Face to Face

FACE TO FACE

Front cover cat.no. 5: 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’

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1 Jan Jansz van de Velde (1620-1664) The Ragpicker, 1645 Iron gall ink on paper 3 7/8 by 3 1/8 inches (9.8 by 7.9 cm.)

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.

Jan Jansz. van de Velde III Jug, 1640 Pencil and brown ink with brown washes, 72 x 85 mm.

Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels, no. 3726 1Adriaan

van der Willigen & Fred G. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-life Painters Working in Oils, 1525-1725, Leiden 2003, pp. 201-202

Lesser known than his paintings are Van de Velde’s drolleries in German collections: in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum (8), Braunschweig, the Städel (4), Frankfurt2 and in a private collection (23).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 ragand-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, no. Z436

Annette Strech, a.o. «Nach dem Leben und aus der Phantasie». Niederländische Zeichnungen vom 15. Bis 18. Jahrhundert aus dem Städelschen Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main, exh.cat. 2000, pp. 108-109 3 Reinhart Schleier, ed., Neue Zeichnungen alter Meister. Entdeckungen au seiner Barocksammlung, Münster 1981, pp. 122-144 2

2 Willem van Nijmegen (1636-1698) Allegory of the loss of Arnhem, 10 June 1672 Pen and black and grey wash on paper 6 7/8 by 5 1/2 inches (17.5 by 14 cm.)

Inscribed (recto): ‘Willem van Nymegen heeft dit geteykent A° 1672 den 10 Junius den dagh daer na als hy de stadt van Arenem heeft over sien geven, aen den hertogh van Touraine dien ick den trompetter van hem heb voor de stadt op hooren eysen. / Laat ons nu vrij haspillen / willen wij niet: sij willen’1; (verso): ‘Schoenen muijlen en laarsen / ’t komt al van den stieren twesen / mellick botter meis / ’t komt al van den vaarsen’ and with several sketches of coat of arms.

Provenance Sale, Vendu Notarishuis, Rotterdam, 11 November 2012, lot 133 Private collection, The Netherlands Willem van Nijmegen was born in 1636 in Zaltbommel in a dynasty of artists.2 He was an early specialist in grisailles for the decoration of interiors and well known for his imitations of marble. He also executed trompe l’oeil decorations in the form of landscapes appearing as engravings. From 1675 to 1690, Van Nijmegen was a member of the Guild of Saint Luke in The Hague, while he is also listed as a Guild member in Delft in 1684. From 1690 until his death on 12 October 1698, Van Nijmegen was active in Haarlem.

In spite of being a popular artist in his time, very few works are attributed to Van Nijmegen today.

Some trompe l’oeil portraits of his predecessors Hendrick Goltzius and Rembrandt are in private collections, while a grisaille of Laocoön is in the Národní Galerie, Prague. The first known trompe l’oeil painting of a print was made around 1650 by Sebastian Stosskopff (1597-1657), now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, although it is unknown if Van Nijmegen was aware of its existence. Unique for his time is Van Nijmegen’s incorporation of the engraved medium while addressing himself directly to the viewer as in the present drawing.3 It is no secret that the Dutch are known to be direct and the artist confirms this through his remarkable bravura.

Usually, the trompe l’oeil effect is accomplished by an engraving on a wooden panel; in the present Allegory of the loss of Arnhem, the drawing itself simulates a print. If not for the inscription, we would seemingly have a genre representation of a woman spinning yarn. However, the elaborated text explains that this work was created the day after the siege of the city of Arnhem by the French army.

1672 is known as the Disaster Year (‘Rampjaar’), when the Dutch Republic was under attack by the British and French armies, as well as the dioceses of Cologne and Munster.

“Willem van Nijmegen has drawn this A° 1672 the 10th of June, the day after he saw the city of Arnhem capitulate to the Duke of Touraine, when I heard his trumpet player claim the city. Let us now freely reel, we do not want: they want.”

2 Biographical information from: A. van der Willigen & F. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-life Painters Working in Oils, 15251725, Leiden 2003, p. 150 3 A. Tummers, “The Painter Versus his Critics: Willem van Nijmegen’s Defense of his Art”, in: Aemulatio. Imitation, emulation and invention in Netherlandish art from 1500 to 1800. Essays in honor of Eric Jan Sluijter, Zwolle 2011, p. 438 1

Even in the unoccupied territories people lived with fear as banks, schools and courts closed. Artists and art dealers suffered during this crisis that bankrupted many. Knowing that Prince Willem III, Stadholder of Holland, had fled, the French Marshal, Vicomte de Turenne (1611-1675) gave the city of Arnhem an ultimatum. If Arnhem refused immediate capitulation, its citizens would not survive. After vigorous resistance, the army surrendered on June 17. It is possible that Van Nijmegen was aware of Quast’s engraving published in 1652, depicting a peasant couple spinning yarn on a spindle with the devil in the background trying to unravel the spun thread.4 In contrast to this earlier engraving, Van Nijmegen’s allegory is subtler; focused solely on the spinning woman, who is depicted not as symbol of virtue, but as the embodiment of the last sentence of the drawing’s inscription. The plea “Let us spin / we do not want: they want” indicates Arnhem residents’ desire to ‘let us be’ or leave us alone.

Pieter Jansz. Quast The devil messing up the yarn, 1634-40 Etching, 212 x 165 mm.

Rijksmuseum, inv.no. RP-P-OB-81.750

It is unclear how the poem on the verso of the drawing relates to the fall of Arnhem.5 Surrounded by sketches of coat of arms, the rhyme is likely to be related to Arnhem. Poems allowed an artist to comment very quickly on current events. The comparison of products deriving from a bull or a cow could possibly indicate the equally important contribution of women and men, in this case in the defense against foreign invasion.

Shoes mules and boots It all comes from the bull’s creature Milk butter grass-cheese It all comes from the young cow

Dieuwke de Hoop Scheffer, “Een serie bedelaars door Pieter Quast: 'T Is Al Verwart-Gaeren'”, in: Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum, 1974, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 166-172. This print is possibly a satire on the English as indicated by its date of publication.

5 Only one of the coat of arms is identifiable with the Van Welderen family crest. Johan van Welderen, lieutenant-general of the cavalry, in command of the nearby town of Nijmegen as of June, early July 1672 and Diederik van Welderen, nobleman of the county of Nijmegen, both defended their region in the battle against Turenne.

4

recto

verso

3 Jacob de Wit (1695–1754) Figure studies for Moses Selecting the Seventy Elders (recto & verso), 1735 Brush with black and gray washes on paper 8 5/8 by 7 1/8 inches (22 by 18.1 cm.)

Inscribed ‘6’ ‘52’ ‘24’ recto; signed, dated & inscribed ‘1735’ verso Provenance Mrs. Sally Sample Ely Aall (1927-2005),1 New York With Davis & Langdale Company, Inc., New York, 1998, where acquired by Private collection, New York

1

Mrs. Aall, an American philanthropist, author and drawings collector, bequeathed works of art to The Princeton University Art Museum, the Honolulu Academy of the Art, and other institutions. Important drawings by Jacob Hoefnagel and Roelant Savery from her collection are now in the Morgan Library & Museum, New York.

Jacob de Wit, aptly named ‘Titian of the Amstel’, was baptized on 19 December 1695 in the hidden Catholic church Het Vrededuifje in Amsterdam’s Kerkstraat.2 Although his father, a wine merchant and innkeeper, was not an artist, Jacob started his artistic training at a young age. Only nine years old, he apprenticed to Albert van Spiers (1665-1718), a painter who specialized in canal house decorations.

After four years, the aspiring artist left for Antwerp to study at the Art Academy. There he lived with his uncle Jacomo, a prosperous wine and art dealer whose large collection of paintings by Rubens and Van Dyck provided perfect study material for the young De Wit. De Wit executed many studies after Rubens and his copies of the ceiling in Antwerp’s Jesuit Church became the only pictorial reference after lightning destroyed the church. By 1713, De Wit joined the Antwerp Guild of St Luke.

By 1715, De Wit returned to Amsterdam, after a traditional artist’s pilgrimage to Rome was vetoed by his uncle, who considered him too young. In 1716 he received the first of many commissions from Aegidius de Glabbais, a Roman Catholic priest of the clandestine Moses and Aaron church. The majority of De Wit’s patrons were fellow Catholics, but before long Protestants too employed him to decorate their homes. In 1735 stadholder William IV invited him to paint the decoration for Huis ten Bosch Palace in The Hague. Soon De Wit became Holland’s most in demand artist and he and his wife Cornelia Eleonora van Neck bought two adjacent canal houses on the Keizersgracht. De Wit exhibited part of his considerable art collection of about 200 paintings and 800 mostly Flemish and Italian drawings in one of the rooms of his house. Behind the house was De Wit’s studio. In 1742, his income was 4,000 guilders, establishing him as the best paid painter in Amsterdam. When Jacob de Wit died on 12 November 1754 the Old Church’s great bell tolled for four hours.

Jacob de Wit, Moses choosing the Seventy Elders, 1736-37, oil on panel, 32 x 73 cm.

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, object no. SK-A-1783

2

Biographical information from: Jacob de Wit. The Titian of the Amstel, exh.cat. Amsterdam, Royal Palace, 1986

This rare, double-sided drawing is directly connected to the most prestigious commission of De Wit’s career, the decoration of the Council Chamber at the Amsterdam Town Hall, now the Royal Palace.

On 24 January 1735, the committee entrusted with the renovation selected the Old Testament subject of Moses obeying God’s command to choose seventy elders to advise him and Jacob de Wit, the only history painter capable of producing a painting on this scale.3 The theme of Moses identifying his advisors would have been understood as an appropriate allusion to the role of the city councilors. De Wit produced eight small-scale representations of his plan before finding the final composition of Moses in the wilderness raising his arms in awe as the divine inspiration descends as a dove. These preparatory studies for the monumental mural range from quick delineations in ink on paper, to exercises in gouache to colorful oil sketches on panel (Rijksmuseum, Bijbels Museum, Amsterdam Museum, Teylers Museum, Musée Picardie, Amiens, and Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, Canada). The final painting, measuring 5 by 13 meters and for which De Wit received 5,000 guilders, was completed two years later in October 1737.4 Proud of this major achievement, De Wit included two self-portraits in the commission. Although the artist stands out in his contemporary attire, he opted to omit the white wig usually featured in his selfportraits. The first self-portrait shows the artist at work holding his sketchbook, right under Moses’s outstretched left hand as if receiving his blessing. The second portrays De Wit in fashionable costume standing on the rocks looking straight at the viewer, shown here in a detail. The preparatory sketch of the figure on the verso of the sheet relates to this figure on the artist’s left, possibly someone involved with the commission.5 As all the elders wear turbans in the painting, the double portrait of the bearded figures served possibly as a model for the bareheaded figure standing behind the artist.

Dressed in antique fashion, sandwiching the creator, they may indicate an allegory of prudence, a rebuttal that old age is the enemy of artistic achievement.

Jacob de Wit, Moses chooses Seventy Elders, 1737 Royal Palace, Amsterdam (detail)

Eymert-Jan Goosens, Master of Deception. The painter Jacob de Wit, 1695-1754, exh.cat. Royal Palace Amsterdam 2003, pp. 14-19 A. Staring, Jacob de Wit 1695-1754, Amsterdam 1958, p. 119 5 We are grateful to Robert-Jan te Rijdt, curator of drawings at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, for identifying the present drawing of a single head as a study for De Wit’s Moses Selecting the Seventy Elders in the Amsterdam Royal Palace.

