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Reproducing the Golden Age.
Copies after 17th-century Dutch
genre painting in the first half of
the 18th century.
Junko Aono, University of Amsterdam
Although a considerable number of
copies after 17th-century genre
painting were made during the first
half of the 18th-century, until now
little attention has been paid to
these reproductive works, which
were dismissed as an uninspired
repetition of the art of the Golden
Age. However, during the first
decades of the 18th century
painters and collectors began to
look back to the 17th century as a
glorious past and to realize that
they shared a common exalted
heritage of painting. What function
and meaning did copies have in the
specific context of the earliest
reception of the art of the Golden
Age? This paper aims to reconsider
the importance of copying after
17th-century genre painting from
the point of view of artists and
collectors in the first decades of
the 18th-century.
One of the contemporary remarks on
the production of copies is found
in Johan van Gool’s discourse on
its commercial misuse in the
mid-18th century. By criticizing
art dealers for selling copies as
originals at high prices to
collectors, Van Gool argues that
painters passively made copies that
were commissioned by art dealers
for only a small amount of money
and therefore they themselves did
not take the initiative in
producing copies. However, several
examples of copies made by Nicolaas
Verkolje (1673-1746) and Louis de
Moni (1698-1771) shed a new light
on the painters’ involvement in
this reproductive activity. By
identifying original paintings and
their copies by means of sales
catalogues and inventories, it
becomes clear that well-known
painters were consciously and
actively engaged in reproducing
certain types of 17th-century genre
painting which enjoyed great
popularity among collectors. One of
the most popular themes was the
candlelight scene. Nicolaas
Verkolje, for example, executed
splendid mezzotint prints after
17th-century candlelight paintings
by Gerrit Dou and Godfried
Schalcken. By doing so, Verkolje
contributed to the popularity of
the original paintings and the
candlelight subject in particular,
and at the same time he produced
candlelight pieces after his own
design, which were still strikingly
similar to those of his
17th-century masters. The same is
true of Louis de Moni, who executed
a number of copies after
17th-century painters and
specialized in genre painting in a
similar way. Furthermore,
contemporary documents reveal that
painters were also involved in the
selling of copies. De Moni, this
time as an auctioneer, even sold
copies by Willem van Mieris after
his father Frans van Mieris that
passed as originals.
Consequently, these examples
illustrate how painters
deliberately took advantage of the
situation in which 17th-century art
became glorified and was considered
superior to contemporary art. In
this context, copies seem to have
fulfilled various functions: they
were substitutes for certain types
of 17th-century paintings that
became less available and therefore
enthusiastically sought after by
collectors; they demonstrated which
kind of 17th-century themes were
popular in those days and they
validated early 18-century painters’i
own works that showed similar
styles and motifs; and finally,
they enhanced the value of original
paintings as the art of a venerated
past. By using reproductive methods
effectively, early 18th-century
painters found new ways to cope
with and claim a pictorial
tradition that was in the process
of being canonized. This
reconsideration will contribute to
further discussion about the
function and meaning of copying as
a homage to the art of earlier
periods.
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