RCIN 912936
2. Windsor Castle, Royal collects ion; RCIN 912936
3. Inv. no. 2004.122; previously sale, Amsterdam, Replica Shoes ’s, The Jacobus A. Klaver collects ion of Dutch Old Master Drawings, 10 May 1994, lot 22
4. Inv. no. 2008.18; sale London, Replica Shoes 's, 9 July 2008, lot 29
5. Sale, London, Christie’s, 10 July 2014, lot 71, £302,500