3 4

De Wit most likely used the countless drawings for the final composition as there is no discernable underdrawing on the canvas of the mural. Preparatory sketches ranging from full figures to detailed studies of hands can be found in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, Szépmüvészeti Museum, Budapest, Museum of National Literature, Prague, The British Museum, London, Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Teylers Museum, Haarlem, Kunsthalle Bremen, Landesmuseum Hannover, among others. In addition to preliminary studies, De Wit also produced drawings of more finished heads intended for collectors’ portfolios. The present drawing seems to be the only double-sided sheet related to the Moses commission. The numbering 6, 52, and 24 further suggests that the sheet would have been used as a study, rather than for individual sale. De Wit’s present double-sided drawing is an important source of information about his studio practice in general and shows the artist’s process culminating in the final iteration of Moses Selecting the Seventy Elders.

Jacob de Wit Study for the figure of Moses Point of brush and black ink with black and gray wash over red chalk, 19.6 x 15.1 cm.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, accession no. 2002-82

4 Simeon Solomon (1840-1905) Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the Fiery Furnace, October 1863 Watercolor on paper 13 by 9 inches (33 by 22.8 cm.)

Monogrammed & dated ‘10 SS 63’

Provenance Christopher Wood Gallery, London Private collection, London & New York Christie’s, London, 5 November 1993, lot 128 Barry Friedman Ltd, New York, 2000 Private collection, United States Exhibited London, The Gallery, Berners Street, Winter Exhibition, February 1863, cat. 40 Dudley Gallery, Sixth General Exhibition of Water-color Drawings, January 1870, no. 45 (titled The Three Holy Children in the Fiery Furnace) London, Geffrye Museum, Solomon. A Family of Painters, 8 November – 31 December 1985; Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, 18 January – 9 March 1986, cat.no. 46, p. 68 Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Love Revealed: Simeon Solomon and the Pre-Raphaelites, 1 October 2005 – 15 January 2006; Munich, Museum Villa Stuck, 9 March – 18 June 2006; London, The Jewish Museum of Art, Ben Uri Gallery, 11 September – 26 November 2006, cat.no. 40, pp. 90-91 Literature W.M. Rossetti, exhibition review in: Fine Art Quarterly Review, I, May 1863, p. 195 Exh. review “Dudley Gallery. Sixth General Exhibition of Drawings”, The Art-Journal, 1 March 1870, p. 87 Exh. review, Atheneum, 12 February 1870, p. 234 Illustrated London News, 12 February 1870, pp. 181-182 The Spectator, 19 February 1870, p. 237 S. Reynolds, The Vision of Simeon Solomon, Stroud 1984, pl. 31 G.M. Seymour, The Life and Work of Simeon Solomon (1840-1905), 1986, published dissertation University of California, fig. 95, p. 318 J. Allen, “Simeon Solomon and Stained Glass”, in: Pre-Raphaelite Society Review, Vol. XXVIII, no. 3, Autumn 2020, fig. 3.5, p. 26

The eighth child of Michael Solomon and Catherine Levy, Simeon was born in London on October 9, 1840. His father, a merchant who sold Leghorn hats, and one of the first Jews to be named a freeman in the City of London, died when Simeon was a teenager. Simeon’s brother Abraham taught him studio drawing while his sister Rebecca was responsible for his Jewish education. Though negative stereotypes about Jews pervaded, Victorian society slowly accepted their presence. In 1858, Lionel de Rothschild was the first Jew to assume a seat in the House of Commons. That same year, Solomon showed Isaac Offered at the Royal Academy, the institution he would later reject.

In his twenties, Solomon was one the youngest artists to join the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of painters and poets formed in 1848 as a reaction against the established Royal Academy. The Brotherhood’s name reflected its members’ desire to return to the morality and sincerity that characterized art before the Italian Renaissance, literally pre-Raphael. The PreRaphaelites often included religious symbols and figures in their art, and Solomon’s choice of subjects fit right in, although as a Jew he remained an outsider. This otherness, combined with his homosexuality and androgyny, caused his peers to perceive him as exotic.

David Wilkie Wynfield (1837-1887) Photograph of Simeon Solomon, circa 1870

Solomon, attracted to men in defiance of the law, was arrested for indecent exposure in a London public bathroom in February 1873 at the age of 32. Convicted of sodomy and sentenced to six weeks or hard labor, Solomon lost his reputation amongst the Pre-Raphaelites and was rejected by the art establishment. The following year, in Paris, arrested for soliciting men, Solomon spent another three months in jail. Unable to sell work with his tarnished reputation, Solomon turned to family and friends.

Without support from the art world, Solomon soon became a pariah, homeless and alcoholic, spending the latter years of his life at the St Giles parish workhouse where he died of heart failure on August 14, 1905. Fifteen years of success, prosperity and respect, Solomon turned his back on it all, and deliberately lived the remainder of his life as an exile, among the social outcasts. The end of his accomplishments came as abruptly as it began.

Although extensive subcultures existed in cities, homosexual identity had only started to emerge in the 1870s; the terminology was not used in Great Britain until much later. The law forbade specific sexual acts, but until 1885, it did not explicitly forbid all expressions of male same sex love. Androgyny took on a special significance with regard to sexuality in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It was neither sordid nor illegal. Not only Pre-Raphaelites like Edward Burne-Jones, but also Gustave Moreau and Fernand Khnopff often depicted gender neutral models. For Solomon, the Kabbalah’s perspective that Adam was created as both male and female before being separated into two creatures, completed the notion of perfection of one gender. This spiritual identity possibly helped him overcome some of the adversity of being different.

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednegois one of Solomon’s most ardently Jewish subjects, representing the protection God granted to the Jewish heroes from the fiery furnace. When the three men refused to worship Nebuchadnezzar’s ninety-foot-high golden image, the Babylonian king demanded their execution. Filled with rage, he ordered the furnace to be heated up more than seven times as usual and the strongest guards to secure the captives. Checking the furnace, the king spotted three unbound figures accompanied by a Godsend angel. Astonished, Nebuchadnezzar proclaimed “any people, nation, or language that utters a blasphemy against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego shall be torn limb from limb, and their houses laid in ruins; for there is no other god who is able to deliver in this way” (Daniel 3:29).

The red-headed figure on the left is modeled on Algernon Charles Swinburne, the English poet who wrote about many taboos including lesbianism, cannibalism and sadomasochism. It has been suggested that Simeon portrayed himself on the right and his sister Rebecca as the angel, though they resemble his favorite recurring androgynous facial types. The person on the right also appears in Solomon’s Two Acolytes Censing: Pentecoast of the same year, now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.1

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) Algernon Charles Swinburne, 1861 Paper, 18.2 x 15.8 cm.

Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, object 682

1

Bodycolor on paper mounted on canvas, accession no. WA1957.83 [https://collections.ashmolean.org/object/91035]

5 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.

1 2

Goupil painting stockbook no. 2, Madonna by Professor Müller, consigned 16 December 1873 by M.A. Lizardi, asking price $1,500 Sold 5 November 1874 for $1,650 to R.R. Springer, Cincinnati, OH

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 was sent to 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.

Carl Müller, Holy Family, 1872 Black and white chalk on gray paper, 104.1 cm. Ø Signed ‘Carl Müller Düsseldorf 1872’ The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Accession no. 83.10

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 shadow box frame is most likely a marriage made by Goupil & Cie. for the local market as it appealed to collectors of academic paintings with conservative taste. Their elaborate construction protected the gilding from oxidation and the velvet from attracting dust under the glazing, creating a time capsule for the entombed painting.

Finke, op.cit., pp. 84-85 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 3 4

6 Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884) Un Breton, 1877 Signed, dated & inscribed ‘A MON AMI O. METRA/J. BASTIEN-LEPAGE/St. Brieuc 1877’ Watercolor on paper 12 1/2 by 9 1/8 inches (31.6 by 23 cm.)

Provenance Private collection, United Kingdom Sotheby’s, London, 15 November 1995, lot 81 The Garden & selected watercolours & oil paintings, Sotheby’s Summers Place, Billingshurst, West Sussex, 22 May 1997, lot 220 Private collection, United Kingdom Day & Faber, London, 2002 Private collection, The Netherlands Bastien-Lepage was born in the village of Damvillers on 1 November 1848. His father grew grapes to support the family. Bastien-Lepage took an early liking to drawing, and his parents fostered his creativity by buying prints of paintings for him to copy. Bastien-Lepage’s first formal training was at Verdun. In 1867, he was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, studying with Alexander Cabanel. He was awarded first place for drawing but spent most of his time working alone, only occasionally appearing in class.

Bastien-Lepage was wounded in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, returning home to immortalize family and villagers of north-eastern France. His Portrait of my Grandfather from 1873, exhibited at the Salon the same year, earned him his first public success. That same year, he was commissioned to portray the Prince of Wales. In 1875, he placed second at the Prix de Rome. His next endeavor to win the Grand Prix de Rome the following year with Priam at the Feet of Achilles, now in the Palais des Beaux Arts in Lille, was again unsuccessful, and the painter returned to country life.

To the Salon of 1877, he sent a full-length Portrait of Lady L. and My Parents; and in 1878 a Portrait of M. Theuriet and The Hayfield, now in the Musée du Luxembourg.

From then on, Bastien-Lepage was widely recognized in France as a naturalistic painter. His Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt from 1879 won him the Legion of Honour. In 1880 he exhibited a Portrait of M. Andrieux and Joan Of Arc listening to the Voices, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The same year, at London’s Royal Academy, the little portrait of the Prince of Wales was shown. Once well established, Bastien-Lepage traveled to England, Switzerland, and Italy. The artist, struggling with his health, returned to Paris in 1884 where he died of cancer at the young age of thirty-six. A posthumous exhibition of more than 200 of his pictures was presented at the École des Beaux-Arts.

The present drawing was executed in Saint-Brieuc, a village in the Côtes-d’Armor region of Brittany.

Dedicated to Bastien-Lepage’s friend Olivier Métra (1830-1889), a composer and conductor, it predates a watercolor of the same subject, now in the Baltimore Museum of Art. Curiously, this second drawing is dated 1880 and inscribed Dinar, a coastal village in Brittany about 80 kilometers from SaintBrieuc, lacking the detailed background of our drawing.1 A drawing of a female Breton peasant, dated 1876, also inscribed Saint-Brieuc, could possibly be a pendant to our drawing.2

Jules Bastien-Lepage Sketch of a Peasant, 1880 Watercolor over graphite, 339 x 249 mm.

Signed, dated & inscribed ‘Dinar 1880’ The Baltimore Museum of Art, object no. 1946.42

Jules Bastien-Lepage A Breton Peasant, 1876 Watercolor, 299 x 238 mm.

Signed, dated & inscribed ‘St Brieuc 1876’ Present whereabouts unknown

Marie-Madeleleine Aubrun, Jules Bastien-Lepage 1848-1884, Paris 1985, cat.no. 540, p. 307, only published the Baltimore watercolor in her catalogue raisonné, with the notion that the location “DINAR (sic)” must be erronous. A second variant in watercolor, Breton assis Dinar, also dated 1880 and measuring 320 x 241 mm, appeared on the art market recently.

