Plenary
Addresses
State
of the Art in Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish
Studies
Eric Jan
Sluijter
It is
revealing that, when I was asked to speak about the
present situation in the study of Netherlandish art
of the seventeenth century, I misunderstood the question
and thought I had to speak about research in Dutch
Art. Only when I saw the program of this conference,
did I realize with a shock that I was supposed to
discuss research in Flemish art too. This is a telling
example of the traditional and still existing autism
between Dutch and Belgian art historians. A few years
ago, when I had to write a critical comment accompanying
a bibliography of everything Dutch art historians
had published between 1993 and 1998 on art of the
early modern period, it suddenly struck me, as I was
going through the many hundreds of titles of books,
articles and catalogues, that Dutch art historians
write about almost everything, except Flemish art
after the late sixteenth century. It was an appalling
discovery that even publications on Rubens and Van
Dyck were absent. The other way round, the same can
be said of Belgian art historians. In the second half
of the nineteenth century, the time of flowering nationalism
as well as the period when the discipline of art history
took shape, Dutch and Belgian art historians drew
precise territorial lines along the geographical borders
of that time. Even today it seems as if, where it
concerns the art of The Netherlands after the fall
of Antwerp in 1585, an iron curtain has come down
which was never fully lifted. Nowadays it has nothing
to do with nationalism, I hope; in the first place,
it has everything to do with a now long established
tradition in the research and teaching of art history:
if there are no specialists in the field teaching
it at the universities, there will be no offspring.
In The Netherlands for instance, there has been a
sustained tradition of many good specialists teaching
Italian art, so that there is always a next generation
of Italianists ? but no 'Fleminists.' Thus ? and this
is also true of the present generation of art historians
? the few who publish in both fields are foreigners:
American, English or German.
In the past, it became
traditional ? and this is also true of art historians
(such as Horst Gerson) who studied both fields ? to
emphasize those characteristics which were identified
as distinctly Flemish or Dutch ? and we all know the
familiar catchwords. Hans Vlieghe however, in his
new Pelican survey of Flemish art, explicitly emphasizes
the continuities in the arts of both countries, and
he underlines that one sees more or less the same
stylistic and typological developments in genre, landscape
and still life painting. After having finished the
book he presented a paper ("Flemish art, does
it really exist?", published in Simiolus),
in which he spoke about his growing doubts while writing
his survey. At the same time he pointed out that at
the time itself, and still as late as Houbraken, no
real distinction was made between artists from the
Northern or Southern Netherlands, while in foreign
countries they were all considered Fiamminghi,
or Flemings. Moreover, the artists themselves, whether
from the northern or southern Netherlands, drew together
when they were, for instance, in Rome or London. Thus,
it is fitting that the only recent survey covering
both fields is a book produced for the Italian market
La pittura dei Paesi Bassi, under the supervision
of Bert Meijer.
Recently there have
also been exhibitions in which Dutch and Flemish art
was, with good reason, presented together, not only
when the focus was on international trends, such as
the paintings by Dutch and Flemish followers of Caravaggio
exhibited in Raleigh and other American cities, or
the exhibition Greek Gods and Heroes in the Age
of Rubens and Rembrandt, in Athens and Dordrecht,
but also in the large still life exhibition in Cleveland
and Amsterdam. In an important exhibition on women
artists through the ages, Elck sijn waerom (in
Antwerp and Arnhem), an initiative of Katlijne Van
der Stighelen, north and south were brought together
as well. In addition two recent and stimulating conferences,
last year in Leiden about Netherlandish artists in
Britain (as a matter of fact incorrectly entitled
"Dutch Artists in Britain") and the highly
productive conference in Middelburg on "Art for
the Market" in 1998 covered both. Things are
changing. Of course it is entirely legitimate to make
a choice in surveys or exhibitions between art and
artists of Flanders or those within the Seven Provinces,
but not in the thoughtless manner that has been common
for such a long time.
