View of the Town of Alkmaar

View of the Town of Alkmaar

View of the Town of Alkmaar

Artist:Salomon van Ruysdael (Dutch, Naarden, born ca. 1600–1603, died 1670 Haarlem)
Medium:Oil on wood
Dimensions:20 1/4 x 33 in. (51.4 x 83.8 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Purchase, 1871

Catalogue Entry

This painting, although now unsigned, is certainly by Ruysdael. It combines a view of Alkmaar from the west with an invented river view, and may date from somewhat earlier than the mid-1650s, the period suggested in Stechow's (1938) monograph; in design and execution, it recalls river scenes of the late 1640s and early 1650s.
Views of Alkmaar have often been confused with views of Haarlem because of the general resemblance between the two cities' Grote Kerken and because Dutch painters frequently modified the proportions and details of architectural monuments for artistic reasons. However, The Met's picture was already called a view of Alkmaar by Ruysdael when it was acquired in the 1871 Purchase, and Stechow (1938) considered the church depicted here similar to the one in Alkmaar, partly on the basis of views of the city painted by the artist in the 1650s. The profile of the Late Gothic Grote or Sint Laurenskerk (built 1470–1512) presented in the New York panel is perhaps somewhat misleading, since the view from the west shows the west or main entrance façade in front of the western elevation of the transept. The long nave is almost completely obscured as it recedes behind the west façade, and of course the choir is invisible. In a view from the north, as in Ruysdael's View of Alkmaar with the Sint Laurenskerk from the North, dated 1644 (private collection), one gains a more complete idea of the church as a whole, with the choir to the left, the nave to the right, and the northern transept arm playing a subordinate part in between. Comparisons with the Laurenskerk today must also take into account that a taller crossing tower with a carillon was built in the 1680s.
The spire seen to the right in the present painting is that of the Grote Kerk's freestanding bell tower. The two smaller churches visible just to the left, one with a round or onion-shaped crown on its bell tower and the other with a simple spire, no longer exist, but they were identified by the Regionaal Archief in Alkmaar as belonging to monasteries closed in the late sixteenth century. The small churches are seen from a very different angle in the painting dated 1644, and in a version of that composition, dated 1647, in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. Visible to the far right on the riverbank are a standard mill (similar to one that actually existed) and what would appear to be (and should be, given the location) the cities southern gate, called the Kennemerpoort (built in 1631–32), and an adjacent gabled house with a slim tower.
Plans of Alkmaar show that canals, or singels (girdles), on the west side of Alkmaar do recede diagonally to the right in views from the west (as here) and from the north-northeast. However, these actual waterways bear no resemblance to the rivers seen in Ruysdael's various views of Alkmaar. Similar riverbanks are found frequently in his oeuvre, with both real and imaginary buildings beyond them.
The panel dated 1644, the Dublin version of 1647, and The Met’s picture are probably the earliest views of Alkmaar painted by Ruysdael, who returned to the subject in the 1650s and 1660s. The city was a fairly short trip to the north of Haarlem, where the artist lived, and it is possible that he went there a number of times. Ruysdael is known to have visited Alkmaar in 1644 because of the death of his brother Pieter de Goyer early in that year, and his subsequent appointment as guardian of Goyer's three daughters.
While Ruysdael's views of Alkmaar may be placed among his many river scenes with old forts, castles, churches, and so on, his contemporaries would have associated the cityscape with certain historical events. The Grote Kerk, for example, was the burial place not only of the artist's brother but also of Count Floris V of Holland (died 1296), the nobleman from whom the most prominent Catholic family in Haarlem, the Haarlem van Berkenrodes, received Berkenrode Castle. Alkmaar was more generally known for withstanding the siege of 1573 by the Spanish troops that had captured Haarlem. The deliberate flooding of the land around the ramparts of Alkmaar turned the tide in Holland's war of independence against Spain.
[2016; adapted from Liedtke 2007]

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