2 Sale, Galerie Bassenge, Berlin, 26 November 2010, lot 6349 1

7 Jan Toorop (1858-1928) The Three Brides, ca. 1893-1896 Platinotype on salted paper, heightened with white gouache and Indian ink 15 7/8 by 19 5/9 inches (40.4 by 49.8 cm.)

Provenance E.J. van Wisselingh & Co., Amsterdam Private collection, Belgium Mathieu Néouze, Paris, 2017 Private collection, New York Literature1 Walter Shaw Sparrow, ‘Herr Toorop’s “The Three Brides.”’, The Studio, Vol. I, September 1893, 33, p.

247, ill.

J(an) V(eth), “Aantekeningen schilderkunst”, De Amsterdammer, 1 October 1893, no. 849, p. 3 B. Polak, Het fin de siècle in de Nederlandse schilderkunst, The Hague 1955, pp. 130-131 (Bettina SpaanstraPolak, Het Symbolisme in de Nederlandse schilderkunst 1890-1900, Bussum 2004) Robert Siebelhoff, “The Three Brides; A drawing by Jan Toorop”, 19de Eeuwse Nederlandse schilderkunst: Een zestal studies. Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, 1976, vol. 27, p. 246 Jan Frederik Heijbroek & Ester Wouthuysen, Portret van een kunsthandel. De firma Van Wisselingh en zijn compagnons 1838-heden, Zwolle 1999, n. 47, p. 130 Marian Bisanz-Prakken & Gerard van Wezel, Toorop/Klimt. Toorop in Wenen. Inspiratie voor Klimt, Zwolle/The Hague 2006, p. 38 Gerard van Wezel, Jan Toorop. Zang der Tijden, The Hague 2016, p. 77 From 1882 through 1889, welcomed by the Belgian avant-garde, Indonesian born artist Jan Toorop lived intermittently in Ixelles, near Brussels. Joining the newly formed Lex XX (Les Vingt) in 1884, he was immediately part of the inner circle of the “revolutionaries”: James Ensor (1860-1949) and Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921). As the sole Dutch member of Les XX, Toorop forged important relationships between his contemporaries in Belgium and The Netherlands.

After meeting the British student Annie Hall (1860-1929) in Brussels, whom he would marry in 1886, Toorop split his time between The Netherlands, England and Belgium. In April 1890, the couple settled in the Dutch coastal town Katwijk aan Zee, jumpstarting a new artistic endeavor.

Notwithstanding an absence from Holland of nearly a decade, Toorop was considered the most important Dutch avant-garde artist at the time, with international connections and aspirations. Soon after returning to the Netherlands, Toorop cofounded the Haagse Kunstkring (Art Circle of The Hague), where he organized the first retrospective exhibition of Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) followed by a group show of Les XX in 1892.

1

All literature refers to one of the three platinotypes. The whereabouts of the other two platinotypes are unknown.

That same year, Sar Péladan (1858-1918) visited The Netherlands, luring Toorop to join his Salon de la Rose+Croix and ushering in his foray into symbolism. Soon, seductive, fatal women, symbols of sensuality and destroyer of man, enter Toorop’s emblematic vocabulary. Embracing his colonial East Indies heritage of tropical vegetation, carvings and Hindu iconography, Toorop began his most important symbolist drawing The Three Brides, now in the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo.2 This extraordinary tour de force took over one year to complete, allowing the artist to plan carefully its public unveiling. In an undated letter to Octave Maus (1856-1919), Toorop announced that his soon to be finished drawing will be first exhibited at De Nederlandse Etsclub (The Etching Club of Holland), rather than at Les XX.3 Under pressure from fellow artist and art critic Jan Veth (1864-1925) (see catalogue no. 16), in an effort to promote local symbolism, The Three Brides was first shown in Amsterdam at Arti et Amicitae in February 1893 before making its appearance at the Etsclub the same month.4 By the summer, The Three Brides was included in the international Jahresausstellung von Kunstwerken aller Nationen at the Glaspalast in Munich, together with Ferdinand Khnopff’s I Lock my Door upon Myself, solidifying Toorop’s international reputation. It continued to Berlin, where it was included in a Symbolist exhibition at Galerie Gurlitt.5 Before it was first shown in public, The Three Brides was already purchased by dealer E.J. van Wisselingh & Co. for ƒ1,300.6 As this instant sensation was constantly committed to international exhibitions and out of his control, the artist implored his gallery to send him one photo of the work.7 Most likely, Toorop was referring to the platinotype Van Wisselingh commissioned from the Amsterdam photography studio Wegner & Mottu.8 At Toorop’s initiative, it was submitted to Walter Show Sparrow (1862-1940), whom he knew from Brussels, for publication in his newly established The Studio.9 Although it is uncertain if this is the present print, Veth writes that The Studio’s reproduction from a platinotype made by Wegner & Mottu and issued by Wisselingh, measuring 42 by 51 cm., represents the drawing flawlessly.10 Jan Toorop and his daughter Charley posing in front of The Three Brides, 1895 R.K.D., The Hague, no. 0000151709

In January 1893, Toorop writes to Verwey: “Presently I am working on a large drawing which is meant for the Etsclub in Amsterdam, that is to say in case it is ready in time”, Robert Siedelhoff, “Jan Toorop and the year 1892”, in: Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies, Vol. IX, Fall 1988, pp. 72-93, p. 92 3 Siebelhof 1976, op.cit., p. 226.

4 Jeroen Giltay, “De Nederlandsche Etsclub (1885—1896)”, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, Vol. 27, 1976, pp. 91-125, p. 110 5 Although there was certainly interest in the drawing, the asking price was deemed too high. It was not until 1919 that The Three Brides was sold to Freiherr von der Heydt, Elberfeld. Letter to P.C. Eilers ,28 October 1893, Archive E.J. van Wisselingh & Co., R.K.D., no.

508, https://rkd.nl/nl/explore/archives/details/NL-HaRKD-0005/path/1.1.1.3.3.1.

6 J.F. Heijbroek & E.I. Wouthuysen, De kunsthandelaar J.H. de Bois (1878-1946), Amsterdam/Antwerp 1993, p. 78 7 Undated letter to Eilers, R.K.D., op.cit., no. 506, p. 3 [1893], https://rkd.nl/nl/explore/archives/file/110049162 8 Heijbroek/Wouthuysen 1993, op.cit., n. 101, p. 130 9 Sparrow, op.cit., p. 247, ill.

10 Veth, op.cit., p. 3 2

Extensive circulation of this new art magazine provided The Three Brides European exposure and the attention of numerous artists, including the young Edvard Munch (1883-1944).11 Munch’s lithograph The Three Stages of Woman from 1899 was clearly inspired by Toorop’s dreamlike subject matter. When The Three Brides was finally exhibited in Belgium at La Libre Esthétique in February 1894, it caught the attention of Toulouse-Lautrec and Gauguin. A third Frenchman visiting the Brussels exhibition, writer and bibliophile Octave Uzanne (1851-1931), inquired directly of Toorop if the drawing was for sale.12 Although Toorop’s response is unknown, Uzanne procured a unique photographic version of The Three Brides, described by the Symbolist novelist Jean Lorrain (1856-1906) after visiting his Paris home: In the hallway, cluttered with trinkets, a strange photograph, an impossible to find example, unique, because there are only three in the world, and yet I recognize it, because I have already seen it at the painter Hawkins. It represents a painting, famous in Holland, the Three Brides, by the painter Jan Toorop; it is fantasy and dream rendered with astonishing precision: it is both the manner of Holbein and the musings of an opium smoker. […] It is Asian Catholicism, saturated with perversity and ecstasy, frightening, terrifying Catholicism, which is explained, because this Dutchman Jan Toorop is Javanese by birth.13 If Lorrain is correct, only three unique photos of The Three Brides existed: a second photo was in Paris with the symbolist painter Louis Welden Hawkins (1849-1910), while the whereabouts of the third version were not mentioned.14 Although The Three Brides was a sensation at the time, it was not reproduced as a print.15 By the late nineteenth century, it had become easier for artists to obtain photographs, reducing the desire for graphic art. Van Gogh mentioned photographing his works numerous times in letters to his brother. As a result of the rapid evolution of the art market, combined with romantic views on originality and authenticity, a unique photo served the growing needs of dealers and artists alike.16 Platinotypes became popular in the late nineteenth century when commercially produced platinum paper became available.17 The most durable of all photographic processes, it was surely inviting for Toorop to enhance the monochrome image with white heightening and washes in order to replicate a reduced impression of the drawing. To this purpose, it was printed on salted paper allowing the absorption of the wet mediums the artist applied with a brush.18 Although the archival photographic process of the platinum keeps the print unchanged, making the image virtually immortal, its use came to an abrupt halt in 1914, when platinum was needed to manufacture explosives used in World War I.

Siebelhoff 1976, op.cit., p. 230 Letter from Uzanne to Toorop, dated 31 March 1894, followed by a second letter dated 19 April 1894, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, C147-1 & 2, see: Siebelhoff 1976, op.cit., pp. 245-6, n. 91 & 92, p. 257 13 “Une visite de Jean Lorrain chez Octave Uzanne - 17, quai Voltaire (Samedi, 1er février 1896)”, Le Journal du Samedi, 8 February 1896 14 Sale Collection Octave Uzanne, Hotel Drouot, Paris, 30 May 1908, lot 163, “Toorop (J.H.), Les trois Fiancées. Photo sur papier salé, relevée de plume et de gouache et lavée d’encre de chine, avec dédicace.” Without size or illustration.

15 Paul Begheyn & Ruud Priem, Jan Toorop Studies, Zwolle 2009, pp. 21-22 16 Robert Verhoogt, Art in reproduction. Nineteenth-Century Prints after Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Jozef Israëls and Ary Scheffer, Amsterdam 2007, p. 24 17 Dusan C. Stulik | Art Kaplan, Platinotype, The Atlas of Analytical Signatures of Photographic Processes The Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles 2013, p. 5 18 The eyes of the seraphim kneeling on either side of the center bride are closed in the drawing, a change suggested by Van Wezel necessitated due to repairs after it returned from London to The Netherlands in the late 1890s. Bisanz-Prakken/Wezel, op.cit, p. 38 & Wezel, op.cit, p. 77.

11 12

This novel technique of a manipulated photograph certainly matched the inventiveness of The Three Brides. In the nineteenth century, neoplatonic views on the opposition between men and women found resonance through Nietzsche’s cultural criticism. Men were considered the creative force, in art and social life. Emotionally, however, a man was viewed as less developed and in need of a woman, solidifying the idea of an artist’s muse. Women were supposedly able to reach spiritualization sooner, this special power posing a threat to men. This dualism of the sexes was a central theme for the symbolists at the fin de siècle but Toorop’s The Three Brides remained a difficult to grasp enigma.

