Mireille Mosler, Ltd.
Adriaen de Weerdt (c. 1540-c. 1580)
The Visitation, before 1573
Pen, brush and brown ink, with brown, grey and yellow washes with white heightening, used with oil binder, on beige colored paper, indented for transfer
9 3/8 by 7 inches (23 9 by 17 7 cm)
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Adriaen de Weerdt (c. 1540 - c. 1580)
The Life of the Virgin: The Visitation, before 1573
Pen, brush and brown ink, with brown, grey and yellow washes with white heightening, used with oil binder, on beige colored paper, indented for transfer
9 3/8 by 7 inches (23.9 by 17.7 cm)
Provenance
Sotheby’s, London, 13 December 1966, lots 108-111
Peter Claas, London, 1967
Pieter de Boer (1894-1974), Hergiswil, Switzerland 1
Private collection, The Netherlands
Exhibited
London, The Alpine Gallery, Peter Claas Paintings and Drawings, Exhibition of drawings of five centuries, 15-27 May 1967, no. 96, p.89, pl. XIV (The Purification of the Virgin)
Literature
Hessel Miedema, ed., Karel van Mander. The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, Doornspijk 1996, Vol. III, p. 209, fn. 41
Hollstein’s Dutch & Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts 1450- 1700, Vol. LI, Rotterdam 1998, pp. 220221
Ilja M. Veldman, “Tekeningen van Adriaan de Weert”, Delineavit et Sculpsit , December 2017, No. 42, pp. 2-22, ill. 4, 5, 8, 12, p. 5
Brussels born Adriaan de Weerdt is known only through an exceedingly rare number of drawings and engravings inscribed with his name as inventor. 2 As no known paintings survive by this intriguing Flemish Renaissance artist, De Weerdt is somewhat of an enigma. Most information about the artist’s life and work was proclaimed by Karel van Mander’s Schilder-Boeck from 1604, undoubtedly contributed by Dirck Volkertsz. Coornhert’s pupil Hendrick Goltzius.3 Coornhert, who collaborated on prints with De Weerdt during their German exile, is the conduit to Goltzius, whose own chiaroscuro work was indebted to the Flemish draughtsman.
The four present drawings executed in an un-Dutch grisaille technique, are clearly influenced by Northern Italian mannerists like De Weerdt’s man of the hour Parmigiano According to Van Mander, following in Leonardo’s footsteps by imitating the maniera and aria of one master and making it one’s own was the preferred method. The influence of Parmigianino’s elegantly elongated figures on the international court style of the Emperor Rudolf II in Prague must have been considerable at the time. Applied washes in brown, grey and yellow reveal the artist’s fascination with the Italian chiaroscuro woodcuts, introducing the next generation of Dutch artists, especially Goltzius, to this style and technique.
2 Biographical information from Veldman 2017, op.cit., p. 2 3 Miedema, op.cit., p. 207
Adriaen de Weerdt (c. 1540 - c. 1580)
The Adoration of the Magi, before 1573
Pen, brush and brown ink, with brown, grey and yellow washes with white heightening, used with oil binder, on beige colored paper, indented for transfer
9 5/8 by 7 3/4 inches (24.5 by 19.8 cm)
Provenance
Sotheby’s, London, 13 December 1966, lots 108-111
Peter Claas, London, 1967
Pieter de Boer (1894-1974), Hergiswil, Switzerland
Private collection, The Netherlands
Exhibited
London, The Alpine Gallery, Peter Claas Paintings and Drawings, Exhibition of drawings of five centuries, 15-27 May 1967, no. 96, p.89, pl. XIV (The Purification of the Virgin)
Literature
Hessel Miedema, ed., Karel van Mander. The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, Doornspijk 1996, Vol. III, p. 209, fn. 41
Hollstein’s Dutch & Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts 1450- 1700, Vol. LI, Rotterdam 1998, pp. 220221
Ilja M. Veldman, “Tekeningen van Adriaan de Weert”, Delineavit et Sculpsit , December 2017, No. 42, pp. 2-22, ill. 4, 5, 8, 12, p. 5
As a young man, De Weerdt traveled to Italy to become acquainted with the style of Parmigianino and other Italian Mannerists. Upon his return, the Protestant De Weerdt and his mother left tumultuous Flanders around 1566 for Cologne, a sanctuary for artists fleeing the Low Countries.4 A conspicuously large number of Netherlandish artists emigrated to the free town of Cologne, a Catholic bulwark, forced to leave for political and religious reasons during the Duke of Alba’s reign of terror and worsening economic conditions. Cologne offered good prospects for the Dutch refugees, many of whom were engravers, designers and publishers, professions which were much in demand. Skilled native artists were rare in Cologne, and the wealthy, art-loving patricians and prosperous burghers were eager customers. Possibly for opportunistic reasons, De Weerdt converted to Lutheranism, which allowed him citizenship in 1577and membership to the local guild. He was arrested in his adopted hometown at a secret gathering of Lutherans, but as a citizen, there were no serious consequences. His arrest in 1579 is the last time De Weerdt is recorded. His relatively short life perhaps explains his limited artistic output.
Adriaen de Weerdt (c. 1540 - c. 1580)
The Purification of the Virgin5
Pen, brush and brown ink, with brown, grey and yellow washes with white heightening, used with oil binder, on beige colored paper, indented for transfer
9 1/2 by 7 5/8 inches (24.2 by 19.5 cm)
Provenance
Sotheby’s, London, 13 December 1966, lots 108-111
Peter Claas, London, 1967
Pieter de Boer (1894-1974), Hergiswil, Switzerland
Phillips, London, 17 April 1996, lot 120
Barbara Piasecka Johnson (1937-2013), Princeton, NJ, by whom sold
Christie’s, London, 30 September 2014, lot 272 (as attributed to de Weerdt)
Private collection, The Netherlands
Exhibited
London, The Alpine Gallery, Peter Claas Paintings and Drawings, Exhibition of drawings of five centuries, 15-27 May 1967, no. 96, p.89, pl. XIV (The Purification of the Virgin)
Düsseldorf, Galerie Sabrina Förster, Sammlung Pieter de Boer: holländische und italienische Meisterzeichnungen, 15.-19. Jahrhundert , Spring 1993, cat.no. 3, pp. 12-13, ill. (The Presentation in the Temple)
Warsaw, Zamek Królewski, The Masters of drawings. Drawings from Barbara Piasecka Johnson collection, 4 December 2010 – 6 February 2011, pp. 176-177, ill. (The Presentation in the Temple as The Purification of the Virgin)
Literature
Ilja M. Veldman, De wereld tussen goed en kwaad. Late prenten van Coornhert, The Hague 1990, p. 19, fig. VI, fn. 39 (The Visitation)
Hessel Miedema, ed., Karel van Mander. The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, Doornspijk 1996, Vol. III, p. 209, fn. 41
Hollstein’s Dutch & Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts 1450- 1700, Vol. LI, Rotterdam 1998, pp. 220221
Ilja M. Veldman, “Tekeningen van Adriaan de Weert”, Delineavit et Sculpsit , December 2017, No. 42, pp. 2-22, ill. 4, 5, 8, 12, p. 5
Exhibited
Düsseldorf, Galerie Sabrina Förster, Sammlung Pieter de Boer: holländische und italienische Meisterzeichnungen, 15.-19. Jahrhundert , Spring 1993, cat.no. 3, pp. 12-13, ill. (The Presentation in the Temple)
Warsaw, Zamek Królewski, The Masters of drawings. Drawings from Barbara Piasecka Johnson collection, 4 December 2010 – 6 February 2011, pp. 176-177, ill. (The Presentation in the Temple as The Purification of the Virgin)
5 The provenance of The Purification of the Virgin, also known as The Presentation in the Temple is slightly different. Inherited by P. de Boer’s second wife, Mary, it appeared on the art market with Sabrina Förster in Düsseldorf in 1993 and offered for sale in 1996 in London. When it was auctioned again at Christie’s in 2014, it was purchased by the present owner and reunited with the other three grisailles.
