Bosrand met voerman en wandelaar

DERK JAN VAN DER LAAN (Zwolle 1759-1829 Zwolle)

Derk Jan van der Laan was the son of a simple pedlar from Leiden. He grew up in Zwolle where he attended the Latin school. Sometime after 1776, Van der Laan went to Leiden to study with Hendrik Meijer#. He returned to Zwolle in 1781, where he set up business with his cousin in a tea, coffee and glass shop. At that time Zwolle was a politically lively town, and Van der Laan became an active patriot. From 1795 on he held several government positions in Zwolle; the artist strove to combine his commercial and political activity with his art. In 1819 he helped to establish the Zwolle Art Academy.
Van der Laan painted genre scenes at first, but soon switched to town views and landscapes. Almost all his drawings in pen, ink and wash are dated, all before 1800. He also made several watercolours, probably influenced by his teacher Hendrik Meijer, who himself was greatly stimulated in the use of that technique by a trip to England he made with Wybrand Hendriks#.




254 Edge of a forest in a hilly landscape

Black chalk, brush, black and grey ink. Framing line in pen and black ink.
385 x 473 mm.
Signed and dated on the verso, lower right: Derk Jan van der Laan inv’ & fecit 1790. (pen and dark-grey ink).
PROVENANCE: bought from the artist by Hendriks, for the Museum, together with No. 255, 1790 (f 210,-).
Inv. 1854: W1 48 ‘een Geldersch landschap’ or 49 ‘dito’; inv. 1864: V* 66 ‘Boschrijk landschap met bespannen kar’.
INV. NO.: X 67.
EXHIBITION: Zwolle 1990, no. 21 (repr.), p. 15.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Scholten 1904, pp. 474-75.

Hendriks bought this drawing, together with No. 255, directly from the artist, in the same year that they were drawn, for a fairly high price. Possibly Hendriks knew Van der Laan personally, since he had been a pupil of his good friend Hendrik Meijer, and had boarded with him in Leiden.
Van der Laan made a number of drawings with a similar scene (though all vertical in format), each signed and dated 1789 (for example a sheet in Leeuwarden, Fries Museum, inv. no. FM VI-86), and several sheets in a private collection in The Hague (formerly Van Eeghen Collection, Amsterdam; photos RKD). Another similar drawing, in the same technique and dated 1784, is in Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet; exh. Zwolle 1990, no. 28, repr.).