The artist preferred his audience to have their own interpretation, although Toorop attempted to divulge his ideas when prompted.19 The symmetry of good and evil disseminates from the innocent bride at the center. The mystical bride on the left is in a state of paralyzing surprise by the seraphim offering her lilies, symbols of purity. These spirits emanate from waves flowing out of a big bell held

by Christ’s hand. The bride of hell with skulls adorning her dress on the right holds a platter filled with blood. With her free hand, she keeps the mortals pushed down, proclaiming their weakness. The bell’s waves seem at war with the evil bride, her withered lilies sprouting snakes to fend off the seraphim propelled by Christ’s bell. The menacing loud bells remind one of a favorite of the Symbolists: Edgar Allan Poe’s The Bells from 1849, where the chimes begin as happy wedding bells foreboding luck and then turning into an alarm for a frantic fire. Hanging from the nail in Christ’s hand, the bells and stained glass represent virtuousness, keeping mankind from the temptation of sensuality. The row of houses symbolizes the threat of the city with her worldly dangers. But above all, it is the strands portraying abstract concepts as sound and smell and good and evil in elongated figures that send a shockwave through the art world in 1893.

19

Spaanstra-Polak, op.cit., pp. 119-129

Jan Toorop, The Three Brides, 1893, black chalk and pencil with white and some colored heightening on brown paper 78 x 98 cm., signed & dated, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands, inv.no. KM 104.449

8 Jan Toorop (1858-1928) Contemplatie (Nirwana) (Contemplation (Nirvana)), 1895 Pencil with white and blue heightening on paper 21 3/4 by 13 3/8 inches (55.2 by 34.1 cm.)

Signed & dated ‘J.Toorop 1895’

Provenance Dr. Titsing, 1897 Christie’s, Amsterdam, 22 May 1991, lot 4991 Sotheby’s, Amsterdam, 1 December 2004, lot 13 Private collection, Germany Studio 2000, Blaricum, 2012 Private collection, New York Exhibited Brussels, La Libre Esthétique, 25 February - 1 April 1897, no. 496 Frankfurt, Schirn Kunsthalle, Okkultismus und Avantgarde. Von Munch bis Mondrian 1900-1915, 3 June – 20 August 1995 Zeist, Slot Zeist, Jan Toorop, 15 October 1995 – 7 January 1996 Takamatsu, City Museum of Fine Arts, Symbolisme en Europe, 1 November – 8 December 1996, cat.no. 82, p. 122; Tokyo, Bunkamura Museum of Fine Arts, 14 December 1996 - 9 February 1997; Himeij, City Museum of Art, 15 February - 30 March 1997.

Katwijk, Katwijks Museum, Jan Toorop. Het Late Symbolisme, 23 October 2001 - 19 January 2002, no.

23 Domburg, Jan Toorop: Sporen van een Leven, 2005 The Hague, Gemeentemuseum, Toorop in Wenen: Inspiratie voor Klimt, 7 October 2006 - 7 January 2007, fig. 47, p. 40, cat.no. 121, pp. 223-225 The Hague, Gemeentemuseum, Jan Toorop, 26 February - 29 May 2016, cat.no. 189 Literature Paul Schultze-Naumberg, “Jan Toorop”, Die Kunst für Alle, 13, 1897/1898, no. 6, p. 91, ill.

Ph. Zilcken, “Jan Toorop”, Elsevier’s geïllustreerd maandschrift, 8, 1898, Vol. 1, p. 126 Albert Plasschaert, Jan Toorop, Amsterdam 1925, p. 36, no. 12 Bettina Polak, Het fin de siècle in de Nederlandse schilderkunst. De symbolistische beweging 1890-1900, The Hague 1955, cat.no. 78, p. 366 Marty Bax, “Theosophie und Kunst in den Niederlanden 1880-1915”, in: Okkultismus und Avantgarde.

Von Munch bis Mondrian 1900-1915, 1995, p. 282, fig. 226, p. 295 Catherine de Croës, François Daulte, a.o., Symbolisme en Europe, Tokyo 1996, cat.no. 82, p. 122 1 2

Alternative title Inward contemplation, according to a label on the verso at the time of the sale.

As ‘vrouw (op achtergrond nog een vrouw)’ (woman (another woman in the background), drawing

William Rothuizen, Jan Toorop in zijn tijd, Amsterdam 1998, cover ill., p. 17 ill.

Harry J. Kraaij & William Rothuizen, Jan Toorop: Het late Symbolisme, Amsterdam 2001 p. 17, ill., p. 36 Bettina Spaanstra-Polak, Het Symbolisme in de Nederlandse schilderkunst 1890-1900, Bussum 2004, no. 78, p. 366 M. Bisanz-Prakken, Toorop/Klimt. Toorop in Wenen: Inspiratie voor Klimt, exh.cat. Gemeentemuseum, The Hague 2005, cat.no. 121, p. 225 Marian Bisanz-Prakken, in: Gustav Klimt. The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky collections, exh.cat. Neue Galerie, New York 2007, pp. 257-258, ill.

Rosina Neginsky, a.o., Symbolism, Its Origins and Its Consequences, Newcastle upon Tyne 2010, fig. 2-10, p. 42 Gerard van Wezel, Jan Toorop. Zang der Tijden, The Hague 2016, cat.no. 189, p. 113 Gerard van Wezel, Jan Toorop. Gesang der Zeiten, Munich 2016, cat.no. 200, p. 119 After the completion of his most important drawing, The Three Brides, in 1893, Toorop returned to portraiture, employing his personal symbolism: the soul is revealed in a fantasy, embodying different types of beings rather than the formality of a portrait. The sitter no longer represents a particular woman, but rather the embodiment of a melancholic mood. The androgynous knight in armor in the background is a motif that made its first appearance in Fernand Khnopff’s Angel in 1889.

Although Gustav Klimt most likely never met Toorop in person, the Austrian artist was seemingly affected by his Dutch contemporary, whose work he encountered at international exhibitions like the Secession in Vienna.3 Toorop, participating in Viennese exhibitions from 1899 through 1902, was one of the most celebrated international artists at the turn of the century. While Nirvana was never exhibited in Vienna, it would likely have been familiar to Klimt from the reproduction in Die Kunst für Alle, the influential German magazine in 1898.4 Klimt’s Bleiches Gesicht (Pale Face) from 1903, heavily borrows the three-quarter length cropping of the woman, the sharp contours as well as the spiritual embodiment of the subject’s physiognomy. Crucial for the expression of reflection and meditation in both works are deep shadows around the eyes and the inward-directed gaze beneath heavy, half-lowered eyelids. Both faces are strikingly similar with the pointy chins, angular noses, and tightly closed lips.

Both faces are framed with wavy curly hair, although Toorop’s sparsely use of coloration, the overall translucency of Nirvana is surely sustained.

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), Bleiches Gesicht, 1903 Canvas, 80 x 40 cm.

Neue Galerie, New York, accession no. EL.41

3 4

Marian Bisanz-Prakken, “Gustav Klimt und die »Stilkunst« Jan Toorops, in: Klimt-Studien, Salzburg 1978, pp. 146-224, p.146 Schultze-Naumberg, op.cit., p. 19 https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/kfa1897_1898/0121

Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921) Avec Verhaeren. Un Ange, 1889 Mixed media on paper, 33 × 19.5 cm European private collection

9 Gustave Moreau (1826-1898) Hélène Glorifiée, 1896 Watercolor, gouache and shell gold on paper 12 by 9 1/8 inches (30.5 by 23.2 cm.)

Signed & inscribed ‘Gustave Moreau HÉLÈNE GLORIFIÉE’

Provenance Comtesse Greffulhe (1860-1952), Paris1 George Wildenstein (1892-1963), Paris Confiscated by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg following the Nazi occupation of Paris, after May 1940 (No. W161) Transferred to Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany, 15 January 1943 Returned to France, 13 November 1945, and restituted to George Wildenstein, 21 March 1947 Daniel Wildenstein (1917-2001), Paris 1976 Florence Gould (1895-1983), New York Her sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 24-25 April 1985, lot 12 Nomura Co., Ltd, Kyoto, until 1992 when the company name was changed to LECIEN Co., Ltd, Kyoto, by 1995 With Daniel Varenne (2018†), Geneva, 2003 Private collection, Switzerland Their sale, Christie’s, London, 21 November 2012, lot 14 Private collection, United States Exhibited Lausanne, Fondation de l'Hermitage, Chefs-d’Oeuvre de la collection Florence Gould, 1985 Zürich, Kunsthaus, Gustave Moreau Symboliste, 14 March - 25 May 1986, no. 139 Tokyo, National Museum of Western Art, Gustave Moreau, 21 March - 14 May 1995, no. 97 Kyoto, National Museum of Modern Art, 23 May - 9 July 1995 New York, David Zwirner, Endless Enigma, 12 September - 27 October 2018 Literature Robert de Montesquiou, Un peintre lapidaire. Gustave Moreau, exh.cat. Galerie George Petit, Paris, 1906, preface, p. 27 Pierre-Louis Mathieu, Gustave Moreau: Sa vie, son oeuvre, Fribourg, 1976, no. 425, p. 363 ill.

Pierre-Louis Mathieu, Gustave Moreau: Complete edition of the finished paintings, watercolours and drawings, Oxford, 1977, no. 425

In a letter dated 15 May 1896, Moreau mentioned sending three unfinished watercolors to Charles Ephrussi, among them Hélène Glorifiée, Mathieu, op.cit., 1976, p. 363. Ephrussi then supposedly delivered it to Comtesse Greffuhle, née Princess Elisabeth de Riquet de Caraman-Chimay at the Hôtel Greffruhle on rue d’Astorg, Paris.

1

Pierre-Louis Mathieu, “Gustave Moreau et le mythe d'Hélène”, in: Gazette des Beaux-Arts, September 1985, pp. 76-80 Toni Stooss, Gustave Moreau Symboliste, Zürich 1986, no. 139, pp. 284-285 Pierre-Louis Mathieu, Gustave Moreau. Monographie et Nouveau catalogue de l'oeuvre achevé, Courbevoie (Paris), 1998, pp. 123 & 421, no. 462 Gustave Moreau, exh.cat. Grand Palais, Paris, 1998, p. 204 Gustave Moreau, Between Epic and Dream, exh.cat. Art Institute, Chicago & Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Princeton, 1999, p. 227 Natasha Grigorian, European Symbolism: In search of Myth (1860-1910), Oxford/New York, 2009, pp. 52, 60-62 Marie-Cécile Forest & Pierre Pinchon, Gustave Moreau: Hélène de Troie. La beauté en majesté, Musée Gustave Moreau, Paris/Lyon, exh.cat. 2012, pp. 94-95 Gustave Moreau’s visionary works speak to an obsession with the otherworldly, the macabre, and the life of the imagination, making him one of the most fascinating artists of the nineteenth century.

Guided partly by his unusual religious faith, called Neo-Platonism, stressing the imperfection and impermanence of the physical world, Moreau captured the products of his imagination with precision.

Moreau believed that by doing so, he was allowing divine vision to speak through his brush. In Moreau’s art, moments depicted from biblical or mythical narratives are populated with ambiguous visual symbols, with divine and mortal beings locked in conflict, and with strange visions of venereal suffering.

In an era when paintings of mythological subjects often meant sentimentalized renderings or cold recitations of classical sculpture, Moreau was a pioneer with his intensely personal, fantastical, even perverse, interpretations. His works from the 1860s anticipate the Symbolist work of the 1880s, exploring interior consciousness rather than exterior observation. A solitary, wealthy intellectual, Moreau spent most of his life in Paris. His home in Montmartre is now a national museum, where most of the preparatory drawings and unfinished paintings are kept.