Adriaen de Weerdt (c. 1540 - c. 1580)
Christ among the Doctors in the Temple, before 1573
Pen, brush and brown ink, with brown, grey and yellow washes with white heightening, used with oil binder, on beige colored paper, indented for transfer
9 1/2 by 7 5/8 inches (24 by 19.5 cm)
Provenance
Sotheby’s, London, 13 December 1966, lots 108-111
Peter Claas, London, 1967
Pieter de Boer (1894-1974), Hergiswil, Switzerland
Private collection, The Netherlands
Exhibited
London, The Alpine Gallery, Peter Claas Paintings and Drawings, Exhibition of drawings of five centuries, 15-27 May 1967, no. 96, p.89, pl. XIV (The Purification of the Virgin)
Literature
Hessel Miedema, ed., Karel van Mander. The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, Doornspijk 1996, Vol. III, p. 209, fn. 41
Hollstein’s Dutch & Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts 1450- 1700, Vol. LI, Rotterdam 1998, pp. 220221
Ilja M. Veldman, “Tekeningen van Adriaan de Weert”, Delineavit et Sculpsit , December 2017, No. 42, pp. 2-22, ill. 4, 5, 8, 12, p. 5
In Cologne, according to Van Mander, De Weerdt produced designs for prints, among them a series The Life of Mary. 6 The present four grisailles are designs for this series of prints, engraved by Isaac Duchemin and likely published by De Weerdt himself in a rare first edition in 1573.7 These plates were subsequently published by Peter Overadt, Hieronymus Wierix, and Claes Jansz. Visscher as The life of Mary and Christ although the total number of prints varies with each edition. Ilja Veldman suggests that the series originally was conceived as two separate cycles: The Life of Mary and The Life of Christ , corroborated by Van Mander.8 Remarkably, the present four designs appear together in Jan Schabaelje’s Emblata sacra in 1654, suggesting that some eighty years after their inception, they were separated from the others.9 The only other drawing connected to the series is the Healing of a Leper in the Albertina, possibly the design for the fourteenth print of the series, although this drawing is executed in an entirely different style and technique.10 Four signed designs for the print series The History of Ruth, also in the Albertina, are the only other known surviving drawings for prints 11
6 Karel van Mander, Schilder-Boeck, Haarlem 1604, fol. 230r19: “een Vrouwe Leven, met Kerstnacht” (The Life of Mary, with a Nativity)
7 Hollstein, op.cit., nos. 2, 4, 6, 7. Only one complete set of the first edition exists in the Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden.
8 Veldman 2017, op.cit., p. 15. The fact that the last four plates are not numbered supports the idea that The Life of Mary was conceived as eight numbered plates.
9 Jan Philipsz. Schabaelje (c. 1585-1656), Den grooten emblemata sacra, bestaende in meer dan vier hondert bybelsche figueren […], Amsterdam, in the printworks of Tymon Houthaer, 1654
10 Chalk traces, pen in gray, wash, 25.2 x 18.5 cm, inv.no. 26208
https://sammlungenonline.albertina.at/?query=search=/record/objectnumbersearch=[26208]&showtype=record
11 inv.nos. 7972-7975
https://sammlungenonline.albertina.at/#/query/9755727f-4c89-46ae-ab7a-d7c3ebcc574e
Jan Jansz van de Velde (1620-1664)
The Ragpicker, 1645
Iron gall ink on paper 98 by 79 mm.
Signed & dated ‘J v velde A 1645’
Provenance
Haboldt & Co., Paris, 1980s
Private collection, Washington DC
Jan Jansz. van de Velde III was born in Haarlem. First taught by his father, the well-known engraver Jan van de Velde II (ca. 1593 – 1641), his paintings reveal the influence of the Haarlem still life painter Willem Heda. On 4 April 1643, Van de Velde is recorded as a painter in Amsterdam, aged 23, on the occasion of his marriage with Dieuwertje Willems Middeldorp (born 1619). He remarried in Amsterdam in 1656, suggesting that he spent most of his career in the city. At this date, Van de Velde is recorded as a silver wire drawer; thirty-two years later his wife is recorded as the widow of the painter Van de Velde. Although it is generally assumed that he was buried in Enkhuizen’s Westerkerk on 10 July 1662, the fact that his second wife was still in Amsterdam he might equally well be the Johannes van de Velde buried in the Zuiderkerk on 2 September 1664. During the first two years of his second marriage, children of a Jan van de Velde were buried in the same church.1
Van de Velde’s dual identity as a draughtsman and a painter in the archival record reflects the two areas of his artistic practice. Best known as a still life painter, his humorous drawings demonstrate his familiarity with a range of sources. A little over forty intimate tabletop still life paintings are known by Van de Velde, dated between 1639 and 1662, and can be found in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, among many other museums. His signature is often an elaborate calligraphy, revealing the influence of his grandfather Jan van de Velde I (1568-1623), publisher and master of penmanship.
Only one drawing of a jug in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels connects the artist’s two separate practices. Other drawings, all drolleries, by Van de Velde are in collections in Germany: in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig, the Städel, Frankfurt2 and in a private collection.3 In these drawings, often referencing earlier motifs from Hans Holbein or emblem books, Van de Velde expresses himself beyond the narrow range of his painted still lifes. Familiar with themes of the dance of death or an allegory of vice outside the subject boundaries of still life Van de Velde is a proficient draftsman, adept at conveying physiognomy and gesticulation in an economical manner. Dated between 1643 and 1645, many of the drawings have in common a single figure with a touch of vegetation and a simple horizontal line. Moths, flies, bumblebees, dragonflies, beetles or caterpillars outline the silhouette of the singular figure on the unfilled sheet.
While many of the motifs are in a direct lineage from Hieronymus Bosch, Van de Velde’s drawings also reference Jacques Callot’s drawings with which he may have been familiar with through Adriaen van de Venne or Rembrandt. His grandfather’s collection of books and prints will also have provided access to pictorial sources. Nevertheless, some of his drawings are inscribed “inventor” under his signature, supporting the idea that he conceived anew these grotesque figures rather than following an existing emblem book. Our hawker, dressed in rags, surrounded by flies, insinuates the smelly business of the ragpicker. Paper, made from rags in paper mills, created a new profession: the rag-and-bone man buying up rags in the villages and towns, selling his wares on to paper millers. With the development of the art of printing came an increased demand for paper, rags became a scarce commodity As a result, rags were regarded a strategic raw material not allowed to be exported. Could our drawing insinuate that the smelly schmatte metamorphoses into the paper in our own hands?
Jan Jansz. van de Velde III Gatje Poep, 1643 Brown ink, 126 x 105 mm. Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig, Z436
Nicolaas Struyk (1686-1769)
Insects
Watercolor and bodycolor on paper with period black and gold ruled beige card mount
9¾ by 8⅛ inches (24 by 20.7 cm)
Provenance
Randall
Lucien Goldschmidt (1912- 1992), New York, 1970s
George and Maida Abrams, Boston
Johnny van Haeften, London, 2000ch
Peter Tillou, London, 2005
Private collection, United Kingdom
Literature
T.O. Weigel, 1862, catalogue XIII
Hermann August Hagen, Biblioteca Entomologica. Die Litteratur über das ganze Gebiet der Entomologie, bis zum Jahre 1862, Leipzig 1862- 1863, Vol. II, p. 394
Little is known about the mathematician Nicolaas Struyk’s childhood and education.1 He was born on May 21, 1686, in Amsterdam as the second son of the goldsmith Nicolaas Struyk Nicolaaszoon and Geertruy Wesdorp. The Struyk family were faithful members of the Lutheran church in Amsterdam. From an early age, Struyk was in contact with collectors of natural history specimens. On a modest scale he collected himself. By 1718, Struyk had assembled six substantial folios with drawings. As a little boy he went out with his father catching butterflies. Later in life he was to write that “formerly insects were my favorite pastime”. Struyk never married and died in Amsterdam in 1769.
