Flemish Paintings
Collection catalogue
A catalogue of paintings and kunstkastjes created in the Southern Netherlands by artists born in or after 1570 and up to circa 1700, including important examples by or associated with the leading figures – Rubens, Van Dyck and Jordaens – and other lesser-known but still notable members of the school.
Flemish art
The interest of Dutch museums in seventeenth-century Flemish art has revived comparatively recently. In the 1950s the contribution in this field by eminent figures inspired by Frits Lugt (1884-1970), such as I.Q. van Regteren Altena (1899-1980), J.G. van Gelder (1903-1980) and E. Haverkamp-Begemann (1923-2017), was of international standing. But succeeding decades saw – with some exceptions – art history and connoisseurship concerned with the seventeenth-century Netherlands concentrate with significant results on the art of Rembrandt and his compatriots. This catalogue is of works by their counterparts in the south and is the first comprehensive and scholarly account, comprising critical assessment, art historical study and references to technical reports, of the museum’s holding of the school.
The catalogue
Flemish artists born before 1570 are catalogued with the Early Netherlandish Paintings, of which the first part is now online. Due to this selection criterion Jan Brueghel I – a significant collaborator of Peter Paul Rubens and important artist in his own right – is a notable absentee in the present selection as he was born two years before the start date of the catalogue’s remit. But most of the other chief artists are represented. In the case of Rubens his art can be admired chiefly through the activity of his studio. The decorations of a kunstkastje give a further demonstration of the range of Rubens’s oeuvre being newly attributed to Victor Wolfvoet II who made a speciality of copying that master’s work. By Anthony van Dyck is an early portrait of a man and a Penitent Magdalen, neither well known; pride of place goes to the late double portrait celebrating the marriage of Willem Prince of Orange and the Princess Royal, eldest daughter of Charles I. Jacques Jordaens, who sustained the genius of the Antwerp school well into the second half of the century, is represented by two fine mythologies on a large and a cabinet-size scale, and a later Christ on the Way to Calvary, painted for one of Amsterdam’s ‘hidden’ churches. Entries on the three recently acquired Le Witer portraits by Jordaens and on the paintings by Michael Sweerts will be contributed by the museum curators. Six paintings show the variety of David Teniers II’s output during his long career, most distinguished is the St George’s Day Kermis which was owned by four important, eighteenth-century French collectors.
The catalogue is of 128 paintings counting the four kunstkastjes with their painted decorations as one item each. Three South Netherlandish paintings were destroyed in the Second World War and one was stolen more recently; entries on these are provided separately in the Notes on the use of this catalogue. As presently constituted the collection may be thought rather mixed in quality. Such judgements are subjective, but about one fifth may be thought to be paintings of real merit, while just over this amount are interesting curiosities among which the two signed paintings by Daniel Boone are worthy of mention as being aesthetically egregious. One of these was among the large number of works which were bought by the museum; this includes the fourteen South Netherlandish paintings acquired from the Van Heteren-Gevers collection in 1809. A small number came from the stadholder’s collection (one previously in the British royal collection), while about a further quarter were gifts.
Notes on the use of this catalogue
A pdf with Notes on the use of this catalogue can be downloaded below, as well as a bibliography. Each entry page can be found by scrolling down on the artwork page and clicking on ‘Catalogue entry’ below the image.