Helen of Troy had interested Moreau since his youth; in 1854 he executed an Abduction of Helen in the tradition of Poussin. The fatal beauty reappears in Moreau’s horrific monumental painting, now lost, exhibited at the Salon of 1880, in which she stands on the walls of Troy, presiding over the mass of victims of the war she caused. Helen, daughter of Zeus and Leda, married to Menelaus, King of Sparta, was, according to Homer’s Iliad, the most beautiful woman in the world. The Trojan prince Paris’s abduction of Helen precipitated the Trojan War. After a fruitless ten-year siege, the city fell to the ruse of the Trojan Horse. The Greeks slaughtered the Trojans and desecrated their temples. The discovery of the supposed ruins at Troy by Heinrich Schliemann in 1871, surely inspired artists and writers, already fascinated by mythology and distant places.

The present Hélène Glorifiée dated 1896, marks the culmination of Moreau’s developing thoughts on, and ambitions for, this topic. The small prototype from 1887 in the Musée Gustave Moreau, depicts Helen as equally fatal, but less malevolent than in the other pictorial incarnations; a mysterious enchantress who captures all mankind in her spell. The subject, taken from the rarely-read second part of Goethe’s Faust of 1832, requires extensive knowledge of Greek mythology. In the play, Faust, commanded by Mephisto to bring him the archetype of beauty, summons the spirit of Helen from Hades. Falling in love with Helen, Faust fathers her winged child Euphorion, who charms all with his beauty and gift for music before dying young and calling his mother back with him to Hades.

Helen, in a theatrical posture against a symbolic décor, no longer designates an episode of this myth; rather she is an innocent, whose beauty provoked the conflict through no fault of her own. Although in previous iterations presented as melancholic and resigned upon seeing the soldiers who had died for her beauty, Helen now is portrayed as a guiltless heroine. She is surrounded and glorified by her eternal admirers, the warrior on the left, the poet and king on the right, and her son at her feet. By reducing the number of victims to a symbolic triumvirate–warrior, prince, poet–representing combat, power and art, Helen is elevated to an iconic representation of majestic beauty. The vanquished are not dead or dying, simply subservient and in awe.

The complexity of the literal iconography notwithstanding, this mature work also draws upon a multitude of other sources for its imagery, which come together in a work that stands as one of the very best examples of Moreau’s unique strand of Symbolism. His rigorous academic draftsmanship combines aspects of the Virgin’s Assumption and Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, while the lotus flower that Helen holds in her hand is a traditional Buddhist symbol of purity and divine birth. These various elements are held together in a strongly vertical composition, the smaller figures and their bejeweled, flowing accessories, echoing those of Helen. There are other symbols in the work, but trying to fathom the meaning of each is to miss the effect of the whole, for they principally serve as accessories to reinforce a dominant, symbolic idea.

The intense and shimmering colors of the thickly applied gouache give Hélène Glorifiée a palpable depth and richness. The paint describing Helen’s long cloak has been combed through while wet with long, single filament brushstrokes, creating the finely ridged texture of combed hair, turning her garment into an iridescent extension of the golden plaits drooping off her shoulders. The starry orbs at the lower left and upper right are applied in abundant globs of paint, surrounded by rays of shell gold, historically made and stored in a shallow shell such as a clamshell. An expensive product, shell gold consists of powdered gold leaf mixed with gum Arabic, traditionally used in icons and illuminated manuscripts. Moreau’s use of gold, arduous to use effectively, conveys the importance he placed on the commission and his abilities as a superb draftsman and watercolorist. The intense blues, embellished with a hallucinogenic jewel-like surface akin to cloisonné enamel, create an image rising far beyond the kind of hazy mysticism prevalent in fin-de-siècle Paris.

Commissioned by the Comtesse Grefullhe, who promoted artists such as Whistler and Rodin and frequented Moreau’s studio, Hélène Glorifiée must have been widely admired in her Parisian Salon at the end of the nineteenth century. The Comtesse also owned Moreau’s Salomé au Jardin, Sainte Elisabeth, Saint Jean-Baptiste given to her by her husband Henry when their daughter Elaine was born in 1882.2 Delivered to the Comtesse by the Moreau’s friend and patron, the important Parisian collector of Impressionism and Japanese art Charles Ephrussi (1849-1905)3, the fate of this remarkable work would take a tragic turn when it was confiscated in Paris during World War II and transferred to Schloss Neuschwanstein in Germany, a depot for Nazi plunder from the occupied territories. Restituted to the owner, the art dealer George Wildenstein after the war, the Moreau would have yet another illustrious owner: Florence Gould, the wealthy New York socialite and patron of the arts, who may have identified with the ravishing beauty of Helen.

Gustave Moreau Hélène Glorifiée or La Grande Hélène Oil on canvas, 230 x 120 cm.

Musée Gustave Moreau, Paris, cat. 217

2 3

Anne de Cossé Brissac, La Comtesse Greffulhe, Paris 1991, p. 105 Charles Ephrussi’s collection of netsuke is the protagonist in Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010).

Gustave Moreau, Hélène Glorifiée, 1887 Watercolor, 19 x 12 cm., Musée Gustave Moreau, Paris, cat. 488

10 Auguste Donnay (1862-1921) Hamadryade, 1898 Conté crayon and pastel on wove paper 21 by 13 1/2 in. (53.2 by 34.5 cm.)

Signed & dated ‘Aug. Donnay 1898’

Provenance Private collection, Germany Eric Gillis Fine Art, Brussels, 2017 Private collection, United States The Belgian symbolist Auguste Donnay–less familiar today than his contemporaries Fernand Khnopff and Xavier Mellery–trained at the Academy in Liège, followed by a sojourn in Paris from 1887 to 1888.1 Donnay produced drawings and illustrations and designed covers for the Almanach des poètes in the 1890s. At the world exhibition in Liège in 1905, celebrating Belgium’s 75-year independence, Donnay became a protagonist for a Walloon style as the signature for Flemish painting.

Donnay’s own interest was mostly in mystic figures associated with nature such as fauns and melancholic women leaning against trees. The mythological nymph hamadryade, half human-half tree, is the perfect protagonist for the artist. In this sheet, her elongated limbs, extend and transform into branches, her skin tone emulating the color of the surrounding trees. When Donnay’s childhood friend, the artist Armand Rassenfosse (1862-1934), introduced him to Félicien Rops (1833-1898) in 1892, their interaction was paramount for the young artist.

The term Art Nouveau first appeared in the Belgian art journal L’Art Moderne in 1884 to describe the work of Les XX. While the movement was an international response to academic art of the nineteenth century, inspired by natural forms and the curved lines of plants and flowers, artists in Belgium developed their own stylistic language often inspired by novelties and material from Africa’s Congo Free State ruled by King Leopold II as his private possession since 1885. Pillaging the country from its lucrative rubber and precious minerals, Belgians looted an additional 180,000 items. In preparation for the world exhibition of 1887 in Brussels, abundant supplies of ivory, tropical woods and metals were made available to artists.

Stefan van den Bossche, Zuiver en ontroerend beweegloos. Prerafaëlitische sporen I the Belgische kunst en literatuur, Antwerpen-Apeldoorn 2016, pp. 369-370 1

The unprecedented economic prosperity and overseas expansion of fin-de-siècle Belgium provided progressive artists with elite patrons and budgets awash in Congo dividends.2 Invigorated by the successful African venture, artistic creativity was expressed in architecture, decorative and fine arts throughout the country.

Donnay’s Hamadryade may have well been inspired by Congo motifs and the Coup de Fouet or whiplash style so fashionable at the time.

Congolese collecting latex from rubber vines, 1897 Photograph by F. Michel Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium

Deborah Silverman, “Art Nouveau, Art of Darkness: African Lineages of Belgian Modernism, Part I”, West 86th, Vol. 18, no. 2, 2011, pp. 130-181, p. 144 2

Félicien Rops Les Hamadryades, 1881 Chalk, ink and pencil on paper, 33.5 x 20,5 cm Musée Félicien Rops, Namur, Belgium, inv.no. CFR008-APC741

11 Antoon van Welie (1866-1956) Portrait of Agnes Aronstein-Lewin, 1898 Pastel on paper in its original mount and frame 23 5/8 by 19 1/2 inches (60 by 49.5 cm.)

Signed & dated ‘A. VAN WELIE . ft 1898’

Provenance Galerie de la Bodinière, Paris, 1899 Private collection, France Exhibited Antwerp, Pavillion Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antoon van Welie, 1899 Paris, La Bodinière, Antoon van Welie, 1899 Literature P. de Mont, “Antoon van Welie”, De Vlaamse School, 1899, pp. 121-140 (as “een andere dame in rood gekleed op gele fon”) K. van Lieverloo & P. Roelofs, Antoon van Welie. De laatste decadente schilder 1866-1956, Zwolle/Nijmegen 2007, p. 108 Johannes Antonius (Antoon) van Welie was born in the small town of Afferden in Gelderland in the Netherlands on December 18, 1866. He studied art in Belgium and received critical acclaim in Paris.

He lived between Paris, London and Rome, where he had a studio in Vatican City and received Papal commissions. A protagonist of the international Symbolist movement in his early career, Van Welie became the most celebrated Dutch portraitist, whose portraits were in demand amongst high society and celebrities throughout Europe such as Sarah Bernhardt and Isadora Duncan.1 He exhibited at the galleries of Bernheim Jeune and George Petit in Paris, while amassing a substantial collection of old master paintings.2 Eventually, Van Welie settled in The Hague where he remained until his death on September 24th, 1956.

Most likely, the present portrait was first exhibited in 1899 in Antwerp in a wooden annex to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts. At the request of one of his biggest early supporters, chief curator Pol de Mont (1857-1931), Van Welie contributed approximately thirty-five works, including twelve portraits.3 After De Mont published an article in the British magazine The Studio, comparing Van Welie to the likes of Toorop, Khnopff and Minne, his international career was launched.4 In Paris, De Mont found an ally in the influential writer Anatol France (1844-1924), who convinced gallery De la Bodinière to take the Antwerp show that same year, explaining how this early portrait ended up in a French collection.

K. van Lieverloo, op.cit., pp. 8 & 34.

Sale Collection Antoon van Welie, 7 April 1936, Amsterdam, Mak van Waay, with over 150 old masters.

3 Lieverloo, op.cit., p. 105 4 P. de Mont, “Studio-Talk”, in: The Studio, October 1899, pp. 62-65 1 2

Although both exhibitions lack a catalogue, the model is possibly Agnes Johanna Aronstein-Lewin (1869-?), based on the likeliness of her Whistler-esque portrait in a private collection, Belgium. The Lewin family moved from Germany to ‘s Hertogenbosch, in the Netherlands, where they became acquainted with Antoon van Welie. Agnes older sister, Antonia Lewin (1858-1938), was a student of Van Welie. Portraits dated 1898 of the family, father Falk Lewin (1829-1899) and the two sisters Antonia and Agnes were included in a group show in the Netherlands that same year, where they caught the attention of Pol de Mont.5 On 20 November 1895, the twenty-six-year-old Agnes married the German-born Joseph Aronstein (1867-1940) and the couple lived in Brussels. During World War II, Agnes lived in Barcelona, but other than that, little is known about her life.

