v

Foreign Eyes

Painters from the Low Countries

in Seventeenth-Century England

England has from the beginning been a nation of writers but it is only fromthe early eighteenth century that we can claim to have produced a body ofnative painters, responsible for providing the lion's share of the nation's pic-tures. With the exception of miniature painters practising a specialist art andthe occasional native of distinction such as William Dobson, John MichaelWright and Francis Barlow, the history of painting in England during theseventeenth century was very largely the creation of foreign artists, particu-larly from the Netherlands, both north and south, who either came on shortvisits or for various reasons took up residence here. In the later sixteenthcentury they were often refugees fleeing from war and religious persecution,whereas a century later economic hardship sometimes prompted their emi-gration to England. Portraiture, that essential accompaniment to the life of acourt, was very largely served by foreigners, primarily by Anthony vanDyck and Daniel Mytens before the Civil War, and by Peter Lely andGodfrey Kneller after the Restoration - with the result that our image of theStuart kings is very largely their creation. Although portraiture was the pre-dominant activity of painting in seventeenth-century England, there wereother categories of subject-matter painted by the visiting artists from theLow Countries and some of what they produced forms the subject of thisessay.

Although the hostile political situation between England and the NorthernNetherlands during the reign of Queen Elizabeth i continued under her suc-cessor James 1, largely owing to maritime and mercantile rivalry, this did notprevent the influx of Dutch as well as of Flemish artists, who served toestablish flourishing artistic and cultural ties between the countries. James i,although he recognised the political need for painting, took little interestin art, but his consort Anne of Denmark was a keen collector and patron,who, it was reported, preferred pictures to people. Despite the King's lackof interest, his reign witnessed the beginnings of the great tradition ofEnglish collectors, of whom the most notable were the Earl of Arundel andthe Duke of Buckingham. These two noblemen were, for instance, respon-sible for attracting the young Van Dyck, anxious to establish himself away

190

from the shadow of Rubens, to England in 1620. Apart from painting astraightforward portrait of Arundel and a portrait historie of Buckinghamand his wife as Venus and Adonis, as well as carrying out an unspecifiedcommission for the King, Van Dyck produced, in his The Continence ofScipio, probably painted for Buckingham, the first major picture in Englandwhich was not a portrait. Arranged across a large surface with narrow depthand painted in his lively linear manner of this period, the Roman ruler, in anexemplum of generosity and continence, is seen after his conquest of NewCarthage reuniting the beautiful female captive to her betrothed, Allucius,and handing over to her as a dowry the ransom gifts her parents had offeredhim. (Whether the three principals are to be identified as James I andBuckingham and his wife, as has been suggested, remains very much opento doubt.) With such a developing star in its midst, the English court musthave grieved to see Van Dyck depart after only four months, ostensibly totravel for a period of eight months but in reality for an absence of elevenyears.

In 1625 James was succeeded by his younger son Charles and there beganone of the great eras of English patronage and collecting, not to be rivalleduntil the reign of George iv. Both Buckingham, at least for the three yearsbefore his assassination, and Arundel were still on hand to act as influentialartistic advisers and exempla. In addition Sir Dudley Carleton, Englishambassador at The Hague from i 6 i 6 to 1625 and again from 1626 to 1628

Anthony van Dyck, was to serve as a perceptive and highly effective 'talent-spotter'. He wasThe Continence of Scipio. responsible for introducing the painting of the strange still-life painter Jani 620-162 i. Canvas, Torrentius to the King, who in an enlightened act of patronage invited thI h X

Governing

gThe Governing Body, painter to come to England to save him from a recentlyimposed twenty- g y p-Christ Church, oxford. year gaolsentence for membership of the outlawed Rosicrucian Society

191

and apparent blasphemy and immorality. Unfortunately Torrentius, inclined Gerrit van Honthorst,

to melancholia, produced nothing for his English saviour and returned Apollo and Diana. 1628.Canvas, 357 x 640 cm.

home. The Royal Collection ©,Earlier Sir Dudley Carleton, with eventually more rewarding results, had Her Majesty Queen

spotted the talent of Gerrit van Honthorst immediately after his return from Elizabeth ii, HamptonCourt.

