Jan de Bisschop

Valerius Röver (1686-1739), Delft;

Jonkheer Johan Goll van Franckenstein the Elder (1722-1785), Amsterdam (L.2987, his numbering N3448),

with Bernard Houthakker, Amsterdam,

where acquired by Diane A. Nixon in 1995

Amsterdam, Museum het Rembrandthuis, Episcopius. Jan de Bisschop (1628-1671), advocaat en tekenaar, lawyer and draughtsman, catalogue by R.E. Jellema and M. Plomp, 1992-3, no. 3

M. Plomp, 'Landschappen en stadsgezichten van Jan de Bisschop (1628-1671)', Antiek, vol. 27, no. 5 (December 1992), p. 262, n. 9

This drawing appears for all the world to represent an anonymous corner of the Dutch landscape, but the eighteenth-century inscription on a tab of paper attached to the reverse, which probably records another, lost inscription in the artist’s hand, indicates that it represents a very specific view in Antwerp, near the ‘Tuchthuys’ (‘House of Correction’). This cross between a prison and a workhouse was located in the so-called ‘Nieuwstad’, an area, criss-crossed by streams, into which the historic city expanded after about 1550. The stream seen here was probably the Timmervliet.

The small group of drawings that de Bisschop made in 1649, during the course of his only recorded journey to the Southern Netherlands, are amongst his earliest works. Several other dated drawings are known from this trip, including the stylistically very similar views of the outskirts of Brussels in the Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam and in the Leiden Municipal Archives¹, as well as the Mechelen view in the Lugt Collection.² Further fine examples of Brussels views by De Bisschop were sold at Sotheby’s, Amsterdam, in 1996 and 2000 (the latter drawing consigned from the Van Regteren Altena Collection).³

Although De Bisschop is not thought ever to have made the journey to Italy undertaken by so many Dutch artists of the day, he made numerous drawings of Italian views, and even his depictions of Northern locations such as this are permeated with a highly Italianate lighting – all of which supports the theory that he studied with Bartholomaeus Breenbergh. De Bisschop's main career did not, however, lie within the arts: soon after he made this drawing, he returned to Holland and enrolled as a law student in Leiden, the beginning of an illustrious legal career which was to be his primary occupation thereafter. In the early 1650s he moved to The Hague to take up a legal position at the Court, though after this he still clearly found time to continue producing drawings and prints, and his works include not only very poetic representations of the Dutch and Italian landscape, but also numerous drawn and etched copies of other works of art, chiefly antique. The intials in the monogram JE stand for Johannes Episcopius, the Latin form of De Bisschop's name.

This is one of no fewer than 84 drawings by de Bisschop that were owned by the Delft collector, Valerius Röver (1686-1739), many of which subsequently passed to Johann Goll van Frankenstein. Two other fine drawings by De Bisschop with the same early provenance were also sold at Sotheby’s in Amsterdam during the 1990s.⁴

^1.J.G. van Gelder, ‘Jan de Bisschop', Oud Holland, vol. LXXXVI, no.4, 1971, pp. 5 and 64, figs. 12 and 13

^2.Episcopius, exh. cat., op. cit., 1992, no. 4

^3.Sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby’s, 12 November 1996, lot 18 and 8 November 2000, lot 48

^4.Sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 10 May 1994, lot 70, and 15 November 1995, lot 63