Jan van Goyen

He was an extremely prolific artist who left approximately twelve hundred paintings and more than one thousand drawings.

Training under Esaias van de Velde is recorded. Adriaen van der Cabel, Nicolaes Pieterszoon Berchem and Jan Steen are recorded as having studied under Jan van Goyen. The recorded working language is Dutch. The field of work recorded is painting. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are landscape. The authority associates the name with Dutch Golden Age painting. Places of work recorded in the authority are Leiden, Hoorn and France. Works named in the authority record are Estuary with Sailing Boats, Riverview and Seascape with Duiventil and Hooiberg. Work by Jan van Goyen is recorded in the collections of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Städel Museum, Museo del Prado, Art Institute of Chicago and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

• Name — Jan van Goyen • Birth Name — Jan Josephszoon van Goyen • Born — 13 January 1596 • Birthplace — Leiden, Dutch Republic • Died — 27 April 1656 13 January 1596 • Place of death — The Hague, Dutch Republic • Education — Esaias van de Velde • Known for — Landscape painting • Movement — Dutch Golden Age

Jan van Goyen was the son of a shoemaker and started as an apprentice in Leiden, the town of his birth. Like many Dutch painters of his time, he studied art in the town of Haarlem with Esaias van de Velde. At age 35, he established a permanent studio at The Hague (Den Haag). Crenshaw tells (and mentions the sources) that van Goyen's landscape paintings rarely fetched high prices, but he made up for the modest value of individual pieces by increasing his production, painting thinly and quickly with a limited palette of inexpensive pigments. Despite his market innovations, he always sought more income, not only through related work as an art dealer and auctioneer but also by speculating in tulips (he was the last known victim of the tulip mania of the 1630s) and real estate. Although the latter was usually a safe avenue of investing money, in van Goyen's experience it led to enormous debts. Paulus Potter rented one of his houses. Though he seems to have kept a workshop, his only registered pupils were Nicolaes van Berchem, Jan Steen, and Adriaen van der Kabel. The list of painters he influenced is much longer. In 1652 and 1654, he was forced to sell his collection of paintings and graphic art, and he subsequently moved to a smaller house. He died in 1656 in The Hague, still unbelievably 18,000 guilders in debt, forcing his widow to sell their remaining furniture and paintings. Van Goyen's troubles also may have affected the early business prospects of his student and son-in-law Jan Steen, who left The Hague in 1654.

• Illustration — An Evening River Landscape with a Ferry (1643) Typically, a Dutch painter of the 17th century will fall into one of four categories: a painter of portraits, landscapes, still-lifes, or genre painting. Dutch painting was highly specialized and rarely could an artist hope to achieve greatness in more than one area in a lifetime of painting. Jan van Goyen would be classified primarily as a landscape artist with an eye for the genre subjects of everyday life. He painted many of the canals in and around The Hague as well as the villages surrounding the countryside of Delft, Rotterdam, Leiden, and Gouda. Other popular Dutch landscape painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth century were Jacob van Ruisdael, Aelbert Cuyp, Hendrick Avercamp, Ludolf Backhuysen, Meindert Hobbema, Aert van der Neer.

• Illustration — Farmhouse (1628), oil on panel, 27.5 x 37.5 cm., Museum der bildenden Künste • Illustration — Peasant Huts with a Sweep Well (1633), oil on panel, 55 x 80 cm., Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister • Illustration — Village at the River (1636), oil on panel, 39,5 x 60 cm., Alte Pinakothek • Illustration — Sailing and Row boats in an Estuary (1640), oil on panel, 77 x 116 cm., Museum De Lakenhal • Illustration — Landscape with a Rainbow (no date), oil on canvas, 124.5 x 154.5 cm., Hallwyl Museum • Illustration — Landscape with Two Oaks (1641), oil on canvas, 88.5 x 110.5 cm., Rijksmuseum • Illustration — The Thunderstorm (1641), oil on canvas, 137.8 x 183.2 cm., Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco • Illustration — A Windmill by a River (1642), oil on panel, 29,4 x 36,3 cm., National Gallery • Illustration — A River Scene (1646), oil on panel, 42.6 x 56.5 cm., National Galleries of Scotland • Illustration — Ice Scene near a Wooden Observation Tower (1646), oil on panel, 36.5 × 34.3 cm., National Gallery of Art • Illustration — Panorama Landscape with a View of Arnhem (1646), oil on canvas, 98.5 x 135 cm., Museum Kunstpalast • Illustration — View of The Hague from the Northwest (1647), oil on panel, 66 x 96.2 cm., Metropolitan Museum of Art • Illustration — River Landscape with Boats and Cottages on the Bank (1648), oil on panel, 54 x 73.7 cm., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston • Illustration — River Landscape (1652), oil on panel, 66.7 x 98 cm., Wallraf–Richartz Museum • Illustration — A Stormy Seascape (1655), oil on canvas, 110 × 159 cm., Sinebrychoff Art Museum • Illustration — River Landscape with a Ferry and a Church (ca. 1656), oil on panel, 47.3 x 66.7 cm., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The authorities additionally record the headings Jan Josefsz van Goyen, Jan Josephsz. Van Goyen, Jan Josefsz. Van Goyen, Jan Josephs van Goyen and Jan van Gooijen. His recorded language was Dutch. One child is recorded: Grietje Van Goyen.