Rome and introduced his name and painting to Arundel, thus laying thegroundwork for the artist's visit to England in 1628. There, in addition to anumber of portraits, he produced his enormous picture of Apollo and Diana,possibly to hang at the end of the newly built Banqueting House inWhitehall, the ceiling of which was to be decorated by Rubens. Followingthe taste of the time, Mercury, in the guise of the Duke of Buckingham, leadsa procession of the liberal arts to pay homage to Apollo and Diana, who, per-sonated by Charles i and Henrietta Maria, are seated above in the clouds.With its allusions to the peace-loving enlightenment and sophistication ofthe Caroline court, it offered the first large-scale public representation ofwhat was being created so memorably in the English capital.

A year later Honthorst was followed to London by Rubens, on a diplo-matic mission which must also represent the most distinguished artisticevent of the reign. During his nine months in England he painted portraits ofArundel, a portrait historie of the King and Queen in a composition ofSt George and the Dragon (H.M. The Queen), which, a contemporaryreported, `he has sent home into Flanders to remain there as a monument ofhis abode and employment here'. During his stay he received the commis-sion to decorate the ceiling of the Banqueting House, no doubt undertakingthe necessary preparatory work on the programme, and, as a special present

192 Through Foreign Eyes

for Charles i, painted a highly political allegory of War and Peace, which inthe words of Charles is surveyor, Abraham van der Doort, was `an Emblimwherein the dWerencs and ensuencees betweene peace and warrs isShewed', a subject very relevant to the European peace the artist had beennegotiating. (Mars, the god of war, is driven off by Minerva, the goddess ofwisdom, who protects a woman suckling a child, probably Pax and theinfant Plutus, the god of wealth.)

In 1632 Van Dyck was lured back by Charles Ito England, where he wasto spend most of the remaining nine years of his life. Traditionally it is saidthat the King's pleasure with the Rinaldo and Armida (Museum of Art,Baltimore; see The Low Countries 1993-94: 31 1), which he had commis-sioned two years earlier, is supposed to have been responsible for the invi-tation. If so it is ironic that Van Dyck was required to spend the rest of hiscareer painting portraits of the royal family and the court. The Cupid andPsyche (H.M. The Queen), painted towards the end of his life, remains theonly known surviving mythological picture from the years in England. Itspurpose is unknown, but it represents the culmination of Van Dyck's loveaffair with Venetian sixteenth-century painting, above all with that byTitian. The wonderfully varied range of colours in a high key – above all thepinks and the blues – combined with the elegance and delicacy of the fig-ures and their actions show the artist at the furthest point from the whole-heartedly Rubensian works with which he had begun his career. It is not dif-ficult to imagine that this picture would have been warmly received by anEnglish Court infatuated with Venetian painting. The only mystery is whyhe was never invited to repeat the exercise.

There was another side to the taste of the King and his fellow collectors,a penchant for ingenious and meticulously executed works on a small scale.The Haarlem painter Hendrick Pot was called on to paint the King and

Peter Paul Rubens,War and Peace. 1629.Canvas, 203.5 x 298 cm.National Gallery, London.

193

Queen in a style and size recalling an enlarged miniature. Charles had a par-ticular liking for the ingenious perspectives and architectural scenes, withtheir romantic atmospheric effects of nocturnal interiors, by the Antwerpartist Herman van Steenwyk the Younger, who was active in England from1617 until 1637; the more prosaic perspectives of the Dutch artist GerritHouckgeest were no less popular with the King. In landscape this taste wasmet by, amongst others, the works of Cornelis van Poelenburgh, whoappears to have made several journeys from Utrecht to London in the late1 63os, and who collaborated with the Antwerp painter Alexander Keirincx,who on a second visit in 1639 shared a house in Westminster with him.Apart from painting views of castles and towns for the King, Keirincx pro-vided the landscape for figures probably added by Poelenburgh in theWooded Landscape, painted for Charles, which was later sent to The Haguewith other Dutch pictures by William Iii and never returned.

