A fortified town with figures bathing

While the present view appears to be imaginary, Wagner suggestion that the bridge depicted in the middle distance was that of St. Janspoort in Arnhem (op. cit.), also possibly seen in another view by van der Heyden, from a different perspective, sold in these Rooms on 6 December 2018 (lot 22). While the artist is not documented as ever having travelled to Arnhem, the clear correspondence between the present painting and contemporary depictions of the city’s Janspoort strongly suggests that such a visit took place, most probably when he was on route to the Rhineland. Though the precise dates of this trip are not known, it certainly took place by 1667, the year in which van der Heyden painted his Imaginary view of the Jesuit Church of St. Andreas in Düsseldorf (The Hague, Mauritshuis).

Van der Heyden was one of the first Dutch painters, and perhaps the greatest, to specialise in painting townscapes, although he also painted village streets, country houses and some forty landscapes. Unusually for an artist, he is also remembered as an inventor and engineer; he designed, amongst other things, a comprehensive street-lighting scheme for Amsterdam and a fire-engine fitted with pump-driven horses, and much of his independent wealth derived from that aspect of his career. Painting, by contrast, was almost a secondary interest, although one that he maintained throughout his life. Van der Heyden's townscapes are frequently only loosely based on actual views, topographical accuracy being the least of his concerns; despite his naturalistic style, the artist strove to present idealised depictions of his surroundings above the absolute reproduction of nature.

Van der Heyden’s ability to capture microscopic details so dazzled his contemporaries that, only nine years after his death, his biographer Arnold Houbraken marvelled at the fact that ‘he painted every little stone in the buildings so minutely that one could clearly see the mortar in the grooves in the foreground as well as the background…In truth it is still believed that he had a special grasp of art, or had invented a means whereby, to all who understand the use of the brush, he could accomplish things that seem impossible with the customary ways of painting’ (De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen, The Hague, 1721, III, p. 80). Less than a decade later, the painter and writer Jacob Campo Weyerman similarly noted that ‘all the connoisseurs unanimously avow that the clever artist had an art secret’ (J.C. Weyerman, De levenbeschrijvingen der nederlandsche konstschilders en schilderessen, The Hague, 1729, II, p. 391). Recent scholarship suggests that van der Heyden’s miraculous abilities at depicting mortar were wrought by an ingenious counterproof process in which the brickwork patterns, too fine to have been executed with an ordinary brush, were transferred from an etching plate ‘inked’ with white paint to a piece of paper which was then pressed onto the painted support (see A. Wallert, ‘Refined Technique or Special Tricks: Painting Methods of Jan van der Heyden’, Jan van der Heyden (1637-1712), exhibition catalogue, Greenwich and Amsterdam, 2006, pp. 98-99).