Around this time his love of natural history must have turned into a passion for mathematics. But even in the field of mathematics he remained a collector: he gave his heart specially to applied mathematics. He no longer chased butterflies, but devoted his time to collecting empirical data, with the aim of discovering lawlike patterns in them. This development was less strange than it may seem now. The collections of curiosities and natural history specimens in Dutch cabinets of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were a small-scale reflection of the world as a whole.
It seems that Struyk started his mathematical work around 1712, when he was 26 years old. Like many beginning mathematicians at that time he first performed calculations of solar and lunar eclipses. In his Uytreekening der kanssen in het speelen (Calculation of Chances in Gambling) published in 1716, Struyk displayed his interest in probability calculus. Struyk continued his research into comets to the end of his life. After the publication of his Inleiding (Introduction) in 1740 he carried on tirelessly. The many references to books and papers in foreign journals show that he read profusely and carried on correspondence with colleagues in many countries. However, since his books were published in Dutch, Struyk never received international recognition for his work.
Struyk’s drawings have the same contemporary black and gold ruled beige card mounts, indicating that they all came from the same book or collection, referred to as Seba mounts. Three title pages, bearing Struyk’s signature, dated 1715 and 1719, also support the theory these sheets originated from albums. One of the title pages bears the inscription Verschyden, Uyt lansche Insecten, geteekent na het Cabinet van d'Hn. Seba, J. ten Kate, &c., versamelt door N. Struyck, junior, 1719, indicating that these drawings were executed after insects in the cabinet of Albertus Seba and others.
Born in East-Frisia, Albertus Seba (1665-1736) moved to Amsterdam, where he opened a pharmacy near the harbor around 1700. 2 Seba delivered drugs to the V.O.C. ships departing to the Far East and asked sailors and ship surgeons to bring back exotic plants and animals used for preparing drugs. Seba also started to collect snakes, birds, insects and shells that he bought from or traded with the sailors. From 1711 he provided drugs to the court in Saint Petersburg. After Seba promoted his collection with the head-physician to the tsar, Robert Arskine, Peter the Great bought the complete collection for 15,000 guilders in 1716. Seven months later seventeen trunks arrived in St. Petersburg. With Seba as an intermediary, the famous botanist Frederik Ruysch sold his collection to the tsar as well. A special building was designed, and from 1728 until 1830 both collections were exposed in the Kunstkammer in St. Petersburg.
After the sale of his first cabinet, Seba immediately began forming an even more extensive one. He was able to take advantage of Amsterdam’s preeminent position in overseas trade to collect exotic specimens and had numerous foreign contacts in Ceylon, Virginia, Arabia, Greenland and elsewhere. While the second cabinet is documented in the Thesaurus and some specimens from both cabinets survive in St. Petersburg and Paris, there is no pictorial record of the first cabinet. Possibly Seba commissioned Struyk to draw all the specimens in the collection before shipment took place. His drawings may be the sole survivors of a long lost extensive pictorial record of specimens of Seba’s natural history cabinet. These drawings were most likely included in the six folios with 271 drawings that once were in Struyk’s possession, consisting of insects and butterflies, birds, shells and plants, each carefully mounted.3 The undertaking of such an elaborate project can only have been done for a wealthy patron interested in science and nature. It would have been a long-term commission, begun well in advance of the 1719 date on the title page.
Nicolaas Struyck Verschuyden Uyt-lansche Insecten, 1719 Bodycolor, grey wash and ink, 447 by 280 mm. Present whereabouts unknown
2 Zuidervaart, op.cit., p 127, fn. 10 Cf. Smit et al., Hendrik Engel’s Alphabetical List , no. 1485
3 Hermann August Hagen, Biblioteca Entomologica. Die Litteratur über das ganze Gebiet der Entomologie, bis zum Jahre 1862, Leipzig 18621863, Vol. II, p. 394
Allegory of Summer , 1862
Signed, inscribed & dated “J TOURNY LYON 1862”
Watercolor, pastel, and pencil on paper 23 ¼ inches (59 cm) Ø
Provenance
Sale, Paris, 26 November 1894, Summer and Winter, Two Female Heads , FRF 465 et 485 Private collection, France
Literature
Benezit Dictionary of Artists , online, 2011
T o day, Joseph Gabriel Tourny is probably best known through his Rembrandtesque portrait etch ed by Edgar Degas. The artists met at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1855, where Tourney became a main influence on Degas’ exploration of Rembrandt’s prints and imbued an ‘ anti- academic’ approach to art. Although his name has not left as strong a mark on the Western canon as Degas, Tourny earned multiple honors and medals throughout his career and is known for his watercolor s after famous works of art , such as the Sistine Chapel frescoes . From 1857 on, Tourny would exhibit at the Paris Salon, winning medals in 1861, 1863, and 1868 H is watercolors after Raphael’s cartoons for the tapestries on the Sistine Chapel , bequeathed to the Louvre, were awarded a third - class medal at the Salon, a rare honor for a non - painting submission. Tourny was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur in 1872.
Early in his career , Tourny studied under the history painter and cofounder of the Société Nationale des Beaux - Arts, Louis Martinet (1814 - 1895). The artist also briefly held a position in 1846 as an upholsterer at the renowned Gobelins Manufactory, the historic tapestry factory responsible for supplying the royal court of the French monarchs. Tourny spent a substantial amount of time in Rome, traveling to Italy to copy its famed masterworks as early as 1844, the year he placed second in the Prix de Rome. In addition to the city’s abundance of museum treasures, Tourny was undoubtedly taken with the architecture and design of the ancient city, including the medieval mosaics that once decorated villa s and churches.
Allegory of Summer is a beautiful example of Tourny’s bravado as a watercolorist and a testament to referencing Byzantine polychrome mosaics he would have encountered during his Italian sojourn. Home of the most beautiful golden mosaics, we do not know a direct source of inspiration for this trompe l’oeil that magically animate s an al legorical mosaic. Behind the delicately painted portrait , the draughtsman has carefully rendered hundreds of tesserae, the minute Roman tiles produc ed to embellish decoration s chemes throughout the city His musing model, wear ing ancient Roman jewelry and classical hairstyle finished with flowers and sheaves of wheat, supports her identity as an allegorical depiction of summer. O riginally accompanied by a pendant , Allegory of Winter , the two portraits were possibly already separated by the end of the nineteenth century, when they sold individually at auction in 1894.
Carl Müller (1818-1893)
The Veiled Virgin, 1872
Oil and gold on canvas
11 3/4 inches (29.8 cm) Ø
Signed & dated ‘Carl Müller 1872’
Provenance
Manuel A. de Lizardi y Cubas (1836-1916), New Orleans, 1873, 1 consigned to Goupil & Co., New York,2 two labels on the verso, sold to Reuben Runyan Springer (1800-1884), Cincinnati, 1874
Private collection, New York
Literature
Heinrich Finke, Carl Müller. Sein Leben und künstlerisches Schaffen, Cologne 1896, p. 116
Carl Friedrich Moritz Müller was born in Darmstadt on 29 October 1818, the son of the court painter and gallery director Franz Hubert Müller (1784– 1835). After his initial training with his father, he attended the Düsseldorf Academy where he would be appointed professor in 1857. Most formative were his visits to Italy to study quattrocento fresco painting. From 1840 on, Müller lived in Rome, favorite city of German painters in the nineteenth century. Müller’s specialty was portraiture and church decorations. His contribution to the frescos of the Franciscan church of Saint Apollinaris in Remagen, one of the most important examples of Neo-Gothic architecture in Germany, ensured that he became the most sought-after Nazarene artist of the Düsseldorf school. Müller’s serene Madonna set against a gold ground epitomizes the purity of faith Müller admired in his Italian predecessors.