England during the Civil War was no place for a foreign artist, althoughPeter Lely, who arrived in London from Haarlem just as it began, was ableto survive remarkably well during the war and the subsequent Common-wealth. At the Restoration he was promptly appointed Principal Painter byCharles ii. Regarded as the natural successor to Van Dyck, like his prede-cessor he realised that portrait painting was the principal requirement andquickly abandoned the pastoral and mythological subjects with which hehad begun his career, such as The Concert. This lyrical picture is probablyto be understood as an allegory of Music, here personified by the singer, theflautist and the bass violinist (probably a self-portrait), in the service of Loveand Beauty, exemplified by a half-naked woman seen from the back and

Alexander Keirincx andCornelis van Poelenburgh,A Wooded Landscape.c.1639 (?).Panel,64 x 92 cm. Mauritshuis,The Hague (inv. no. 79).

194 Through Foreign Eyes

Peter Lely, The Concert. the woman on the right who silences her dog.Late 16405. Canvas, With the accession of Charles li in i 66o, the crown no longer played the122.9 x 234.E cm.The Courtauld Institute dominant role in patronage that it had done under his father. Although heGalleries (Lee Collection), was assiduous in trying to reassemble his father's dispersed collection,London. Charles 11 proved himself a far less discerning and active patron of living

artists. Moreover, although the art of the Netherlands remained the principaloverall cultural influence, royal taste veered towards French and Italian art,with erotic mythologies appealing to the King and religious subjects meet-ing the devotional requirements of his Catholic wife, Catherine of Braganza.But artists from the Low Countries were to serve a purpose. Charles ii hada passion for the events of his own life, particularly his escape from theRoundheads during the Civil War and his journey to France in aBrighthelmstone (Brighton) coal-brig; after his restoration, the ship wasconverted into a yacht and renamed the Royal Escape, in which state it waspainted by the younger Willem van de Velde presumably on commissionfrom the King (H.M. The Queen). Charles' departure from Scheveningen atthe time of the Restoration represented a more triumphant moment in theKing's career and the subject of his embarkation on the beach became a pop-ular subject with Dutch artists. Allied to this penchant for his own life-storywent his interest in landscape to provide records of his possessions. TheDutch artist Hendrick Danckerts, was, for example, commissioned by theKing to paint royal residences, such as Greenwich, Windsor Castle andHampton Court, and naval ports, such as Plymouth, Portsmouth andTangier. The latter subjects would particularly have appealed to the nauti-cally minded King, as well as to his brother, the Duke of York, later to beJames ii, and this aspect to their taste undoubtedly led to their patronage ofthe elder and the younger Willem van de Veldes, who probably arrived inEngland in or shortly after 1672, when Charles ii issued a declaration invit-ing people from the Low Countries to come and settle in England.

With patronage no longer very largely centred on the Court, many foreignartists found employment with patrons who in these happier times were

195

building and embellishing their homes in and around London. In fact someartists from the Low Countries had no contact with the King and wereentirely dependent on commissions from outside the Court. While RalphMontagu was building the first Montagu House in London `in the Frenchtaste', the Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale were active in enlarging andredecorating their house at Ham in the early 16705. They employed, in addi-tion to some Dutch joiners, a team of Dutch artists and under the controllinghand of the Duchess they produced a very distinctive ensemble which stillhappily exists today. Much of the painted decoration consisted of overdoorsand overmantles, which included landscapes by Dirck van der Bergen andAbraham Begeyn, a battle-piece by Jan Wyck, three seascapes by theyounger Van de Velde, his first recorded commission in this country, and analchemist's den by Thomas Wyck. This was only one part of a sumptuousensemble of wall-hangings and furniture all designed in the most fashion-able taste of the period, which led John Evelyn to describe the interior asfurnished like a Great Prince's' and to claim that it was `inferiour to few ofthe best Villas in Italy itself'.

Sir Thomas Willoughby, another active patron of artists from the LowCountries, commissioned topographical landscapes of his houses atWollaton and Middleton Park from the Antwerp painter Jan Siberechts, whocame to England in the 167os. By abandoning his natural bent for land-scapes with peasants and animals, Siberechts built up a thriving and distin-guished practice producing views of country seats. Both Danckerts and JanGriffier the Elder, followed later by Leonard Knyff, were also busily pro-ducing country house `portraits' for a wide variety of owners around thecountry. Willoughby also employed Egbert van Heemskerk, another emi-grant artist with a very different specialisation, to paint a series of six drol-leries. The Haarlem artist went on to illustrate events of local history, suchas the Oxford Election (Corporation of Oxford) and the Quaker Meeting,which offered a satirical comment on the Society founded in 1647; the lat-ter proved a popular subject which was repeated in numerous paintedversions as well as being engraved.