From Jan Briels's
two books on Flemish painters in the Northern Netherlands,
although in some respects a bit problematic in their
approach, we have learned much more about the role
of the immigrant artists in the Northern Netherlands,
especially during the transition period at the end
of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth
century. But there is still a lot to be done in defining
more precisely the role of those immigrants ? painters,
dealers as well as consumers ? in the explosive developments
in the cities of Holland. And, apart from that, we
should not stop at examining the common origins, the
transfer, and the many ongoing relationships. This
should also be a starting point for getting the nature
of the interactions as well as the differences in
the developments into sharper focus, and for exploring
with greater precision how these relate to local art
markets, to types of consumers, to religious and political
circumstances, and to the shaping of contemporary
images of identity. Cultural stereotypes about 'Hollands'
and 'Brabants' were constructed and emphasized from
the start. We too often assume nowadays that such
stereotypes were nineteenth-century constructions.
So, it will be clear that the two workshops today
and tomorrow of Stephanie Dickey about "Antwerp
and Amsterdam, Artistic Exchange and Cross-Fertilization,"
and the one of Barbara Haeger, Nicola Courtright and
Susan Koslow, about "Constructing Ideologies
and Aational Identites in Netherlandish Art,"
are both highly opportune. As a matter of fact, today's
politics may also help a little in bringing Dutch
and Flemish art historians together, since it is possible
to get funding from the Netherlands and Flemish Research
Organizations for projects in which Flemish and Dutch
scholars work together. This is already happening
in an extensive research program in the history of
architecture, supervised by Krista de Jonge and Koen
Ottenheym (whose workshop tomorrow on architecture,
architectural theory and architectural engraving also
concerns North and South), while a project is being
planned about a comparison in painting-techniques
in Flanders and Holland between 1580 and 1630, in
which hopefully several institutions in Flanders and
The Netherlands will participate.
Reviewing the recent
literature, it becomes clear that the number and nature
of publications in the field of Dutch and Flemish
art are quite different. On the Flemish front the
'Rubens Forschung' and Van Dyck studies are undeniably
dominant. In fact, an excellent cross section of current
research interests in Flemish art of this period,
can be found in the book with essays, Concept,
Design and Execution in Flemish Painting, 1550-1700
? the result of a six-year project, edited by Hans
Vlieghe, Arnout Balis and Carl Van de Velde; also
here, whichever way you look at it, Rubens takes central
stage. In the case of Dutch art, the number and the
variety of publications in subjects, artists and approaches
are truly bewildering. Many things have happened during
the last decades that have far-reaching consequences
for the way we look at this art. For that reason it
was quite alarming that little of this could be found
in the catalogue of the prestigious exhibition The
Glory of the Golden Age at the bicentennial anniversary
of the Rijksmuseum: the texts in the big catalogue
on painting and decorative arts (the one on prints
and drawings was a different case) could as well have
been written twenty years ago. This catalogue was
compiled by members of the educational department
and meant for a large public, but even then one has
the duty to include the many new insights. As it stands,
a book that was sold to more people than any other
book on Dutch art, confronts this public with beautiful
plates on the one hand, but on the other with uninspired
texts, which mainly seem to be compiled on the basis
of monographs on artists. It seems almost an offence
to much of the art historical labor of the past twenty
years. Luckily the contrary is true for the little,
but delightfully unconventional survey on The Art
of the Dutch Republic by Mari't Westermann, who
is at the moment undoubtedly the most prolific producer
of literature on Dutch art.
Surveying the literature
on Flemish and Dutch art of the last eight or so years,
it is striking that at both sides the two giants,
Rubens and Rembrandt, are still attracting by far
the most attention, at the same time often functioning
as boosters of new developments in the discipline.
In the case of Rubens it has to be said that lately
he almost seems to have been eclipsed by Anthony van
Dyck who, during the last decade, was so lucky as
to have been born 400 years ago in 1999 and to have
died 350 years ago in 1991. As Jeffrey Muller described
recently, the absolute low point of Van Dyck's reputation
was between the two world wars ? when he was considered
the decadent, over refined, deracinated son of Flanders
as an antipode to the virile, healthy Rubens. But
Van Dyck made a spectacular comeback in huge exhibitions
with impressive catalogues in Washington in 1991,
in Genova 1997 and Antwerp and London in 1999, as
well as in some splendid smaller exhibitions with
excellently researched catalogues: on landscape drawings
by Martin Royalton Kisch and on Van Dyck and the art
of printmaking by Ger Luijten and Carl Depauw, and
finally in two sizable books with symposium papers
that were diverse in approaches as well as in quality.