The early presence of works by Müller in the United States may be credited to William Schaus (18211892), a German-born art dealer who began his career at Goupil & Cie in Paris, the leading gallery at the time. In the mid-1850s, Schaus arrived at Goupil’s American branch in New York, and it may have been his personal connection to Müller that prompted the arrival of the artist’s work across the ocean. In Müller’s biography, most likely it is Schaus who is: “An art dealer, who at that time was working as an agent in an American art gallery, told me with commercial enthusiasm how whole piles of photographs of Carl Müller’s painting of the Holy Family had been sent out day after day to the far reaches of the Union.”3 A large drawing of the Holy Family, bequeathed by Schaus to the Metropolitan Museum, attests to his involvement in promoting his fellow countryman.
1 Goupil painting stockbook no. 2, Madonna by Professor Müller, consigned 16 December 1873 by M.A. Lizardi, asking price $1,500
2 Sold 5 November 1874 for $1,650 to R.R. Springer, Cincinnati, OH
3 Finke, op.cit., pp. 84-85
The earliest collector of The Veiled Virgin was Reuben R. Springer, of Swedish origin and one of Cincinnati’s greatest benefactors. Another painting by Müller was bequeathed by Springer to the altar of the Blessed Virgin to his hometown’s St Mary’s Church, dedicated in 1842. 4 Müller, often executing smaller versions of existing compositions for the American market, conceived the composition of the present Madonna originally for a prie-dieu for the Cologne Wrede family.5 The Veiled Virgin’s original American shadowbox frame is most likely a marriage introduced by Goupil & Cie. for the local market as this presentation appealed to collectors of the Gilded Age. The elaborate shadowbox protected the gilding from oxidation and the velvet from attracting dust under the glazing, creating a time capsule for the entombed painting.
4 Finke, op.cit., p. 115 & Sister Mary Agnes McCann, The History of Mother Seton’s Daughters. The Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati Ohio 18091923, Vol. 3, New York/London 1923, p. 79: “Picture in Altar of Blessed Virgin given by Reuben R. Springer, paid $9,000 for it.”
5 Finke, op.cit., p. 116. Present whereabouts unknown
Odilon Redon (1840 -1916)
Ecstasy (L’extase), 1880s
Charcoal on buff paper
19 ½ by 14 ¾ inches ( 49. 5 by 37. 5 c m)
Provenance
Sale, Kornfeld & Klipstein, Berne, 18 June 1965, lot 958, ill.
Galerie van de Loo, Munich, 1977, 1986
Private collection, United Kingdom
Sale, Christie’s, 30 November 1993, lot 128
The Lefevre Gallery, London
Sale, Christie’s, London, 29 June 2000, lot 531
Private collection, United States
Sale, Cornette de Saint Cyr, Paris, 6 July 2011, lot 21
Barry Friedman, New York, 2014
Private collection, New York
Exhibited
New York, David Zwirner, Endless Enigma: Eight Centuries of Fantastic Art , 12 September-27 October 2018
Literature
World Collectors Annuary, vol. XVII, 1965, no. 3728, p. 376 (Die Ekstase)
A. Wildenstein, Odilon Redon, catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint et dessiné, Portraits et figures, Paris 1998, Vol. I, p. 91, no. 211, ill.
Odilon Redon is an amorphous artist, who explored the medium of drawing as an idiosyncratic practice. Trained under Jean-Léon Gérôme and Rodolphe Bresdin, this highly conventional path nevertheless led to an unparalleled imagination over observation of nature, reinterpreting reality to create extraordinary creatures. Through the technique of lithography and etching, Redon discovered infinite gradations of tone and richness of light and dark. His reputation flourished, due in part to the availability of his prints, and he became a celebrated figure in fin-de-siècle Paris, admired by the Symbolists with whom he shared an enthusiasm for the fantastic, mystical, and sublime forces found beneath the surface of everyday life. Using nature as his starting point, Redon imagined new worlds through his enigmatic creations.
Writers with fantastical imaginations, like Edgar Allen Poe and Gustave Flaubert, inspired an essential part of his work, almost entirely executed in black until 1890, when Redon introduced polychromy Redon found black the most effective to express emotions and imagination. His fascination with darkness was accompanied by a powerful attraction to the world of the indeterminate, the phantoms of insomnia, and the monstrous dreams and obscure fantasies usually rendered invisible by daylight. His noirs, executed in charcoal or ink, reveal a disturbing world inhabited by deformed beings and shadows.
Exploring the esoteric aspect of the human soul, imbued with the mechanisms of dreams, Redon’s Ecstasy (L’extase) evokes a state of being. A humanish figure with wide open mouth, deformed by a silent cry is pushed out of the luminous cell behind it. Already shrinking and soon to disappear: the transparent blob has released its mysterious nucleus. Ecstasy seems angst birthed by the unconscious. Redon’s hybrid creature with its grotesque grimace, oscillating between a human being and an animal, does not impress upon us a state of euphoria.
By his own admission, a title “is not justified unless it is vague, indeterminate, and aspiring, even confusedly equivocal.” To this idea, Redon added: “My drawings inspire and do not define themselves. They determine nothing. They place us, just as music does, in the ambiguous world of the indeterminate.”1 Possibly Ecstasy was inspired by C’est l’extase langoureuse, one of Claude Debussy’s most sophisticated experiments in tonal compositions from 1887. Yet Ecstasy does not lend itself to a singular interpretation. Rather, the artist requires us to use our imagination to find meaning according to our own sensitivities and inclinations.
Charcoal, black chalk and black pastel with stumping and erasing, on pale pink wove paper , 50.8 x 37.8 cm The Art Institute, Chicago, 1950.1421
OdilonRedon Cell, ca. 1879-1883
Still life with jugs and bottles, March 1893
Oil on canvas
31 1/3 by 36 1/2 inches (79.5 by 92.9 cm)
Dated ‘MRT 93’
Provenance
Studio of the artist, 1955
By descent to the present owner
Their sale, Christie’s, Paris, 23 October 2020, lot 109
Private collection, New York
Exhibited
The Hague, Gemeentemuseum, Verzameling H.P. Bremmer, 9 March - 23 April 1950, possibly no. 20
Hendricus Peter Bremmer, known as the genius art advisor behind the collection of Helene KröllerMüller and Van Gogh’s prominent promoter, had a strong, charismatic personality and wielded great influence over public taste and acquisition in the Netherlands throughout the first half of the twentieth century. The versatile Bremmer, active as a critic, teacher, publisher, collector, dealer and connoisseur, first trained as an artist. From 1902 on, Bremmer lived at Artiestenhof, artist’s quarters in The Hague, where he would reside until his death in 1956. His home became a place of gathering for young Dutch and Belgian artists and writers, discussing the ideas of Emile Verhaeren, Vincent van Gogh, Jan Toorop, and Odilon Redon. His most lasting legacy is in his role as an art influencer, established after meeting Kröller-Müller in 1906, the wealthiest art patron in The Netherlands at the time.
Canvas,
Kröller-Müller
Bremmer briefly attended the Royal Art Academy in The Hague, where he took the art teacher course in 1889-1890. Ending his artistic career six years later, his focus became teaching art appreciation and forming private collections.1 Grounded in the fin de siècle and the religion and mysticism that pervaded it, Bremmer experienced art in terms of spirituality. Whether it was old masters, Delftware, Chinese figurines or Van Gogh: Bremmer searched for a visible reality forming the basis for his so-called ‘Practical Aesthetics’. His followers, the “Bremmerites”, devotion to art had all the features of a religion. Bremmer’s own eclectic collection consisted of already a thousand objects by 1911.2 From Dutch old master paintings to the avant-garde from Bremmer’s youth: art from all periods and every part of the world were placed together. This overwhelming passion and ability to form ahistorical collections inspired his students to follow suit.
