Roelant Roghman’s etching, “Wateringe”, c.1643–77

Roelant Roghman (aka Roeland Roghman) (c.1620–86)

 “Wateringe” (aka “View of Watering” [TIB]), c.1643–77, from the series, “Eight landscapes with views in various provinces in the Netherlands” (aka “Views of Holland III” [TIB]), published by Clement de Jonghe (1624/25–77)

Etching in brown ink on fine laid paper with watermark

Size: (sheet) 20.5 x 32.8 cm; (plate) 13.3 x 20.8 cm

Inscribed within image: (upper centre) "Wateringe".

Inscribed below the image borderline: (left) "Roelant Roghman invent. et fecit."; (right) “1”.

State iii (of iii) Note that the attribution of this impression to the third state is based on: state i showing only the title of the print; state ii showing the title, the artist’s name, publisher and plate number; state iii with the publication details of state ii but with the publisher’s name erased.

TIB 4 (5). 17 (27) (Walter L Strauss & Franklin Robinson [Eds.] 1979, “The Illustrated Bartsch”, vol. 4, p. 30); Hollstein Dutch 17-2(3)

The British Museum offers the following description of this print:

“Plate 1: Wateringen. View of a village with a church by a river populated with people walking along the banks, riding, fishing and in boats; from a series of eight plates. Etching” (http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=1443431&partId=1&searchText=Roelant+Roghman&page=1)

See also the description of this print at the Rijksmuseum: http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.342618

Condition: good impression from a worn plate with generous margins. The print must have been extracted from a very early bound book/folio as there are stab-binding holes at the far left edge of the margin. There are previous collector’s pencil notations in the margins and a printer’s crease passing through the image. The crease has been toned to minimise the visual distraction. Beyond these issues the sheet is in excellent condition.  

I am selling this worn but well-preserved impression of an extremely rare print from the time of Rembrandt—Roghman was even one of Rembrandt’s good friends—for the total cost of AU$130 (currently US$97.20/EUR86.38/GBP75.28 at the time of posting this listing) including postage and handling to anywhere in the world.

If you are interested in purchasing this dreadfully worn print that is so rare that even a worn copy is seldom seen on the market, please contact me (oz_jim@printsandprinciples.com) and I will send you a PayPal invoice to make the payment easy.

In recent years academic interest has moved to a close examination of Roghman’s prints. Part of the reason is that Roghman was a close friend of Rembrandt (according to Arnold Houbraken in his three-volume biographical account of Netherlandish painters; see vol. 1, pp. 173–4), but the real reason is that Roghman engaged in a similar pursuit of creating imaginary mountain scenes like those of the now highly revered printmaker of extraordinary inventiveness, Hercules Segers—another of Rembrandt’s close associates.

This particular etching may not be the ideal showcase of Roghman’s creative invention. After all, the title, “Wateringe”, suggests that Roghman intended this scene to be a fairly objective topographical study of the town of the same name in the Netherlands. To my eyes, however, there is still creative invention to be found here. Note for instance how Roghman uses strong tonal contrast to cast the buildings in the middle distance in a blaze of light. Note also how he juxtaposes long lines in his representation of water in the canal with dots in rendering of the canal banks.