Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland's Glory

by Lisa Jardine

  In 1631, Rembrandt and Lievens both painted different versions of the Crucifixion, perhaps as an official competition staged by Huygens. Immediately afterwards, Rembrandt was awarded the commission for a series illustrating Christ’s Passion for the Stadholder. In 1639, with the series still incomplete, Rembrandt wrote to Huygens to tell him that two paintings, ‘being the one where the dead body of Christ is laid in the grave and the other one where Christ rises up from the dead to the great shock of the guards’, were now complete:

  I therefore would request if my lord could please tell his Highness of this and if my lord could please have the two pieces first delivered to your house as happened before. I will wait first for a short note to this effect.

  And since my lord will be bothered with this business for the second time in recognition a piece 10 feet long and 8 feet high will be included as well which will do honor to my lord in his house.24

  Like those dealing in art for the top end of the market today, Sir Constantijn Huygens became the possessor of a large work by Rembrandt of his own, as recompense for the time and trouble he had taken in securing the deal and seeing it through to completion.

  Huygens retained his commitment to the talents of Lievens and van Dyck throughout his life. In 1633 he penned a commendatory distich on a sketch by Rembrandt of his old friend Jacob de Gheyn III (Huygens’s companion on that memorable first tour of the major private art collections of England):

  Rembrandtis est manus ista, Gheinij vultus:

  Mirare, lectore, es ista Gheinius non est.

  [Rembrandt’s is the hand here, the face is de Gheyn’s:

  Marvel, dear onlooker, that this is not de Gheyn in person.]

  In the end, though, he (unlike us) preferred a more intense, painterly representation of human feeling, and greater attention to detail than that developed by Rembrandt in his maturity. Rembrandt’s name was not among those selected by Huygens senior to decorate the memorial room at the Huis ten Bosch following Frederik Hendrik’s death in 1647.

  Sir Constantijn Huygens’s influence as an artistic facilitator, adding lustre to the reputations of the princely courts at The Hague by astute encouragement of talent and acquisition, was by no means limited to painting. An enthusiast for classical architecture, he also encouraged a generation of classical sculptors, whose work adorned houses like his own in The Hague. One of these was François Dieussart, with whom Huygens was closely involved for the ten years during which he lived and worked in The Hague (Dieussart arrived in 1641 bearing a letter of recommendation for Huygens from Gerrit van Honthorst). Through Huygens, Dieussart received a number of important commissions. The year of his arrival he executed an Italian marble bust of Elizabeth of Bohemia, followed by marble busts for the large reception room in Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen’s newly completed Mauritshuis, and a bust of the Elector of Brandenburg for an overdoor niche in the bedchamber. In 1646, Dieussart produced a dynastic series of full-length figures of the Princes of Orange for the Huis ten Bosch. For this last commission, Huygens was responsible for negotiating the conditions of delivery and the cost, as well as keeping an eye on the sculptor’s progress. In April 1646, Huygens wrote to Frederik Hendrik assuring him that he expected to get the price of the four statues reduced:

  On Wednesday evening, the sculptor Dieussart will give me four little clay models for Madame’s [Amalia van Solms’s] statues. He is quoting 1000 francs each, not including the marble, which adds about another 200 francs, but I think I can make him see reason.25

  Like other artists who had depended heavily on expensive commissions from within the court circle, Dieussart left The Hague in 1650, shortly after the death of William II.

  By the Restoration, then, artistic taste and artistic practice on either side of the Narrow Sea were strenuously entwined. And throughout the period 1630–60, Sir Constantijn Huygens advised, facilitated and pressured in England and the United Provinces, establishing a vigorous dialogue between the growing number of connoisseurs both within and beyond court-or pseudo-court-related circles in both places. If developing tastes began to elide during this thirty-year period, it is not an exaggeration to suggest that he was in large part responsible.

  So it is no surprise to find him involved in another watershed art ‘moment’ – the hasty assembling of a gift of suitably distinguished paintings by the States of Holland to present to the English King, Charles II, as he returned to his artistically-depleted kingdom in 1660.