Bremmer’s paintings are rare. The majority of his paintings remained in the artist’s family and rarely appear on the market. As a portrait by his son Rudolf reveals, Bremmer enjoyed keeping his own paintings noticeably nearby. The present Still life with jugs and bottles, executed in March 1893, was only recently sold by the heirs, preserving the original stretcher and frame. A photograph from the same year, portraying the twentyone-year old artist in his studio, shows the same jug prominently placed in the foreground
Charles Heykoop H.P. Bremmer in his studio in Leiden, 1893 RKD, The Hague
1 Hildelies Balk & Lynne Richards, "A Finger in Every Pie: H. P. Bremmer and His Influence on the Dutch Art World in the First Half of the Twentieth Century", Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, Vol. 32, No. 2/3 (2006), pp. 182-217
2 H. Balk a.o., op.cit., p. 201
Firmin Baes (1874-1943)
Study for “Porteuse de trèfle” , c. 1897
With studio stamp on verso ‘ F.B. ’ Charcoal on paper with transfer lines
13 by 7 7/8 inches (33 by 20 cm)
Provenance
Collection Georgette Naegels-Delfosse, Brussels1 Lancz Gallery, Brussels, 2022
Literature
Georgette Naegels-Delfosse, Firmin Baes, Brussels 1987, p. 19, ill.
Firmin Baes was born into an artistic family of framers, decorators, and architects in Brussels.2 His father Henri Baes (1850-1920) was a decorative painter and teacher at the Brussels Academy, where Firmin studied from 1888 to 1894. Afterwards, he joined La Patte de Dindon, named after the artist’s pub at the Grand Place in Brussels, where he studied with Eugène Laermans and Emile Fabry. While working with his father’s team on large decoration assignments for restaurants and hotels, Firmin met Léon Frédéric (1856-1940), an occasional collaborator, who influenced his artistic development greatly. In 1900, Baes won a bronze medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, granting him international recognition. At the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, he again received the bronze medal. A member of the Belgian artist’s association Pour l’Art from 1908 onwards, Baes exhibited in their salons almost every year throughout his career. Baes joined the Société Royale des Beaux-Arts in 1919, an organization promoting realism and supportive of the Belgian avant-garde.
Baes’s large home and studio in Brussels, where he received visitors and patrons, was filled with his art collection. He worked on a rigid schedule: mornings were for portrait sittings and nude modelling, while afternoons were devoted to still lifes, interiors and landscapes. Baes specialized in highly finished pastels on canvas or large paper supports with striking verisimilitude and coloration. In order to adhere the chalky pastel to the canvas support, the artist developed a novel technique.
Baes was a very prolific artist, recording over 1,300 works in his inventory books. Several portraits and landscapes were executed in the Condroz region in the Belgian Ardennes where Baes must have worked over a period of time. The present drawing is a preliminary study for the slightly smaller painting Porteuses de trèfle or The Clover Carier in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels.3 Two undated paintings with multiple clover carriers in the Brussels Museums are executed in oil and pastel on canvas.4 Two much larger preliminary studies in Brussels, one also with transfer lines, are dated September 1897, indicating that the subject matter was revisited by the artist over a period of time.5
Firmin Baes
Study for Les Porteuse s de trèfl e, September 1897
Charcoal on paper, 59.1 x 28 cm
Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels, 11.000/17
3 Porteuse de trèfle, 1900, oil on canvas, 28.4 x 21.8 cm, Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels, inv.no. 10998/36 https://fine-artsmuseum.be/fr/la-collection/firmin-baes-porteuse-de-trefle?artist=baes-firmin-1. All works were donated by Georgette NaegelsDelfosse, Baes’s granddaughter.
4 Porteuse de trèfle, oil and pastel on canvas, 42 x 52 cm, Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels, inv.no. 10999/51 https://fine-artsmuseum.be/fr/la-collection/firmin-baes-porteuses-de-trefle & Porteuses et ramasseuses de trèfle, oil and pastel on canvas, 33 x 49.7 cm, Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels, inv.no. 10999/52 https://fine-arts-museum.be/fr/la-collection/firmin-baes-porteuses-etramasseuses-de-trefle?artist=baes-firmin-1
5 Study for “Les Porteuses de trèfles”, September 1897, charcoal on paper, 59.1 x 28 cm, Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels, object.no. 20003012 https://balat.kikirpa.be/photo.php?path=N014430&objnr=20003012&nr=1 and Study for “Les Porteuses de trèfles”, September 1897, charcoal on paper, 72.3 x 45.6 cm , Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels, object.no. 20003013
https://balat.kikirpa.be/photo.php?path=N014431&objnr=20003013&nr=2
Theo van Hoytema (1863-1917)
Three young bearded vultures (Lammergieren), c. 1899
Charcoal and colored chalk on paper
12.2 by 19 inches (31 by 48 cm)
Signed ‘THoytema’
Provenance
Estate sale Theo van Hoytema, Frederik Muller & Cie, 14 November 1917, lot 378 Collection Hartog (Harts) Nijstad (1925-2011), Lochem, The Netherlands
Note
Theo van Hoytema was born in The Hague as the youngest in a family with seven siblings. Orphaned at a young age, Hoytema decided early on his destiny as an artist. By 1890, Hoytema established a studio in a garden house near Castle De Brinckhorst, outside of The Hague. The Dutch tradition of devotion to images of the natural world surely contributed to Hoytema’s early success. Like many other artists, Hoytema was drawn to working in Amsterdam’s famous zoo Artis, and almost his entire output paintings, drawings, graphic work or applied arts have flora and fauna as a subject. The influence of English illustrators such as Walter Crane and Japanese prints are apparent, as are the Art Nouveau stylized elements prevalent at the turn of the century.
With a focus on graphic works, Hoytema kept his sketches and drawings mounted in portfolios organized by subject spanning a period of three decades.1 Rarely did he sign or date drawings, making it difficult to establish a chronology. Suffering from a chronic illness and depression, Hoytema’s artistic output continued, although he was hospitalized for much of 1904 and 1905. During his lifetime, in 1900, an auction with over seventy works was organized at Frederik Muller & Cie in Amsterdam, possibly to support the sickly artist. One of the works in this sale was a rare canvas of 1899, Lammergieren, but without a reproduction, it is unclear how the drawing and painting relate.2
When Hoytema died in 1917, as per his wish, the majority of his work entered the collections of the Kunstmuseum in The Hague and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, while over one-hundred drawings were sold at auction, including the present drawing. His favorite subject matter was the animal kingdom, often portrayed as funny characters, appearing on his popular calendars, original artworks and decorative arts, including ceramics and furniture.
Especially drawn to birds, as pointed out by Jan Veth in the introduction to the 1900 sale, Hoytema’s first lithographed booklet Hoe de vogels aan hun koning kwamen was dedicated to his feathered friends. In 1892, it was the first Dutch attempt to integrate text and illustration into one publication. The same year, Hoytema gained great fame with his lithographed illustrations in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Ugly Duckling, followed by several more bird-themed picture books. Hoytema was certainly a versatile artist: that same year, he also produced the exceptional painting Return of the Stork, now in the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum.
Theo Nieuwenhuis (1866- 1951)
Design for wallpaper with leaves and flowers, c . 1900
Indian ink on paper
16 1/2 by 10 5/8 inches (42 by 27 cm)
Provenance
Private collection, The Netherlands
Theo Nieuwenhuis is the most well-known representative of the Dutch Art Nouveau movement, the Nieuwe Kunst (New Art). He trained at the School for Applied Art and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam, where he was a student of the influential Pierre Cuypers (1827-1921), architect of the Rijksmuseum and Amsterdam’s Central Station. After his studies, Niewenhuis traveled extensively through Germany and Austria and stayed in Paris for a period of time until 1890.