For Rubens studies,
it is of course the Corpus Rubenianum that still carries
the field ? that monument, which, at a steady pace,
continues already for 35 years with impeccable scholarship,
and with admirable concern for the developments and
changes in art historical methodology. Not long ago
Kristin Belkin remarked somewhat wryly that this exemplary
series barely attracts the local press, while everything
about Rembrandt (as well as every utterance coming
from the Rembrandt Research Project, one may add),
elicits international front page attention; fascinating
to think about.
The high level of
scholarship of the Corpus Rubenianum gave us
some of the best books of the last decade, among them
Elizabeth McGrath's Subjects from History of
1997, which is not only one of the most distinguished
in the Rubens Corpus, showing in every respect the
strength of the series, but in my view also the most
impressive book on Netherlandish art of the seventeenth
century that appeared during the last years. In an
almost playful way ? with marvelous sprezzatura, as
if she were emulating Rubens himself ? she combines
a wide learnedness with acute visual analysis of the
works of art. Her understanding of the characteristics
of Rubens's inventions, his use of texts and subtle
wit, is highly compelling; I would say that her book
instructs, delights and moves as few other art historical
writings do.
Apart from the Corpus
volumes, and the lively, concise monograph of Kristin
Belkin in the new Phaidon series Art & Ideas,
several important books were published of which I
only mention Fiona Healy's Rubens and the Judgement
of Paris, a book of incisive scholarship. That
a workshop will be held today about Rubens's 'Allegorical
Inventions,' and that there is one tomorrow on 'Image
and Ritual of Scherpenheuvel,' seems to fit perfectly
into recent concerns in scholarship on Flemish art
? in the latter case because a lot of research is
presently being done in the field of post-tridentine
iconography of church decoration.
If there were no large
exhibitions of Rubens's work during the last years
? only the relatively modest but strikingly effective
exhibition with a delightful catalogue Making and
Meaning in Rubens's Landscapes, by Christopher
Brown ? Rembrandt represents in this respect an entirely
different case. Even without the excuse of being born
or having died some round number of years ago, he
managed to get a host of important exhibitions with
massive catalogues. Not only are Rembrandt studies
booming, also on the exhibition circuit there seems
no end in sight, as Stephanie Dickey recently remarked.
Apart from the large Rembrandt exhibition in 1992
in Amsterdam, Berlin and London, there was the exhibition
Rembrandt/not Rembrandt at the Metropolitan
Museum in 1995, an unusual presentation around Rembrandt
connoisseurship, that was the more interesting because
the two main authors, Walter Liedtke and Hubert von
Sonnenburg had entirely different approaches to connoisseurship.
There was Rembrandt by Himself in London and
The Hague in 1999, to which I will return, Albert
Blankert's Rembrandt: A Genius and his Impact of
1997 in Melbourne, where Rembrandt himself was remarkably
well represented with less obvious works and with
an excellent selection of works by pupils. Then there
was the small but nice exhibition Rembrandt's Treasures
in the Rembrandthuis (1999), contextualizing his collecting
activities, the delightful exhibition and important
catalogue of Rembrandt's drawings made in and around
Amsterdam of (1998), and Rembrandt the Printmaker
in Amsterdam and London (2000), accompanied by the
exemplary and beautifully produced catalogue by Erik
Hinterding, Ger Luijten and Martin Royalton Kisch,
with much new material about the production of prints.
But we are not yet finished, the most recent exhibitions
being "Rembrandt Creates Rembrandt," in
the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, presenting a
thoughtful examination of only a few years of Rembrandt's
activities, last year the quite spectacular exhibition
"Rembrandt's Women", in Edinburgh
and London, and finally the exhibition on the young
Rembrandt in Kassel and presently in the Rembrandthuis,
visualizing Ernst van de Wetering's rethinking of
the first volume of the Rembrandt Corpus, which resulted
in a truly probing and personal exhibition that offers
much food for thought.