  In spring 1660, as Charles II gathered his supporters and future ministers around him in the northern Netherlands prior to his return to England to lay claim to the throne, the States of Holland and West Friesland resolved to secure the favour of the new King by making him a fine and memorable diplomatic gift. Its expensive centrepiece was a magnificent, highly decorated carved bed, with bed-furnishings, and there was also the promise of a handsome ship, to be called the Mary. But the ‘Dutch Gift’ also included a carefully selected group of paintings by major, recognised artists, and a number of classically inspired sculptures.

  By the late 1660s, Sir Constantijn Huygens was in his seventies, with a career’s worth of experience brokering art and culture for the house of Orange. He occupied an unrivalled position in cultivated circles in the Dutch Republic, as arbiter of taste in all things cultural, from music and poetry to art and architecture. When it came to the delicate task of selecting a few Dutch pieces to include in the ‘Dutch Gift’, he was the obvious expert to consult.

  Discreet enquiries had been made, and it had been determined that Charles’s taste, like his father’s, was for Italian art and antique statuary. Accordingly, most of the works presented were by Italian masters, beginning the process of reassembling a major collection for the English monarch to replace that sold off and dispersed by the Commonwealth in 1650. Art connoisseurship at The Hague now tended towards modern, Dutch works – visiting the palace of Rijswijk some years earlier, John Evelyn had commented that there was ‘nothing more remarkable than the delicious walks planted with lime trees, and the modern paintings within’.

  So the Italian paintings and sculptures for Charles’s ‘Dutch Gift’ were acquired, conveniently, from the collection of the art-collecting brothers Gerrit and Jan Reynst, which had recently come on the market, following the death of Gerrit in 1658 (Jan had died in 1646).26 This was one of the most celebrated collections of Italian paintings of its time – though later the authenticity of a number of prominent works in it would become a very public matter of dispute.27 The States of Holland approached Gerrit Reynst’s widow, Anna, with the proposal that they should select from among her late husband’s paintings and sculptures a group of the most outstanding. In September 1660 the sculptor Erasmus Quellinus and the dealer Gerrit van Uylenburgh chose twenty-four pictures and twelve statues, which arrived in London at the beginning of November, and were exhibited in the Banqueting House at Whitehall. Charles II ceremoniously paid a visit to inspect the paintings, and his evident delight caused a considerable stir.28

  In addition to the Italian artworks, with their acknowledgement of the Stuart taste of Charles II’s father, the Dutch Gift included four contemporary Dutch paintings. One of these was a classic near-contemporary work: Pieter Saenredam’s The Large Organ and Nave of the St Bavokerk, Haarlem, from the Choir (1648), which was purchased from the Amsterdam Burgomaster Andries de Graeff. The other three were bought directly from the much-admired ‘modern’ artist Gerrit Dou. One of these was a characteristic Dutch domestic interior (exquisitely detailed): Dou’s The Young Mother (1658), now in the Mauritshuis at The Hague.

  In the case of Saenredam’s Large Organ and Nave of the St Bavokerk, Haarlem, from the Choir, the connection to Huygens’s patronage can be documented, since we can identify this very painting, acquired from de Graeff, as one that Huygens had seen some years earlier, and considered purchasing himself. On 21 May 1648, Pieter Saenredam wrote a letter to Huygens, following up an approach by Huygens on behalf of Stadholder Willem II concerning some
newly completed works:

  My Lord van Zuylichem, It pleases me very much to hear that His Highness has begun to take pleasure in paintings, that he indeed desired to see my recently completed great church, and that he wanted to have it shipped now, in which I foresee, on the basis of continuous experience, difficulties of such magnitude, too long to relate, that I do not dare ship it or take that risk.

  Nonetheless I cordially wished that His Highness saw the same with his own eyes, as has happened with you, My Lord. I have had this piece along with five more of the largest brought to Monsr Vroons.