Nieuwenhuis drew flora and fauna in an ornate style, and is best known as an interior designer and decorative arts, responsible for the interiors of the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam, ocean liners, and carpets. From 1898 to 1924, Nieuwenhuis worked for the influential art gallery E.J. Wisselingh in Amsterdam, representing Jan Toorop (1858-1928) and other international artists. During this period, Nieuwenhuis was also employed by the innovative electronics company Philips in Eindhoven from 1916-1918.
Around 1900, a new art for a new, improved society, was the goal of many artists.1 After a century of styles referencing the past, a new form language emerged, based on asymmetry, curved lines and organic decorative motifs. In the Netherlands, this new style aspired to innovate with idealism, while also searching for the authentic. The art world’s urge to innovate around 1900 coincided with major changes in society. For the first time the urban population was growing faster than the rural population. New means of communication fostered internationalisation. The first cautious steps towards wider suffrage prompted the rise of equal rights movements. And industrialisation and growing prosperity made luxury and entertainment accessible to broader swathes of the population. In the art world, particularly among designers and decorative artists, these changes led to counterreactions, including a rediscovery of the value of nature, the countryside and the traditional.
However, there were differences between the Netherlands and neighbouring Belgium and Germany. Abroad, a new expressive form language was designed to appeal above all to an emerging zest for life in a world that was gathering momentum, whereas Art Nouveau in the Netherlands was a quest for authenticity. The re-evaluation of tradition and skill, the reform of art education, appreciation of the perfection and pristine quality of nature, and fascination with exotic, unspoilt cultures; here, the urge for innovation and idealism went hand in hand with a search for authenticity. Due to the fragility of the paper, very few original drawings by Nieuwenhuis survive. The artist’s lithographs show us the variety of designs and coloration produced for the Dutch interior at the turn of the twentieth century.
Pears in a bowl (Peren in bakje) , 1908
Pastel and pencil on paper
4 3/8 by 9 inches (11 by 23 cm)
Monogrammed & dated ‘ HPB. 19 4- 8 08’
Provenance
Mr. P.M.C. van den Dries, The Hague
Exhibited
The Hague, Gemeentemuseum, H.P. Bremmer, 18 May - 27 June 1971, cat.no. 21
Bremmer’s paintings and drawings are rare. After his abbreviated attendance at the academy, he decided in 1892 to study independently. His studio practice was solidified in a pointillist style although his artistic output would remain limited to this early period. Familiar with the color theories of Ogden Rood and Michel Chevreuil, Bremmer introduced dots of colors directly following nature rather than scientific schemes.1 Whereas Signac and other French and Belgian contemporaries would use these color theories for plein air landscapes, Bremmer applied this method also for still lifes. A few examples of his work are in the Kröller-Müller and other Dutch museums, and only one, slightly smaller, still life painting is in a public collection in the United States in the Indianapolis Museum of Art.2
Fruit still life, 1907
Watercolor on paper, 11.9 x 24 cm
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, KM 106 130
2 Still life with books and Chinese vase, oil on canvas, 55 x 65.4 cm, no. 1992.1 [http://collection.imamuseum.org/artwork/45351]
Marie Spartali Stillman (1844-1927)
Kelmscott Manor, c. 1905
Pencil and w atercolor heightened with bodycolor on Whatman watercolor board
11 by 22 inches ( 30 by 56 cm)
Provenance
Private collection, United States
Exhibited
London, The New Gallery, Summer Exhibition, 1905
Marie Euphrosyne Spartali Stillman was the youngest daughter of a wealthy Anglo-Greek family and grew up in London where her father, cotton merchant and Greek consul-general Michael Spartali, purchased a stately home at Clapham Common and a country house on the Isle of Wight. The Spartalis socialized with many artists and writers, introducing Marie at a young age to James McNeill Whistler and Algernon Swinburne. Swinburne reportedly said “she is so beautiful that I want to sit down and cry.” In 1864, Whistler introduced Spartali to Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), a key member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
As a favorite model and muse to Rossetti and other Pre-Raphaelites, Marie was soon immersed in the art world. As a beau idéal for some of the most notable members of the PreRaphaelites, Marie rose in influence owed to her ethereal beauty. As she became interested in painting herself, Rossetti introduced her to Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893). Under his tutelage, Marie trained as an artist and adopted the languid mood typical of the Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic.
At a time when women were discouraged to pursue careers, Marie doubled down by devoting herself to her art while supporting her family She regularly exhibited both at the Royal Academy of Arts and at the Grosvenor Gallery in London, a radical alternative to the Academy founded in 1877, and in Liverpool, Birmingham, and Manchester. Her works were also shown at important American venues in Washington, DC, Philadelphia, and Boston.
Without her father’s permission, Marie married Rossetti’s friend, the American journalist and photographer William James Stillman (1828-1901) in 1871. Trained by Hudson River School painter Frederic Edwin Church, Stillman chose a career as a war correspondent in Crete and the Balkans. For a time, he was the American consul in Rome, followed by serving his country in Crete during the insurrections. While living in Athens, his first wife worn out by the excitement of life in Crete, committed suicide, possibly another reason why Marie’s father was against this liaison.
The couple lived an itinerant life, spending time in America, Italy and England. Due to their peripatetic existence and William’s unsettled career, Marie was often relied upon to supplement his income through the sales of her art to provide for her family and their six children. Her connection to the Pre-Raphaelites encouraged her to paint vivid and dreamlike landscapes, inspired by the Italian artists before Raphael. Almost a centennial after her death, Marie’s drawing The Enchanted Garden sold for $1.1 million, breaking her own personal record as well as surpassing any other female Pre-Raphaelite artist.
The
Garden, 1889
Pencil, watercolor and heightened color on paper
77.9 x 101.2 cm, monogrammed & dated Present whereabout unknown
In 1871, Rossetti and William Morris (1834-1896) took out a joint tenancy on Kelmscott Manor, in the Cotswolds in the south of England. When Morris left for Iceland that summer, his wife Jane and Rossetti, entangled in a romantic liaison, enjoyed the happiest summer there. Morris and Jane drew great inspiration from the unspoiled authenticity of the architecture and its garden at Kelmscott and viewed it as their joint work of art and the ultimate setting of Romantic ideals. Jane Morris (18391914), like Marie, was a muse and model and an artist in her own right and both are important participants in the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood. Marie, like Jane, embodied the Pre-Raphaelite ideal of beauty, perfect for modelling, and in Rossetti’s eyes she resembled a goddess with her tall figure, elegant gestures, long hair and a gaze that was straightforward and dreamy at the same time. Rather than rivals, the two muses were particularly close and Marie often visited Kelmscott after her husband death in 1901. Views of Kelmscott were especially popular in America, where Marie had solo shows in Boston in 1903 and in New York in 1908.
Marie Spartali Stillman
Enchanted
Karen Kilimnik
the witche ’s stables, half formed, Hampshire , 2008
Water soluble oil color and acrylic on canvas
18 by 24 inches (45.5 by 61 cm)
Titled & dated verso
Exhibited
Pittsburgh, Carnegie Museum of Art, Carnegie International, 57th Edition , 13 October 2018 - 25 March 2019
New York, 303 Gallery, Karen Kilimnik, 1 November – 20 December 2019
Philadelphia born and based Karen Kilimnik conjoins components while constructing her own universe. Whether portraits, still lifes, or landscapes, the artist filters her inner imaginary world through source material procured from museum catalogues and exhibitions. Drawing correspondences between romantic tradition and consumer culture, Kilimnik’s work brings a haunting and contrary sense of beauty to contemporary art. The world of the ballet and childhood, romantic painting and pop music, icons of film and fashion, witchcraft, time-travel, and crime comprise an imagery that has been culled from the fairytale and recent past into an unsettling present. In a world where the forces of nature, youth, and terror have taken awesome hold, Kilimnik’s paintings rematerialize a quest for the romantic sublime.