5

Lieverloo, op.cit., p. 102

Antoon van Welie Portrait of Agnes Johanna Aronstein-Lewin Oil on canvas, 156 x 83 cm.

Private collection, Ghent, Belgium

12 Georges Le Brun (1873-1914) L’Homme au poêle (The Man at the Stove), ca. 1898 Charcoal and watercolor highlights on paper 24 3/4 by 14 1/8 inches (63 by 36 cm.)

Provenance Private collection, Brussels With Eric Gillis Fine Arts, Brussels, 2017 Private collection, New York Exhibited Namur, musée Félicien Rops, Georges Le Brun. Maitre de l'intime, 24 October 2015 - 6 March 2016 Literature Denis Laoureux, Véronique Carpiaux, a.o., Georges Le Brun. Maitre de l'intime, Paris 2015, p. 147, ill., cat.raisonné no. 143 Born in 1873 in Verviers, a Walloon city close to the German border, Le Brun started his artistic education with private lessons in drawing and watercolor. After an intermezzo at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 1895, Le Brun continued his training at the La Patte de Dindon, an independent artist's studio established around 1900 with fellow members Firmin Baes and Eugène Laermans. Like many other artists at the end of the nineteenth century in search of the masters of the Golden Age, Le Brun travelled to Holland in 1897, where he became fascinated by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Pieter de Hooch. In 1900, he travelled through Italy and in 1903 spent two months in Paris. Le Brun published regularly in L’Art moderne and participated in various exhibitions, including La Libre Esthétique. At age forty-one, Le Brun’s career ended abruptly, killed in one of the earliest battles of the First World War on the Western Front in Stuivekenskerke.

In the early part of his career, Le Brun devoted himself to sober depictions of country interiors, recalling the peasant scenes of his predecessor Vincent van Gogh. Similar in introspection, Le Brun searched for the spirituality of simple country life and its dignified farmers. At the same time, the artist absorbed Belgian symbolism, creating eerie empty interiors with doors taking the place for the unknown emanating uncertainty. In contrast to the sun-filled landscapes of the luminists, artists began depicting shadowy nocturnal or twilight scenes in which forms appear to emerge out of darkness.

With the Industrial Revolution, a range of new black drawing articles exploded, contributing to a growing awareness of the material qualities of drawing as an object.

With its diffuse lighting and shadowy contours, The Man at the Stove embodies the strange and foreign in the familiar. In the semi-darkness of the dim light, the elongated figure emerges out of darkness, his identity concealed. It is in this visual puzzle revolving around everyday situations that the principle of Symbolism is revealed, namely to perceive and to expect a different, unknown meaning behind every manifestation of reality, the closed door suggesting a further level of events not accessible to the viewer.

This quest for darkened realms shepherded new subject matter, such as dream states and nonidealized representations of contemporary life. These eerie, frozen figures located in mysterious interiors represent the loss of absolute certainties as experienced in urban life.

George Le Brun The Vestibule, 1909 Charcoal highlighted with pastel on paper, 62 x 48 cm.

Musée d'Orsay, Paris, inv.no. RF42661

13 Adolph von Menzel (1815-1905) Head of a Bearded Man, 1899 Carpenter’s pencil with stumping 8 1/4 by 5 1/8 inches (21 by 13 cm.)

Signed & dated ‘A. Menzel ’99’ ‘Zum 9.6.99’

Provenance Sale, Gerd Rosen Auktionen, Berlin, 7 May 1958, lot 652, est. DM4801, where acquired by Private collection, Heidelberg, Germany, by descent to Private collection, Cleveland, OH Adolph Menzel was born in Breslau in 1815, the son of a headmaster, who soon afterwards founded a lithographic press, in which Adolph worked from the age of fourteen. The family moved to Berlin in 1830 and Adolph soon became responsible after his father’s untimely death. In 1833, Menzel attended the Royal Academy of Art, where he met the wallpaper manufacturer Carl Heinrich Arnold, who would become a friend and patron. Success as an artist came early with a commission from the art dealer and publisher Louis Sachse. Menzel joined the prestigious Royal Academy of Art in 1853 as professor.

Two years later, Menzel visited Paris for the first time and would return frequently to the French capital. In 1867, Menzel was decorated with the Cross of the Légion d’honneur and awarded a medal for his painting of Frederick and His Troops at the Battle of Hochkirch. The first comprehensive show of his work was mounted in 1884, followed by numerous shows in Germany and abroad. He was made an honorary citizen of Breslau and Berlin, an honorary member of the St Petersburg Academy, and member of the Paris and London Academies. In 1898, he became the first artist to be knighted, allowing him to become Adolph von Menzel. Menzel died in Berlin in 1905.

According to the auction catalogue, the exchange rate was DM100 = $23.85, therefore making the estimate $115. A postal receipt dated 18 May 1958 states a declared shipping value of DM 437.

1

Exceedingly prolific during his lifetime, with over 10,000 recorded drawings, Menzel’s artistic output entered institutions and private collections at rapid speed, with few works being available. The trailblazer of German Realist art, Menzel strived to render drawings that were more realistic than photography could capture. The present Menzel drawing from 1888 bears witness to the artist’s adoption of graphite and stump as his most important tools in his later years, after abandoning urban life subjects in oils. As a great admirer of Rembrandt etchings, Menzel ultimately returned to pencil drawings, the medium in which he would leave his most important legacy. Our bearded gentleman seems to have made another appearance in a later drawing, now in Berlin’s Kupferstichkabinett.

Adolph von Menzel Zwei Damen mit Hut und bärtiger Herr, ca. 1900-05 Graphite, partly wiped & scratched on vélin paper, fixed, 13.2 x 21.2 cm.

Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, inv.no. SZ Menzel N 2019

14 Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931) Uomo in Chiesa (Man Seated in a Church), ca. 1900 Watercolor on paper 17 5/8 x 17 5/8 inches (44.8 x 45 cm.)

Inscribed ‘12. uomo in chiesa’ & ‘n° 121 atelier Boldini./ Emilia Boldini.’ verso

Provenance Atelier Boldini, Paris The artist’s widow, Emilia Cardona Boldini (studio stamp (L. 272b) Studio sale, Galerie Jean Charpentier, Paris, 30 June 1936, lot 39, where acquired by Wildenstein & Co., Paris Baron Maurice de Rothschild (1881-1957), by descent Their sale, Fifteen paintings by Giovanni Boldini collected by the late Baron Maurice de Rothschild, Christie’s, New York, 1 November 1995, lot 1 Colnaghi, London, 1996, where acquired by Private collection Their sale, Christie’s, New York, 24 January 2017, lot 124, where acquired by Private collection, New York Literature Emilia Cardona, Lo studio di Giovanni Boldini, Milan 1937, no. 121, pl. LXXXV Carlo Ragghianti & Ettore Camesasca, L’opera completa di Boldini, Milan 1970, pp. 114-115, no. 3171 Piero & Francesca Dini, Giovanni Boldini 1842-1931: Catalogo ragionato. III/2. Catalogo ragionato della pittura a olio con un’ampia selezione di pastelli e acquerelli, Turin 2002, pp. 406-407, no. 754 Tiziano Panconi, Giovanni Boldini: L’opera completa, Florence 2002, p. 401, ill.

The son of a painter and restorer in Ferrara, Giovanni Boldini studied at Florence’s Art Academy in 1864. He first exhibited his work in 1867, visiting the Exposition Universelle in Paris the same year.

Early on, Boldini stood out as a portrait painter. During a trip to London in 1870 he received several portrait commissions. The following year, he established a studio in Paris. Boldini first showed at the Salon in 1874. Through his Parisian dealer Adolphe Goupil, Boldini’s portraits of elegant women in lavish interiors found aficionados in England and America. After moving to a new studio in 1885, Boldini started to produce society portraits, soon developing a formidable reputation for his dazzling, elegant depictions of Parisian high society. By the turn of the century Boldini was the most soughtafter portrait painter in Paris. He befriended John Singer Sargent and Whistler, and became close friends with Degas. His fame reached as far as America, from where he received numerous commissions after exhibiting at Boussod, Valadon & Co. in New York in 1897.

1

Incorrectly listed as located in the Museo Boldini in Ferrara.

Boldini was a gifted and somewhat compulsive draughtsman, filling several sketchbooks, menus, postcards and receipts with dynamic sketches and more elaborate studies. A large group of drawings were bequeathed by the artist’s widow in 1935 to the Museo Giovanni Boldini in Ferrara. Among them is a portrait of Degas, depicted in a similar meditative pose with his cheek resting in his hand.

The present energetic watercolor is possibly a portrait of his friend the caricaturist Georges “Sem” Gourçat (1863-1934). Listed among the properties left by the artist in his studio, carefully catalogued by his wife Emilia Cardona Boldini, this luminous drawing soon after entered the collection of Maurice de Rothschild, a friend and passionate collector of Boldini’s work.

Giovanni Boldini Portrait of Edgar Degas, c. 1885-90 Charcoal on canvas, 60.5 x 46 cm.

Museo Boldini, Ferrara

Sem and Boldini, Paris, 1902 Photo from Bianca Doria, Boldini, Amico Mio, Rizzoli 1998

15 Jacobus van Looy (1855-1930) The Gardener (Hein de Ruijer), ca. 1900 Pastel on colored paper 16 7/8 by 10 5/8 inches (43 by 27 cm.)

Signed & initialed ‘JvL’

Provenance Eline Th. Verkade and W. Braat, heir to the painter Jan Verkade, by descent to Private collection, Deventer, The Netherlands Jacobus van Looy was born on 12 September 1855 in Haarlem, the son of a carpenter, who lost his job when his eyesight began to fail. His mother passed away when he was five years old and when his father died soon afterwards, the young Jacobus ended up in the local orphanage. He trained to become a house painter, but was able to follow drawing classes from 1877 at the Rijksacademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. In 1884, Van Looy received the Prix de Rome, which allowed him to travel.

The following two years he spent traveling through Italy, Spain and Morocco. Until 1892 he lived in Amsterdam, when he married Titia van Gelder and moved to Soest. In 1901, they spent a year travelling through Spain and Morocco. Van Looy moved back to Haarlem in 1913, the year the orphanage where he grew up was vacated and became the current location of the Frans Hals Museum.

Van Looy was a successful author and editor of the prestigious De Nieuwe Gids. After he received a critical review of his art, he focused on his writing and just painted for personal pleasure. His wife’s well-to-do family supported the couple and acquired some of the most important works. The majority of his collection remained in the family, while his Haarlem home on the corner of the Haarlemmerhout Park was converted to a museum in his name after his death in 1930. It closed in 1976 and the collection was transferred to the Frans Hals Museum. The Teylers Museum in Haarlem holds Van Looy’s early drawings from his travels.

The sitter in the present pastel is Hein de Ruijer, Van Looy’s loyal gardener in Soest, near Utrecht, where he and Titia resided between 1894 and 1907. In the countryside surrounding their villa Zomerzorg, the meadows and hayfields were an important source of inspiration for many of Van Looy’s most celebrated paintings in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and Teylers Museum. Similar sized oil paintings–a sketch on panel and a close-up on canvas–as well as a sketch on cream-colored paper of Hein de Ruijer are in the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem. Both oils and works on paper are preparatory studies for a much larger painting, Hein de Ruijer: in the garden in autumn.