  As for the price of the church, I trust that Your Excellency still recalls our oral discussion.29

  Huygens had clearly been with Saenredam, seen the paintings, and discussed purchase prices. Nothing, however, came of the Stadholder’s interest in the St Bavokerk painting – Saenredam was never represented in the collections of the house of Orange. But it is possible that the six paintings were indeed sent via Vroom to The Hague, and five of them were purchased instead by Huygens himself, and thence entered the collections of members of his family. The Large Organ and Nave of the St Bavokerk, Haarlem, from the Choir, was sold to Andries de Graeff, from whose collection it was acquired by the States of Holland to give to Charles II.30 It is a particularly appropriate piece for the Protestant monarch, in a strongly symbolic moderate Protestant Dutch tradition.31

  Recent work on the art market in the northern Netherlands has stressed the fact that in the mid-seventeenth century, ‘access to the latest artistic knowledge depended on personal introductions, from patrons to painters and painters to patrons. Even in the Dutch Republic, where painters sold their works through myriad channels, from auctions and dealers’ shops to fairs and lotteries, some of the most innovative and expensive art remained primarily accessible through private élite channels.’32 As well as his brokering of art acquisition for the house of Orange, Huygens also acted as just such a trusted facilitator, helping would-be collectors gain access to the already highly-esteemed northern Netherlandish painters in the 1660s.

  Gerrit Dou received his training as an artist alongside Jan Lievens, in Rembrandt’s studio at Leiden. He entered Rembrandt’s studio in February 1628, at the age of fourteen, and remained there for three years, until he became ‘an excellent master’. Since Lievens painted Huygens’s portrait at just around this time, we may assume that Huygens also made the acquaintance of Gerrit Dou (though Dou was too young to be included in his autobiographical fragment from this period, which included a celebration of the Rembrandt studio).

  In 1669, Pieter Teding van Berckhout, a patrician of The Hague with family connections to both the Huygens and Paets families, visited Delft in the company of Huygens. He noted in his diary that he paid a call on ‘an excellent painter named Vermeer’. On a second visit to the ‘celebrated painter named Vermeer’ van Berckhout saw several ‘curious perspectives’. In assessing the value of Vermeer paintings currently on the market, he and Huygens compared these with prices for comparable works by Gerrit Dou.33 Here is somewhat more circumstantial evidence that Huygens probably played a part in selecting Dou’s work to be included in Charles II’s ‘Dutch Gift’.

  The arrival of the Dutch paintings in the Royal Collection made a tremendous impression on the English art-appreciating public, particularly after their public display at Whitehall, and may be credited with helping to consolidate a taste and a flourishing market for contemporary northern Netherlandish art in Britain. Evelyn saw the Dou (and another ‘rustic’ painting) at court, on 6 December 1660, and wrote with approval:

  I waited on my Bro: & sister Evelyn to Court: Now were presented to his Majestie those two rare pieces of Drolerie, or rather a Dutch Kitchin, painted by Douce [Dou], so finely as hardly to be at all distinguished from Enamail.34

  The King himself is supposed to have been so charmed by the exquisitely detailed painting that he offered Dou the post of court painter (Dou declined).35

  And the story of Anglo–Dutch cultural circulation and percolation does not, in fact, end here. When William III came to the throne in 1689, he quickly identified major works by artists Huygens had encouraged his family in the Low Countries to acquire in the English Royal Collection, and selected them to be shipped back to Holland, to be hung in his royal palaces, like Het Loo. There they joined the extensive house of Orange art collections, some of them – like the Dou Young Mother – being given pride of place for their exceptional quality.