Often fascinated by life in England, for the witche’s stables Kilimnik transports us to Hampshire, home of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Florence Nightingale. Rather than a castle or grand estate, the artist has chosen a farmhouse and stable, her title insinuating that this is where sorcery takes place. Paired with her predecessor, British-Greek Marie Spartali Stillman (1844- 1927), member of the second generation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, we are enchanted by romantic country life. Like Kilimnik’s painting, Stillman’s watercolor of Kelmscott Manor, draws great inspiration from the unspoiled authenticity of the Cotswold home’s architecture and garden of William Morris and his wife Jane, who would continue her romantic liaison with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, enjoying the happiest chapter of their liaison at the mansion.
Concurrent with Master Drawings, an exhibition of works by Karen Kilimnik and her old master predecessors, The Kingdom of the Renaissance, curated by Mireille Mosler, will take place at Sprüth Magers, 22 East 80th Street, 2nd floor through March 18, 2023.
Joseph
Edward Southall (1861-1944)Contentment, 1928
Watercolor on vellum on linen-covered stretcher
14 1⁄ 2 by 10 3⁄4 inches (36.7 by 27.5 cm)
Monogrammed & dated ‘ES 1928’
Inscribed ‘PORTRAITS OF BESSIE & TODDIE Joseph Southall 1928’ (verso)
Provenance
Anna Elizabeth (Bessie) Southall-Baker (1859-1947), Birmingham
Her sale, Edwards, Birmingham, 23 March 1948, lot 249
Sotheby’s, London, 19 March 1979, lot 17
The Fine Art Society, London
Alan Fortunoff (1932-2000), New York
The Fine Art Society, London, 2005
Exhibited
London, New English Art Club, Summer Exhibition, 1928, no. 99
Birmingham, Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, Autumn Exhibition, 1928, no. 143
Paris, Société National des Beaux-Arts, Salon, 1929, no. 1573
London, Leicester Galleries, Joseph Southall, 1931, no. 46
Birmingham, Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, Joseph Southall, 1933, no. 57
Birmingham, City Museum & Art Gallery, Memorial Exhibition of Works by the late Joseph Southall, 1945, no. 65;
London, Royal Watercolour Society; Bournemouth.
Birmingham, City Musuem & Art Gallery, Joseph Southall, 1861- 1944: Artist-Craftsman, 1980, no. E12; London, The Fine Arts Society, 14 October – 7 November 1980.
London, The Fine Art Society, Sixty works by Joseph Southall, 1861- 1944 from the Fortunoff Collection, 15 March
16 April 2005;
Cheltenham, Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum, 23 April – 4 June 2005.
Literature
‘Up Front’, The Observer Colour Magazine, 18 March 1979, p. 23
George Breeze, Peyton Skipwith & Abbie N. Sprague, Sixty works by Joseph Southall, 1861-1944 from the Fortunoff Collection, Fine Art Society, London, 2005, pp 98-99, no. 23, ill.
Joseph Southall lived and worked in Birmingham at a moment of artistic and cultural excitement, making a substantial contribution to the local Arts and Crafts Movement. Largely devoted to painting, Southall also produced decorative arts in the true spirit of the artist-craftsman. Although there was no formal membership to the Birmingham Group of Artist & Crafts, it was simply unity of conviction encouraged by John Ruskin, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones.
A visit to Italy in 1883 persuaded Southall to devote himself to highly-crafted paintings, reviving the use of egg tempera. In 1897, Burne-Jones sent Southall’s self-portrait in tempera, Man with a Sable Brush, to the New Gallery, along with his own work, establishing Southall as one of the foremost artists working in this medium at the time. Participating in exhibitions of the Arts and Crafts Society and Modern Paintings in Tempera, a precursor of the Tempera Society, Southall became one of their leading members. When the 1930 Winter Exhibition at the Royal Academy was devoted to Italian Painting, a renewed interest in tempera painting arose, resulting the following Summer Exhibition with an entire gallery devoted to works in tempera. Although Southall lived mostly in Birmingham, he exhibited internationally throughout his lifetime, at the Galerie George Petit in Paris in 1910.
Both sitters in Contentment are highly familiar to the artist: his beloved missus and kitten.1 Southall and Bessie were first cousins who delayed marriage until well in their forties, in 1903, in order to avert offspring. His wife, Anna Elizabeth (“Bessie”) Baker, was herself a significant craftswoman, assisting Southall in his work and writing on the art of gilding. She appears in many of Southall’s pictures, including his celebrated double portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, London. As a childless couple, their feline family member may have played a significant role as Toddie is prominently portrayed.
Joseph Southall The Agate, 1911 Egg tempera on linen 100.3 x 50.3 cm) National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG 7020
1 Two studies for Contentment were exhibited in the Birmingham show in 1980, op.cit., E12(i) and (ii). The pencil drawing, 27 x 20.1 cm, shows marks that indicate a transfer to the final version. A smaller watercolor, approx. 22 x 15.5 cm was a color study, showing green and rust-red fabric in the background instead of the present yellow and blue.
Jan Toorop (Java 1858-1928 The Hague)
Portrait of Dora Luthy -Arbenz , 1909
Pencil, chalk and pastel on paper
18 by 13½ inches (45.7 by 34.3 mm.
Inscribed, dated & signed ‘Dora Luthy, Arbenz. Jan Toorop 1909 Zurich ’
Provenance
Commissioned by Friedrich Alfred Lüthy (1851-1909) & Dora Luthy- Arbenz (1871- 1944) , Zürich, 1909
Sale Eberhard Habsburg, Zürich
Collection of Dr Hans Lüthy, Egg bei Zürich
Sale, Koller, Zürich, 23 September 2022, lot 3486
Jan Theodoor Toorop was born on 20 December 1858 in Purworejo on the Island of Java in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). He was a descendant of a Dutch-Indonesian father and a British mother, but moved to the Netherlands at the age of eleven. In 1880, Toorop enrolled at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. From 1882 to 1886, he lived in Brussels, where he became closely involved with Les XX (Les Vingts), a group of progressive artists centered around James Ensor (18601949). After his marriage to the British Annie Hall in 1886, Toorop alternated his time between The Hague, Brussels and England. Beginning in 1890, Toorop also spent time in the Dutch seaside town of Katwijk aan Zee. During this period he developed his own unique Symbolist style, with dynamic, unpredictable lines based on Javanese motifs, highly stylized willowy figures, and curvilinear designs. Toorop died on 3 March 1928 in The Hague.
Little is known about Dora Lüthy, née Arbenz. Her husband, Friedrich Alfred Lüthy, was born in Soluthurn in 1851, the youngest son of merchant Eduard Lüthi. In 1859, Eduard Lüthy bought the seventeenth-century villa Feldbrunnenhof on the Baslerstrasse. Like his two brothers, Friedrich chose the merchant profession and went abroad. At the age of twenty-six, Lüthy became an assistant on a large tobacco plantation of the Swiss firm Näher und Grob in the Sultanate of Serdang on Sumatra, a plantation he would later manage. By the spring of 1890, Lüthy returned to Feldbrunnen with a small fortune (over 16 million Swiss francs in today’s value). At home, he converted the family’s residence into Villa Serdang, named after the sultanate of Sumatra, in 1892 by the established Zürich architects Alfred Chiodera and Theophil Tschudy.
In 1894, Lüthy married Dora Arbenz, daughter of a Zürich bank director. Lüthy was not very involved in his community, often even at odds. Nevertheless, he was a great supporter of today’s natural history museum and social institutions in Solothurn. Lüthy died of an illness on 2 December 1909, which may explain the lack of a pendant portrait, although they could have been separated by inheritance.