Jacobus van Looy Hein de Ruijer: gardener Soest, 1894-1907 Oil on panel, 44.3 x 32.8 cm.

Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem Inv.no. vL96-59

Jacobus van Looy Hein de Ruijer: In the garden in autumn Oil on canvas, 139 x 105 cm.

Present whereabouts unknown

Jacobus van Looy Hein de Ruijer, 1900 Oil on canvas, 36 x 27 cm.

Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem Inv.no. vL96-64

Jacobus van Looy Study of gardener Hein, 1900 Pastel, 37 x 28.5 cm.

Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem Inv.no. vL49-282r

Jacobus van Looy Juli (Zomerweelde), ca. 1890-1900 Canvas, 120 x 170 cm.

Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, on loan to the Rijksmuseum, accession no. SK-C-1645

16 Jan Veth (1864-1925) Portrait of Jacobus van Looy (1855-1930) Pencil on paper 10 5/8 by 7 1/2 inches (27 by 19 cm.)

Monogrammed ‘J.V.’ & inscribed ‘Jac van Looy’ Squared up in pencil

Provenance Private collection, The Netherlands Jan Veth was the son of Gerradus Huibert Veth, a Dordrecht iron merchant and liberal politician, and Anna Cornelia Giltay. On his mother’s side he descended from a long lineage of Dordrecht artists: his great-grandfather was Jacob van Strij. Veth received his art education at the Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam where he enrolled in 1880. With several of his fellow students he founded the St. Lucas group. From 1885 he worked with the painter Anton Mauve in Laren. He married Anna Dorothea Dirks on 10 August 1888, had five children and settled in nearby Bussum.

Veth was an influential art critic, poet, and portraitist. Among his sitters were Max Liebermann, Jan Toorop, and Adolph von Menzel. As portraitist of the intellectual elite and editor of the De Nieuwe Gids, Veth entered the heart of the Dutch art world in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Precisely in a period in which that world went through major developments, Veth recorded its protagonists. Veth wrote with his brush and painted with his pen. In impassioned art criticism he gave his own subtle view of the changes in art, determining which artists were relevant. From Rembrandt to Redon, Veth was an important tastemaker, playing a pivotal role in the Dutch art world at the time.

At the art academy, Veth met the older student Jacobus van Looy. Their mentor, August Allebé (1838-1927), led an entire generation of artists to great prominence, whose careers would remain intertwined by the artists societies De Nederlandse Etsclub, St. Lucas, and Flanor. But most importantly both artists presence at De Tachtigers (The Movement of Eighty), started in the 1880s against conservative mainstream literature, solidified their prominence in the cultural landscape in Holland. Veth made a lithograph of Van Looy, published in 1896, for which the preparatory drawing is in the Dordrechts Museum. It is likely that Veth made several sketches of his friend and colleague with whom he shared an artistic and literary interest throughout their careers.

Jan Veth, Portrait of Jacobus van Looy, 1896 Colored chalk on paper, 39.9 x 38.1 cm.

Dordrechts Museum, object no. DM/975/T691

17 Jacobus van Looy (1855-1930) A Water Carrier in Tangier, 1902 Pastel on paper 12 5/8 by 9 7/8 inches (32 by 25 cm.)

Signed ‘Jac.v. Looy’

Provenance The artist, by descent to the previous owners Private collection, Werkhoven, The Netherlands Exhibited Possibly Haarlem, Huis van Looy, Schilderijen en Teekenwerk van Jacobus van Looy, 1934, as ‘Een waterdrager langs de blauwe baai’, cat. p. 8 Haarlem, Frans Halsmuseum, Jacobus van Looy, 13 November 1982 - 9 January 1983 Haarlem, Teylers Museum, Looy met den noorderzon, weg!! De reizen van Jacobus van Looy, 19 December 1998 - 7 March 1999 Literature E. Scheepers, C. Will a.o., Looy met den noorderzon, weg!! De reizen van Jacobus van Looy, Zutphen, 1998, ill. front cover In 1884, Van Looy received the Prix de Rome, allowing him to travel abroad. The next year, Van Looy started his Grand Tour and left for Rome, followed by visits to Venice and Genoa. In 1886 he traveled to Spain and in the footsteps of Don Quixote, he crossed over to Spain’s overseas protectorate Morocco. The inspiration of Tangier was not limited to his frantic visual production; the confrontational experience also propelled his writing. Upon his return in Amsterdam, he wrote his first novel Gekken (Madmen), recounting the autobiographical encounter of a procession of madmen, considered saints in Tangier. Travelling in Marocco, Van Looy produced primarily black chalk drawings.1 He only had his sketchbook available since he had left his paint supplies in Sevilla to save costs, a regrettable decision. In a letter to August Allebé, dated 21 November 1886, Van Looy expressed that Tangier had been the most inspiring place and planned to visit again.2

Chris Will, a.o., Jacobus van Looy 1855-1930. Niets is zo mooi als zien…, exh.cat. Frans Halsmuseum, Haarlem 1998, p. 124 F.P. Huygens, Jacobus van Looy; Wie dronk toen water! Bloemlezing uit de briefwisseling met A. Allebé gedurende zijn Prix de Rome-reis 1885-1886, Amsterdam 1975, pp. 265-270 1 2

Fifteen years later, accompanied by his wife, he was finally able to fulfil his wish. Together they left the Netherlands in November 1901, arriving in Morocco in January 1902 via France and Spain. Only this time, now with paint supplies, was Van Looy able to execute small oil studies and pastels, and a novel Reizen (Travelling). The present pastel was likely executed during the artist’s second trip to Tangier, when he produced a series depicting African water carriers, considered the best works produced in Morocco.3 One of the sketches is described by Van Looy in a letter from 1905 as accomplished due to the rendering of “the allure of the rocking and weird walking” executed with “gun fast skilled fingers”.4 This time, Van Looy regretted not having brought along a camera, forcing him to make quick sketches of his impressions.5 Lauded as a writer but criticized as an artist, Van Looy limited his artistic production to painting his flower garden and portraits of familiar faces in proximity: family, his loyal gardener, innocent children and often himself. With the majority of his artistic output placed in Dutch public collections, most works that are still in private hands are in the artist’s extended family or circle of friends. One of his largest paintings of his garden in Soest - source of inspiration for so many of his artworks - is on view at the Rijksmuseum.

J. de Hond & E. Scheepers, “’Gij zit dat maar den heelen dag op kameelen, drommedarissen en giraffen en platte daken, maar wij zitten hier stil te Baarn’. Twee Marokaanse reizen”, in: Looy met den noorderzon, weg!!, op.cit., p. 83 4 Letter to the writer Herman Robbers, 12 November 1905, NLMD, in: Hond & Scheepers, op.cit., p. 86 5 A smaller pastel of the same African water carrier appeared on the art market recently at Venduehuis, The Hague, 15 December 2020, lot 124.

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18 Theo van Hoytema (1863-1917) Portrait of an old farmer, ca. 1900 Pastel and charcoal on board 21 5/8 by 17 inches (55 x 43 cm.)

Monogrammed ‘ThH’ & inscribed ‘ATELIER VAN HOYTEMA RNRH’1

Provenance Estate sale Theo van Hoytema, Frederik Muller & Cie., Amsterdam, 14 November 1917, lot 423 Private collection, The Netherlands Theodoor van Hoytema was born in The Hague, the youngest in a family with seven siblings.

Orphaned at a young age, he decided early on that he was destined to become an artist. By 1890, he established a studio in Pax Instrantibus, a simple garden house near castle De Brinckhorst, outside of The Hague. Hoytema was the first artist in the Netherlands who integrated lithographic illustrations with text in Hans Christian Andersens’s The Ugly Duckling. Published in 1894, it immediately gained success and established Hoytema as a sought-after multidisciplinary artist. At the International Exhibition in San Francisco in 1915, Hoytema won a gold medal.

The influence of Japanese art and English illustrators such as Walter Crane are apparent in his work, as are the Art Nouveau stylized elements prevalent at the turn of the century. Almost his entire output whether they are paintings, drawings, graphic work or applied arts, have animals as a subject. With a focus on graphic works, Hoytema kept his sketches and drawings mounted in portfolios organized by subject spanning a period of three decades of artistic output.2 Rarely did he sign or date drawings and therefore it is difficult to establish a chronology. Suffering from a chronic illness, most likely syphilis, Hoytema’s artistic output is limited to the beginning of the twentieth century. When Hoytema died in 1917, as per his wish, the majority of his oeuvre entered the collections of the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, while over one-hundred drawings of animals and landscapes were sold at auction. The present pastel was the only fully executed portrait in the sale, an outlier in Hoytema’s dedication to the animal kingdom.

Theo van Hoytema Eight Peacocks, 1892 Watercolor on paper 105.3 x 43.5 cm.

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, object no. RP-T-1965-343

1 2

Studio stamp with monogram Richard Nicolaus Roland Holst (1868-1938), an artist in charge of the estate.

Marjan Boot, Theo van Hoytema 1863-1917, Zwolle 1999, pp. 97-117

19 Chris Beekman (1887-1964) Young Woman in Profile, 1906 Black chalk, graphite and white heightening on paper 18 3/4 by 12 1/2 inches (47.8 by 31.7 cm.)

Signed & dated ‘Chris Beekman 1906’

Provenance W. Hoogendijk, The Netherlands Politicized at the early age of thirteen as a worker in the porcelain factory Rozenburg in The Hague, Chris Beekman elevated the hardship of laborers throughout his career. Although the factory’s artistic output around 1900 is at the height of Art Nouveau design in the Netherlands, Beekman, influenced by artists such as Théophile Steinlen and Vincent van Gogh, chose to depict the vagabonds and the destitute of everyday life in his own work. The artistic milieu at Rozenburg, where he would remain employed until 1909, surely introduced him to the fashionable artists at the time. Artists active in The Hague at the time such as Breitner and Toorop and his teacher Willem Bastiaan Tholen all greatly influenced the young Beekman. It was not until Beekman met the most influential H.P. Bremmer, advisor to Hélène Kröller-Müller, in 1913, that his career as an artist was solidified. Bremmer, an early supporter of Van Gogh, bought fifty drawings by Beekman and placed over one-hundred works in the collection of the Kröller-Müller Museum.

Rarely do works appear on the art market.

Chris Beekman Workers, 1915 Oil on canvas, 42 x 65 cm.

Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterloo, inv.no. KM 130.382

Venturing into abstraction in 1917 as an important contributor to the avant-garde collective De Stijl, Beekman’s reputation was soon overshadowed by its most zealous members, Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondriaan and Gerrit Rietveld, after his return to realism in 1922. In fact, he had already parted from the De Stijl in 1919, after Van Doesburg accused him of politicizing the movement. In 1926, Beekman moved to Amsterdam. The turbulent times of the interbellum, marked by the emergence of fascism, the founding of the Dutch Communist Party and the crash of the stock exchange in 1929 triggering the Great Depression, Beekman decided to create art with an appeal to mass audiences.

Sympathetic to the social struggles of the labor movement, Beekman rejected abstraction altogether.

Avant-garde tendencies were now replaced by a realistic style to depict the Amsterdam laborers and unemployed, coming full circle to the start of his career.

20 Antoon van Welie (1866-1956) Echo, 1908 Charcoal, black chalk and gouache on paper 29 by 19 7/8 inches (73.5 by 50.5 cm.)