Apart from Simon Schama's
daring attempt to look through Rembrandt's eyes, written
in an engaging prose that reaches a large public,
there are quite a lot of recent books worth mentioning,
but the most important is undoubtedly Ernst van de
Wetering's Rembrandt at Work, a collection
of studies, several of them essays originally written
for the Rembrandt Corpus, and with some new chapters
added. Reading this book we realize how much Ernst
van de Wetering has enriched our knowledge and understanding,
not only of the relation between technical and creative
aspects in Rembrandt's works, but also in our insights
in working methods and studio practices in general.
Furthermore, his analysis of painting techniques in
combination with a careful rereading of the contemporary
vocabulary in treatises on painting ? something we
also find in some important publications of Paul Taylor
? has led to new insights in the artistic process.
And related to this, Van de Wetering has highlighted
the role of the connoisseur and the terms and categories
in which seventeenth-century connoisseurs would have
talked about painting. I think that the impact of
Ernst van de Wetering over the years can hardly be
overrated ? even if his opinions sometimes provoke
objections, as for instance in his essay for the Rembrandt
by Himself catalogue. Arguing convincingly that
the self portraits may have functioned as samples
of virtuosity meant for connoisseurs interested in
artistic skill and celebrity likeness, he rudely brushed
aside ? calling them nineteenth-century concepts ?
any notion of self-portraiture as being bound up with
individual identity, in passing condemning Perry Chapman's
book on Rembrandt's selfportraits as anachronistic.
However, those who read Perry Chapman's important
book know that she carefully locates Rembrandt's conception
of individual identity within in a seventeenth- century
context. For a good understanding of the issues at
stake in this discussion I can refer to Stephanie
Dickey's acute review of the Rembrandt by Himself
catalogue in the Art Bulletin.
Anti-theoretical as
this catalogue is, the other extreme should also be
mentioned, a book written by an outsider coming from
literary studies: Rembrandt's fictions of the pose.
Rembrandt against the Italian Renaissance,
by Harry Berger Jr., of which the first 350 pages
entirely consist of theory, covering almost all aspects
of post modern cultural theory and the politics of
portraiture in the early modern period, while the
last 200 pages contain a provocative discussion of
Rembrandt's self-portraits, shifting the attention
from the painter's act of painting likeness, to the
sitter's part in the act of portrayal and self-portrayal.
A whole range of approaches
to one work by Rembrandt, is to be found in the very
useful series of Cambridge University Press on one
work of art, in this case Rembrandt's Bathsheba
in the Louvre. Although the ugly appearance of the
book is shameful, with badly printed reproductions
and, even worse, Bathsheba in mirror image on front
and back cover, it is a wonderful way to present current
methodology: documentation and technical analysis,
up to date iconological interpretation, as well as
literary theory and semiotics. Not only useful for
students, but for all of us. This sampling of approaches
we also find in that valuable collection of essays
Looking at Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting,
edited by Wayne Franits, with old essays that
played a more or less decisive role in the debate
about the significance of Dutch art for their original
audience, to which important new articles were added
that acknowledge more recent methodologies. An enormous
range of present scholarship is also to be found in
the book with no less than 23 symposium papers delivered
in Washington and The Hague on the art of Vermeer
? Vermeer, the artist who may have eclipsed Rembrandt
in the sheer numbers of people attracted by the recent
exhibitions of his work in Washington and The Hague,
and last year in New York and London, where he was
spectacularly shown within a Delft school constructed
by Walter Liedtke. But the number of publications
on Vermeer do not come near to those on Rembrandt
? it is only in recent novels that he suddenly outstrips
him, which says a great deal about the startling public
response to his art. The scholarly books that appeared,
tend to be original and provocative, a special case
being Ivan Gaskell's challenging book, Vermeer's
Wager. Speculations on Art History, Theory and Art
Museums, in which, mainly through the art of Vermeer,
he explores how art works are mediated not only through
reproduction ? in particular photography ? but also
through displays in museums.
For the remaining
minutes I have to venture into the whole field of
recent publications on Netherlandish Art apart from
the biggest names. And then the staggering variety
becomes too much for me to handle, I am afraid. First
of all, the Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek
merits special attention, because it stimulates innovative
studies alongside more traditional research around
certain topics. The present editors, Reindert Falkenburg,
Herman Roodenburg, Frits Scholten, Jan de Jong and
Mari't Westermann have a sure hand in choosing topics
which are, time and again, in the center of up-to-date
interests and debates in the field of Dutch and Flemish
art. At the same time they manage to assemble exciting
collections of articles, often thought provoking and
always of a thoroughly scholarly quality, intermingling
interdisciplinary concerns with sound art history.