Probably because of the tobacco trade in the Dutch East Indies, the Lüthys felt an affinity with Jan Toorop, its most prominent artist in the beginning of the twentieth century. It could also be that they were introduced to Toorop by Nina and Fritz Meyer-Fierz, Zürich collectors who commissioned identical portraits the same year. Although no information is known on Dora Lüthy and her activities as a collector, living in the sizeable Jugendstill villa Serdang certainly would allow for a welcoming home for contemporary commissions. The Lüthy children were eternalized in portraits by the Swiss artist Albert Anker in 1900. 1
Jan Toorop (1858-1928)
Portraits of Nina and Fritz Meyer-Fierz, 1909
Pencil, chalk and pastel on paper 460 by 350 mm. (each)
Signed, dated & inscribed ‘Fritz Meijer. 1909/JthToorop/Zürich’ & ‘Nina MeijerFierz.1909/ JthToorop’
The Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis Accession nos. 2018.35.1 & 2018.35.2
Jan Toorop (1858-1928)
The Dream of the Seven Hills (De Droom der Zeven Heuvelen), ca. 1914
Pencil, black chalk and wax crayon
5 3/4 by 9 3/4 inches (14.7 by 24.8 cm)
Signed ‘JTHToorop’ & inscribed ‘No.3’
Provenance
H. P. Bremmer (1871-1956), The Hague
By descent to a private collection, The Netherlands
Sale, Amsterdam, Christie’s, 1 December 1998, lot 211
Kunsthandel Studio 2000, Blaricum
Triton Collection Foundation, The Netherlands, 2004
Their sale, Christie’s, Paris, 25 March 2015, lot 22
Exhibited
The Hague, Gemeentemuseum, Têtes Fleuries: 19e en 20e-eeuwse portretkunst uit de Triton Foundation / 19th and 20th Century Portraiture from the Triton Foundation, 2007
Rotterdam, Kunsthal, 15 jaar Marlies Dekkers /15 Years Marlies Dekkers, 2008
Literature
Cornelis Easton, J.E. Heeres & Anton van der Valk, Het boek der Koningin, Amsterdam 1919, p. 8, ill.
Hans Janssen, Têtes Fleuries: 19th and 20th Century Portraiture from the Triton Foundation, The Hague 2007, p. 17, ill.
Sjraar van Heugten, Avant-gardes 1870 to the present: The Collection of the Triton Foundation, Brussels 2012, p. 127, p. 132 ill.
Around 1905, like many artists of his time, Toorop would turn to Catholicism. In 1908 he even moved to Nijmegen, one of the oldest Dutch cities close to the German border and the center of Dutch Catholicism at the time. Toorop developed more certainty in his mysticism while church doctrine allowed him a clear iconography. From 1910 on, Toorop’s health prevented him from long hours behind the easel and he focused on works on paper. Toorop died on 3 March 1928 in The Hague.
The Dream of the Seven Hills was published in 1919 in Het boek der koningin (The book of the Queen), a present to Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands on the occasion of the end of World War I.1 Its first owner was H.P. Bremmer (1871-1957), the influential Dutch art critic, who played a major role in introducing contemporary art to a broader audience. He organized art classes where well-to-do ladies were educated in appreciating the art of their time. Many Dutch artists were given advice what to paint and collectors what to acquire His most prominent pupil was Hélène Kröller-Müller, one of the richest women in the Netherlands at the time. The important collection she built with Bremmer’s advice is now in the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo.
The sleeping subject of The Dream of the Seven Hills is the young poetess Miek Janssen (1890-1953), Toorop’s muse and mistress from 1912 until his death in 1928. Possibly the title refers to a dream about the city of Rome, the city built on seven hills and capital of the Catholic faith. A sketch from the same period with eyes piercing over a landscape, adorned with their interlaced monogram OM (for Miek and Olaf, his nickname) suggests a religious connotation: its title Witte Donderdag - Goede Vrijdag (Maundy Thursday - Good Friday) refers to the Holy Week, commemorating Jesus’s Last Supper and the Eucharist 2
Jan Toorop
Witte
Jan Toorop (1858-1928)
Miek Janssen, Bruges, 1915
Conté crayon and pencil on paper
6¼ by 4¾ inches (16 by 12 cm)
Signed & dated ‘JTToorop 1915’
Provenance
Private collection, The Netherlands
Sale, Zeeuws Veilinghuis, Middelburg, 6 June 2019, lot 449
Like many other symbolist contemporaries, Toorop situated some of his late symbolic religious themes in Bruges, a medieval town in Belgium. The mystic aura of fifteenth century architecture and paintings by the Flemish primitives such as Rogier van der Weyden and Hans Memling appealed to artists at the turn of the century. In 1914, Toorop created the monumental drawing Adoration Bruges (or Divine Love Walk). His muse and mistress, Miek Janssen (1890-1953), whose presence in the symbolist drawing is eternalized in their interlaced monogram OM (for Miek and Olaf, his nickname), described in detail its meaning and dedicated a poem to boot.1 Expressing man’s desire to unite with God, slender figures of divine beings flow past the lofty houses of Bruges, stretching their hands. In their midst rises the young woman in adoration, and they lead her, the longing one, to the Infinite Love.
Bruges is seemingly a second sitter in Toorop’s drawings dated the following year: the present drawing executed in Conté crayon and the colored chalk one in the KröllerMüller Museum. Rather than a formal portrait depicting a sitter, it seems to be a continuation of the now uncloaked young woman in adoration, the artist’s archetypal muse. Toorop’s daughter, Charley, was the artist’s preferred model, until 1912, when she married and their relationship became fraught. That same year, she was replaced by Miek, his future favorite model. The downward gaze and symmetrical frontality of the sitter are typical for Toorop during this period, as is the reference of the city of Bruges as a backdrop. The arched bridges, inspired by the Begijnhof, are also a well-known motif known from Fernand Khnopff’s 1892 frontispiece for Bruges-la-Mort by Georges Rodenbach.
Jan Toorop
Meisjeskopje, 1915
Colored chalk on paper, 26.5 x 16 cm
Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, KM 103.075
Willem van den Berg (1886 – 1970)
The Silver Heron
Signed ‘WILLEM VAN DEN BERG.’
Oil on panel
50 3/8 by 36 5/8 inches (128 by 93 cm)
Provenance
Private Collection, The Netherlands
Willem van den Berg was born on February 16, 1886 in The Hague, where he first trained with his father, Andries van den Berg, a painter, print-maker and art teacher. He later enrolled at the local Academie voor Beeldende Kunst and befriended the artist Willem van Konijnenburg (1868-1943) in 1913. Van den Berg also took study trips to Belgium, Italy and England and worked with the Barbizon artists in France and exhibited at the Jeu de Paume in Paris in 1926. In 1935, Van den Berg exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, and continued to paint and exhibit internationally throughout his career. By 1938 he moved to Amsterdam, where he became the director of the National Academy of Fine Arts and remained there until his death on 23 December 1970.
Van den Berg painted still lifes, landscapes and portraits although he is mostly known for renderings of peasants and Dutch fishermen. Although Van den Berg was very much inspired by paintings by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, as a result of his time among the Barbizon painters, a connection to Jean François Millet is also apparent. Like his contemporaries, Van den Berg found inspiration in the nineteenth century Amsterdam zoo Artis, sketching animals to be worked on in the studio in a variety of mediums such as lithographs, woodcuts, drawings or paintings.
Funny creatures captured Van den Berg’s imagination as the many iterations of large feathered birds indicate. The present monumental Silver Heron, another local zoo resident, is positioned by the artist in a sparse, symbolist setting. Replacing the heron’s natural habitat with a decorative scheme of art nouveau ornamentation against a monochrome golden background was inspired by eighteenth century Japanese woodblock screens. Like his predecessor Vincent van Gogh, Van den Berg’s sensibility drastically changed once he encountered these exotic and colorful artworks from the east, leaving traditional representation behind for fashionable Japonisme.