  The exquisite little Dou painting which had been included in the Dutch Gift to Charles II in 1660 was removed from London by William and Mary and taken to Het Loo, where it hung in pride of place over the fireplace in Queen Mary’s private apartments. An English visitor who had known her toured Queen Mary’s apartments at Het Loo around 1700, and reported on the splendour of the royal closet, or private sitting room, closely hung with exceptionally fine paintings:

  In the first closet were several good paintings in bright colours. Through that we passed into a second which was hung with extraordinary fine paintings. There was a small piece of a woman rocking a cradle [the Dou], which was valued at 16,000 guilders.36

  After William’s death, the English Crown had to apply to the Dutch government for the return of these paintings – with limited success. In the early-eighteenth-century inventory of paintings which ought to be returned to the Royal Collection in England, drawn up by the English Resident Ambassador Alexander Stanhope, the Dou was prominently listed as needing to be recovered. Today, it still hangs in the Mauritshuis – too beautiful a painting for the Dutch ever to have relinquished to the less appreciative English.37

  Here, perhaps, lies the answer to the vexed question of what happened to the Jan Lievens works produced for the court of Charles I during the 1630s. A growing taste in England for Dutch painters of both portraits and landscapes developed from the 1660s, as exiles returning home absorbed tastes they had acquired abroad, which merged seamlessly with tastes established by Dutch artists working in England before the Commonwealth period. Samuel Pepys (to take just a single example) records his admiration for perspective paintings by Samuel van Hoogstraten that he had seen at wealthy city entrepreneur Thomas Povey’s house, and in 1669 himself commissioned his own Dutch ‘landskips’ in ‘distemper’ by Hendrick Danckerts made to measure for his living room: ‘Mr Dancre … took measure of my panels in my dining room where … I intend to have the four houses of the King, White Hall, Hampton Court, Greenwich and Windsor.’ Once these works were complete, Pepys pronounced them to be ‘mighty pretty’. Sir Pieter Lely owned at least three Danckerts landscapes at his death in 1680.

  Dutch artists like these, even if they did not reside in England, made it their business to visit regularly during these years – van Hoogstraten was in London at the time of the Great Fire in 1666 (in his treatise on painting he describes the effect of the dense smoke on the sunset).

  Yet the English Royal Collection remains today depleted of many of its former Dutch holdings. Some failed to return at the Restoration, when forcible and conscience-based restitution of artworks dispersed in 1651 was most effective inside England, and with aristocratic owners in Italy and France, who had, on the whole, acquired Italianate paintings. Paintings sold under the Commonwealth to overseas buyers – particularly those that did not represent members of the Stuart royal family – remained with the purchaser, and over time passed into galleries and collections worldwide.

  The importance of Dutch works of art for the great collections of the Stuart royals and the Orange Stadholders is also lost on us today for a further reason. When Amalia van Solms died in 1675, under the terms of her will the magnificent collection of paintings she and Frederik Hendrik had assembled over their married life together were divided up between her three daughters and her Hohenzollern grandsons (the children of Louise Henriette, Electress of Brandenburg, who had predeceased her). The most distinguished works in the collection, including paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens, Lievens and Honthorst, were dispersed
between the electoral household in Berlin and other court cities in the Empire.38

  After the 1688 invasion, when William and Mary took advantage of their newfound access to the riches of the English Royal Collection to enhance their own, the trusted member of William’s household charged with selecting and transporting these works of art was none other than Sir Constantijn Huygens’s son Constantijn junior, William III’s personal secretary.

  On the very day on which William was proclaimed King of England – 23 February 1689 – William and Constantijn Huygens junior appraised the art in a number of rooms at Whitehall Palace (which Mary had decided the couple could not live in, because the central London air exacerbated William’s asthma). These, according to Constantijn, ‘also contained fine and admirable works; one of them contained many miniatures by [Isaac] Oliver, some of them after Italian originals’. William arranged for van Dyck’s great equestrian portrait of Charles I to be removed from the gallery at Hampton Court so that it could be hung where he could admire it. Over the next nine months, Huygens records numerous occasions on which the new King had him draw up lists of paintings in one or other of the royal palaces (Whitehall, Hampton Court, Windsor and Kensington), and have some or all of them moved from one to another. After the death of Queen Mary in 1695, William had Huygens move the best paintings from her apartments at Windsor and Hampton Court, to be hung in the refurbished rooms at Kensington Palace. The King instructed Huygens ‘that I should sort the small paintings from the large ones to some extent’. They were to be hung on strings ‘so that they can be arranged and rearranged’.39