One of the most admired qualities in painting during the reign of Charles iiwas that of verisimilitude. Its representation, which was principally pro-vided by artists from the Low Countries, found an eloquent admirer inSamuel Pepys, who on being taken to Simon Verelst's lodging in Londonwas shown `a little flower-port of his doing, the finest thing that ever 1 thinkI saw in my life – the drops of Dew hanging on the leaves, so as I was forcedagain and again to put my finger to it to feel whether my eyes were deceivedor no'. On another occasion he enthused about a picture in the manner of the`miscellanies' produced by the Leiden artist Evaert Collier, who spent ashort time in London. It is, he said, `so well painted that in my whole life Inever was so pleased or surprised with any picture ... even after that I knewit was not board, but only the picture of a board, I could not remove myfancy'. And his enjoyment of the ingenious is reflected in his repeated plea-sure in the power of spatial trompe l'oeil; visiting the house of ThomasPovey in Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1663, he wrote: `above all things I do themost admire his piece of perspective especially, he opening the closet doorand there 1 saw that there is nothing but a plain picture hung upon the wall.'The work described is very probably to be identified with the View down a

Samuel van Hoogstraeten,A View down a Corridor.1662. Canvas, 264 x 136.5cm. The National TrustJohn Hammond (BlathwaytCollection), Dyrham Park.

196 Through Foreign Eyes

Corridor painted the year before by Samuel van Hoogstraeten, who was inLondon from 1662 to 1667, and which passed from Povey's possession tothat of his nephew, William Blathwayt of Dyrham Park, where it has hungas a trompe 1'ceil ever since.

If not a great work of art, the picture known as The Tichborne Dole (MrsJohn Loudun, Tichborne Park), painted by the little-known Flemish artistGillis van Tilborch in 1670, provides one of the richest documents ofEnglish social history. Standing before their Tudor house, Sir HenryTichborne and his family, accompanied by their various retainers andwatched by tenants and villagers, are about to distribute bread to the poor,following a family tradition supposedly going back to the thirteenth century.In this wide composition, recalling Dutch and Flemish paintings of the sub-ject of the distribution of bread, the entire spectrum of a village societydependent on the grand house, including an engaging variety of dogs, ispainstakingly recorded.

James li, whose taste matched that of his brother and who had particularlypatronised the Van de Veldes, had little time as monarch to attract newartists to England. William and Mary, as might be expected, turned to artistsfrom the Low Countries, but perhaps deliberately reacting against the tasteof their two predecessors chose to employ different artists. Jan Wyck, whohad been in England since 1674 but who had never carried out any work forthe Crown, was now given commissions. Godfried Schalcken, the master ofcandle-light scenes, which sometimes included portraiture, was encouragedby William to make several visits to England in the 169os. According toArnold Houbraken, the flower painter Maria van Oosterwijk also workedfor William and Mary. The Van de Veldes however, so popular with CharlesII and James Ii, were ignored by the new monarchs; yet so much did theyappeal to English taste that they readily continued to find patronage. Willemvan de Velde the Younger lived on until I707, into the reign of Queen Anne;regarding his search for light and atmosphere there is a nice account of his`going a skoying' given to the English artist William Gilpin by an oldThames waterman who `had often carried him (i. e., Van de Velde) out in hisboat, both up and down the river, to study the appearances of the sky. Theold man used to say, they went out in all kinds of weather, fair, and foul'. Itwas a practice which was followed by so many English artists in subsequentcenturies.

CHRISTOPHER WHITE

FURTHER READING

BROWN, C., Van Dyck. Oxford, 1982.

MILLAR, o., Sir Peter Lely r6r8-80. London, 1978.

WATERHOUSE, E., Painting in Britain 1530 to 1790. New Haven / London, 1994•

WHINNEY, M. and o. MILLAR, English Art 1625-1714. Oxford, 1957.

WHITE, c., The Dutch Pictures in the Gallery of H.M. The Queen. Cambridge, 1982.

197