The yearbooks about Goltzius, about Image and Self
Image, Nature and Landscape, Art for the Market, The
Art of Home in The Netherlands ? and I mention
only the ones of which the focus is primarily on the
late sixteenth- and seventeenth centuries ? belong
to the most important publications of the last years
and are required reading of every student in the field.
They make clear in how many directions good art historical
scholarship may go without losing any of its specificity,
at the same time undercutting notions that traditional
art history belongs to the past, or that all new art
history is nonsense. On the contrary, they show how
well they may inform each other, and that the worst
thing one can do is dismiss everything that differs
from one's own approach. We have seen this attitude
for instance in some reviews of the just mentioned
yearbooks. Such an attitude, in which one does not
even try to understand what others are talking about
? in both camps often marked by a kind of condescending
arrogance ? is absolutely unprofitable and only helps
to widen the gulf between the two, a gulf that often,
but not always, coincides with the study of Netherlandish
art in the Netherlands and Belgium on the one hand,
England and America on the other, with Germany somewhere
in between, and which has a lot to do with different
traditions in academic education.
Well, that being said,
it is gratifying that on the one hand during the last
years there has still been an enormous production
of traditional monographs with catalogues raisonn?s,
which many decades from now will still be used eagerly.
Among them are huge ones ? I only think of the almost
improperly fat monographs on Gerrit van Honthorst
by Judson and Ekkart and Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem
by Van Thiel ? as well as the many normal sized ones,
some of them focussing on one aspect of an artist's
oeuvre, such as the beautiful book by Kristi Nelson
on Jacob Jordaens's tapestry designs. On the other
hand, these are balanced by less traditional books
on one artist, such as Mari't Westermann's entertaining
Amusements of Jan Steen, in which Jan Steen's
comical work is interpreted within the context of
comic literature and performance, rituals and social
practices, or Celeste Brusati's Artifice and Illusion
that offered a wonderfully versatile approach to Samuel
van Hoogstraten's written and painted works, which
are discussed as highly self-reflexive and as elements
of his formidable self-fashioning, a book that exemplifies
the best in recent critical scholarship in Dutch art.
I have to pass over
the incredible activities on the exhibition front,
exhibitions accompanied by catalogues that often become
standard works on the subject (not always something
to be happy with, if only for the lack of indices):
in the first place an amazing number of large and
important monographic exhibitions, from many artists
of the old canon like Potter, Steen, Van Goyen, Dou,
and Cuyp, to more recent additions such as Judith
Leyster, Norbertus Gysbrechts and Michael Sweerts.
And I should add here that many of the catalogues
have a prominent section on technique, which emphasizes
the importance of the many recent and accessible studies
in painting techniques that confront a wide audience
with new directions in technical research, and make
us all more conscious of the process and the act of
painting as well as of workshop practices.
I will also pass over
the staggering variety of thematic exhibitions showing
the many directions in art historical as well as public
interests: from the spectacular, but also debatable
selection of paintings under the denominator 'Dutch
Classicism,' by Albert Blankert, to the beautiful
exhibition on Children Portraits, and from impressive
exhibitions on Pastoral Art or Greek Mythology, to
those on Seascapes or Winter Scenes, as well as a
remarkable outpouring of exhibitions and catalogues
on the art in Dutch cities: Dordrecht, Rotterdam,
Haarlem, Alkmaar, Utrecht, Zwolle, The Hague and Delft,
all very different in character and quality, sometimes
mainly compilations of older literature, but more
often adding much new material to our knowledge. There
is a lot of other important work that I have to skip
now, such as some very interesting studies on the
complicated role of religious denomination that has
been attracting more attention over the last years;
studies about the relation between art and the natural
sciences which will also be discussed in a workshop
here; several important iconographic and iconological
studies, exploring how themes articulate the concerns
of the culture in which they were made, among them
several on women and the issue of domesticity. And
I would have liked to dwell on the recent surge of
interest in the representation of the home, not only
in the latest NKJ, but also in the interesting
catalogue accompanying the exhibition Art &
Home, and in the delightful book Het Nederlandse
interieur in beeld, containing a large and exemplary
selection of paintings, drawings and prints of Dutch
interiors from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century,
with highly expert texts by Willemijn Fock.
