item details
Roeland Roghman; artist
Overview
Geertruydt Roghman (1625–1657) was a Dutch Golden Age painter, engraver and printmaker. She was born in Amsterdam to family of artists, the daughter of engraver Henrick Lambertsz Roghman (1602–c. 1660) and Maria Jacobs Savery. Geertruyd was the oldest sister of Roelant (1627–1692) and Magdalena Roghman (1637–c. 1669) and the grandniece of the well-known painter Roelant Savery (1576–1639) through her mother.
During Holland’s Golden Age, Dutch society became the most urbanised in Europe and this meant greater freedoms for women. Within the context of enormous commercial prosperity and social progress, the number of Dutch women artists increased. Some remained essentially helpmates in their male relatives’ workshops, this being the case for Roghman who worked in her father’s workshop. In her short life Roghman did not produce a large body of work. She is best known for the 14 prints based on sketches by her brother Roelant, variously called Landscapes with villages near Amsterdam (Hollstein) or Plaisante Lantschappen (‘Pleasant landscapes’) (British Museum) and indeed ‘Amusing scenes drawn from life by Roelant Rogman’. These scenes sold well throughout the latter half of the 17th century and early 18th century and served as inspiration to landscape painters. As well as landscapes, Roghman produced an original suite of five engravings called Household Tasks, which have not as yet been acquired by Te Papa. Each print presents a sober view of domestic work. Rather than being moralising or erotic allegories, as was common among genre depictions of the time, the works present real life as experienced by women of the time. Roghman was thus one of the few 17th-century Dutch artists to focus on ordinary women.
Roghman did not marry and the last archival record of her is from 1651. One of her prints may be dated to 1652, and scholars have concluded that she was dead by 1657, probably having died a few years earlier.
Te Papa currently has seven etchings by Geertruydt Roghman in its collection, all from the 'Pleasant Landscapes' series. They were made after her brother Roelant - also represented in the collection - and whose insignia ‘R.R’ is still visible in several of them. This print, Plate 14, takes the viewer back to 'Het dorp' (the village) of Muyderbergh (present day Muiderberg), seen in Plates 2-4 (Te Papa 1869-0001-449/51). The tower of the Old Church (the theme of Plate 2) is visible in the gaps between the thatched cottages, with smoke rising from the chimney of one of them on the far left. Various figures negotiate the road going through the unprepossessing, muddy-looking landscape, which is dominated by a tall pole.
Sources:British Museum Collection online, https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=1624018&partId=1&search Text=het+dorp+muyderbergh&page=1https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=1623951&partId=1&searchTex t=roghman+plaisante&page=1
Martha Peacock, 'Geertruydt Roghman and the Female Perspective in 17th-Century Dutch Genre Imagery', Woman’s Art Journal, vol. 14, no. 2 (1993-1994), pp. 3-10.
Wikipedia, ‘Geertruydt Roghman’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geertruydt_Roghman
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art April 2019