Much goes on in the
study of seventeenth- century art literature ? in
this field we thankfully received within five years
the incredible Fundgrube of Hessel Miedema's
five immensely thorough volumes with comments on Van
Mander's Lives; but here I only wanted to mention
the wonderful and erudite article by the oldest and
most prominent HNA-member, Julius Held. His study
in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes
of Scribanius's discussion of Antwerp painters
in his 1610 city description, was published when
Julius was 93 years old. To attain this level of scholarly
sophistication at such an age, is the highest we can
strive for as art historians, although I wonder if
any of us will ever emulate Julius's achievement.
One field that is
really booming, is that of the print culture, the
importance of which we already came across in new
publications on Van Dyck and Rembrandt. At last, it
is becoming part of the canon of Dutch art, as we
could see in the huge exhibition and catalogue of
The Dawn of the Golden Age, in which prints
got deservedly a very important place. Next to the
steady production in the ever useful and important
New Hollstein-series, it is the process of printmaking
and print publishing that gets much attention now,
as in the new series on prints and printmaking, in
which appeared Nadine Orenstein's book on Hendrick
Hondius's business, and Ilja Veldman's two impressive
volumes on Crispyn de Passe and his family. But also
within the study of prints the variety is enormous,
extending to the interpretation of themes and subjects
as well, from the traditional iconographic methods
in the delightful exhibition of Eddy de Jongh and
Ger Luijten on genre prints, to the steady stream
of densely argued readings of printed images by Walter
Melion.
Finally, what really
changed our view of Dutch painting most fundamentally,
so that no survey, be it a book or a lecture course,
can ever be the same as, say ten years ago, are the
studies about the art market, about the relations
between producing, selling and buying of paintings,
about the socio-economic circumstances under which
art was made, sold and used. In contrast with the
rather crude Marxist approach from the sixties and
seventies, the more recent achievements in this field
went hand in hand with a host of new archival research,
which, since the generation of Bredius, had long been
neglected. But this changed drastically with the work
of Michael Montias, Marten Jan Bok, Willemijn Fock,
Jaap van der Veen, Pieter Biesboer, John Loughman
and, of course, Duverg? here in Antwerp. If we only
think of the research in probate inventories ? and
here the work for the Getty Provenance Index, which
became a very important art historical tool, has played
a truly stimulating role ? then we realize how much
we have learned from this in quite a short span of
time. The most recent result is the delightful book
Public and Private Spaces. Works of Art in Seventeenth-Century
Dutch Houses, based on extensive inventory research
by Loughman and Montias.
To ask questions about
the connections between the production of paintings
and social and economic factors, or to question how
painters positioned themselves in the local market
with certain types of products ? such questions have
become so self evident, that it is hard to realize
how this changed our thinking in quite a short period.
It was of course Michael Montias's work, starting
with his Artists and Artisans in Delft (which
appeared already twenty years ago), that gave the
signal, followed by his many articles about price
and labor costs, art dealers, economic factors and
style, the volume of the production of paintings,
and studies on probate inventories. Important next
steps were the dissertation of Marten Jan Bok on Supply
and Demand in the Dutch Art Market, and the publications
by Neil De Marchi and Hans Van Miegroet on price and
market mechanisms, on market value of copies and originals,
on the Antwerp art export, etc. The conference at
Middelburg of 1998 and the NKJ on Art for
the Market, contributed greatly to our understanding
of the interdependence of the artistic and the economic
and showed how the field, first stimulated by economists
and historians, is expanding and how the results are
taken up by art historians and developed in several
directions. Many projects are now under way: at this
conference we will hear more about present and future
research when De Marchi and Van Miegroet give a presentation
of the Mapping Markets for Paintings Project, in
which many scholars are working together. To conclude,
I am certain that at this conference we may look forward
to many workshops and sessions which take up a variety
of exciting directions that will engender much stimulating
research in the near future.
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