Signed & dated ‘Antoon van Welie ft 1908-’

Provenance Studio 2000, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1992 Private collection, The Netherlands Christie’s, Amsterdam, 13-14 May 2014, lot 230 Mathieu Néouze, Paris Exhibited The Hague, Boussod Valadon & Cie, Tentoonstelling van schilderijen en tekeningen door Antoon van Welie, April 19081 Literature Studio 2000 Magazine, September 1992, no. 3, pp. 18-19, ill.2 Van Welie’s symbolist style is unusual in Holland at a time when the general taste is still focused on the traditional painters from The Hague school. In contrast, Van Welie’s interest in mythology and fairy tales however, reveals more common interests with artists such as Fernand Khnopff, Franz von Stuck and his countryman Jan Toorop.

Love and ill-fated yearning became Van Welies primary subject matter, inspired by wide ranging sources from Wagner’s tragic opera Tristan and Isolde to Shakespeare’s heroine Ophelia; any contemporary play or poem could become a source. The present Echo derives from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The talkative nymph Echo was much admired by Venus for her magnificent voice.

After misleading Juno into believing that her husband Jupiter is in town, Juno curses Echo by making her able only to finish a sentence, but not to start one; hence unable to say anything on her own.

The moment depicted is after Echo has fallen in love with Narcissus, who rejects her. Echo prays silently to Venus, who disembodies her until she remains a voice and is heard by all, the aural phenomenon we know today as echo. Narcissus, deeply infatuated with his own reflection in the water, wastes away with love for himself, echoing the manner in which Echo did earlier. After his body has fully disappeared, the flower that bears his name sprung up in its place.

1

Boussod, Valadon & Cie was a branch of the French gallery Goupil & Co., with offices in Paris, London, Berlin, New York and The Hague.

2 With dimensions 68 x 45 cm.

21 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.

1

C. Easton, op.cit., p. 8

The sleeping subject of The Dream of the Seven Hills is the young poetess Miek Janssen (18901953), 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 Donderdag-Goede Vrijdag, signed & dated ‘JThT 1914’ Pencil, 13.5 x 13.5 cm., present location unknown

Inscribed “Vreemd en siddrend ziels- gezoem....../ Wolk omwaade sterren dooven,/ Als door dauw bestreelde bloem,/ Smarten -wijde lijdens-oogen......”

(Strange and shuddering soul-buzz...... /Cloud fanned stars quench, /Like dew-streaked flower, / Sorrows-wide suffering-eyes.....)

2

22 Firmin Baes (1874-1943) Vieux paysan du Condroz (Old farmer from the Condroz), ca 1915 Pastel on canvas 30 5/8 by 23 1/8 inches (78 by 59 cm.)

Signed ‘Firmin Baes’

Provenance Private collection, Belgium Sale, Bernaerts Auctioneers, Brussels, 19 June 2017, lot 345 Private collection, United States Firmin Baes was born into an artistic family of framers, decorators, and architects in Brussels.1 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 received again 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.

1

Chantal Lemal-Mengeot, “Firmin Baes”, in: Nouvelle Biographie Nationale, Brussels 2001, Vol. 6, pp. 17-18

23 Wilm Wouters (1887- 1957) Geertje Karregat ‘De Zaligmaker’, ca. 1922 Oil on canvas 42 x 33 1⁄4 inches (108 x 85 cm.)

Signed ‘W. Wouters’

Provenance Private collection, De Rijp, The Netherlands Exhibited Enkhuizen, Zuiderzeemuseum, Volendam Kunstenaarsdorp het Erfgoed van Hotel Spaander (Volendam Artists Village, The Heritage of Hotel Spaander), 11 November 2009 – 2 May 2010 Volendam, Volendams Museum, Wilm Wouters schildert Volendam, 15 March – 8 November 2015 Literature Brian Dudley Barrett & André Groeneveld, Volendam Kunstenaarsdorp het Erfgoed van Hotel Spaander (Volendam Artists Village, The Heritage of Hotel Spaander), exh.cat. Enkhuizen 2009, p. 149, ill.

“Wilm Wouters Schildert Volendam” in de-Maarschalk, 10 March 2015, ill.

Wilm Wouters was born in The Hague in 1887. From 1909 to 1914, he was enrolled at the Rijksakademie and studied with Nicolaas van der Waay in Amsterdam. In 1918, Wouters moved to the village of Volendam, changing his life forever.1 In search of the “unspoiled” life of the villagers, from the 1880s onwards, artists from all over the world had become enamored of all things Dutch, and arrived in droves to search for what they considered the “true” Holland. Volendam, eleven miles north of Amsterdam, was a remote fishing village accessible only by boat or carriage. Such isolation had left Volendam largely untouched by the modernization and industrialization dominating cities.

Wouters lived in Volendam until 1925, when he returned to Amsterdam.

The Hotel Spaander was one of Volendam’s principal attractions. Entrepreneurial innkeeper Leendert Spaander (1855-1955) decorated the hotel with historic rooms to rent out to artists. For an additional fee, he would supply models, often one of his seven daughters. His youngest, Conny, married Wouters in 1919, solidifying the artist’s connection to Volendam. At Hotel Spaander, art accumulated from unsettled debt, attracting tourists to visit the ever-expanding collection. Americans like Andrew Carnegie, William Randolph Hearst, Clark Gable, Elanor Roosevelt, and Walt Disney all flocked to the picturesque village, proliferating Holland mania at home.2 Between 1880 and 1920, Americans embraced the colonial Dutch influence repudiating England over Holland.

1 2

Dick Brinkkemper, Peter Kersloot & Kees Sier, Volendam schildersdorp, 1880-1940, Zwolle 2006, p. 126 Annette Stott, Holland Mania, Woodstock, NY 1998, pp. 44-45

The traditional costumes and tiny wooden houses crammed with objects appealed to the imagination of artists and collectors alike. One of Volendam’s most popular artist’s models was Geertje Pieters Karregat (1837-1924), nicknamed the Savior (Zaligmaker), emblematic of the fishing village. Geertje was married to the fisherman Jan Pooijer Pantjes (1828-1898) with whom she had eight children, five of whom Geertje survived. They lived in a tiny house in the Doolhof (Maze) on a narrow street in the oldest part of town. An embalmer by day, Geertje disrobed the deceased, washed and then dressed them in burial clothes for their viewing. On the occasion to bid farewell, Geertje recited the rosary.

These prayers had to ensure that the deceased went to heaven, or be saved, hence her nickname the Savior. Most likely, Geertje would be remunerated for this service of reading prayers as it was called in those days.

This would explain why Geertje is depicted in the pew of the seventeenth century Protestant Stolphoevekerkje. The Protestant community in Volendam’s predominantly Catholic enclave, was never big. However, the 1658 church is older than most of the houses, providing a perfect backdrop for the idealized world of the villagers. Geertje’s gaze, locked with the painter, is posing again as a model while also praying for the peaceful passing of the widower’s wife and mother of the young children behind her. A slightly smaller version of this painting is in the collection of Hotel Spaander,3 indicating the popularity and demand for the present painting at the time.

Wilm Wouters De Zaligmaker biddend in de kerk, 1922 Oil on canvas, 100 x 85 cm.

Signed ‘W. Wouters’ Collectie Spaander, Volendam

Piet Koning, Wilm Wouters. En zijn toevlucht Voldendam, Volendam 2015, p. 59. The work was exhibited at Arti et Amicitiae in Amsterdam in 1923 and offered for sale for 250 guilders.

3

Geertje Karregat, 'de Zaligmaker'

24 Baruch Lopes de Leão Laguna (1864-1943) Knitting Woman, ca. 1940 Charcoal with white heightening on paper 235/8 by 201/2 inches (60 by 52 cm.)

Signed ‘B. Laguna’

Provenance Collection Mauve, The Netherlands Baruch Lopes Leão de Laguna was born on 16 February 1864 in Amsterdam to a Portuguese Sephardic family. His early life was marred by tragedy, continuing into his later life, when he lost his son Martijn in a motorbike accident. After his parents’ death when he was only ten years old, he entered the orphanage of the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam. There, his talent was noticed and, at the age of fourteen, he began his training as a decorative painter at the Quellinus arts and crafts school. In 1880, the inaugural year of the Rijksacademie, Laguna enrolled. Together with Jan Veth, Jacobus van Looy, and Willem Witsen, Laguna founded the Sint Lucas association, of which Jan Toorop and Piet Mondriaan were board members.

At the age of seventeen, Laguna had to leave the orphanage and support himself. He set up a studio nearby in the Jewish quarter, the Jodenbuurt, previously home to Rembrandt. Like his predecessor, he was inspired by the faces in the community. In 1885, he exhibited at Arti et Amicitae in Amsterdam, a show that was well received by both critics and fellow artists, solidifying his artistic career. His breakthrough came with his drawings for Elsevier’s Geïllustreerd Maandschrift first publication in 1891, introducing Laguna to a national audience.

In 1898, he married Rose Asscher (1872-1944), daughter of a diamond cutter from London. Due to her poor health, they moved to the countryside in Laren, where he became associated with the Laren School of painters. Discovered by Jozef Israëls (1824-1911), the area around Laren, distinguished by its unspoiled beauty and diverse landscape, was ideally situated due to its proximity to Amsterdam.

This community continued to attract artists into the twentieth century. It was home to Piet Mondriaan during World War I, where he met Bart van der Leck, who painted Laguna’s portrait in 1902.1 In great demand with the new American bourgeoisie, Laguna’s paintings were sold directly by the local gallery Hamdorff to the United States. Sadly, the 1940 German occupation ended his freedom and success. In hiding on a remote farm, no longer able to portray the Dutch haut monde, Laguna continued to produce work, although with limited access to models. As the German occupation continued and paint supplies must have run low, it is likely that the artist was restricted to use charcoal, a medium easily self-made by burning wood. The subject of the present drawing could have well been one of the kind strangers who had offered him refuge. Eventually, the Lagunas were betrayed and transported to the Auschwitz extermination camp, where Baruch was murdered on 19 November 1943.

1

Rijksmuseum, object no. RP-T-1977-22

25 Willem van den Berg (1886-1970) Volendammer (Frerik Schokker), 1940 Black pencil on paper 9 7/8 by 6 1/4 inches (25 by 16 cm.)

Signed & dated 'Willem vd Berg 29 Maart 1940'

Provenance Private collection, The Netherlands Willem van den Berg, born on 16 February 1886 in The Hague, first trained with his father Andries van den Berg, a painter, printmaker and art teacher. Van den Berg enrolled at the local Art Academy and took study trips to Belgium, Italy, England, and France. One of his paintings was 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 exhibit internationally throughout his career. By 1938, Van den Berg moved to Amsterdam, where he became the director of the National Academy of Fine Arts.

In the late nineteenth century, Volendam had become one of the most popular artists’ villages in Europe, popular with Monet, Signac, Renoir, and Picasso. Just eleven miles north of Amsterdam, Volendam even far into the twentieth century, remained frozen in time, untouched by modern life.

The simplicity of the fishing community, wearing traditional costumes, living in tiny dollhouse-like wooden houses had an enormous appeal for artists and tourists alike. Van den Berg was not only attracted to the surroundings of the colorful fishing village on the former Zuiderzee sea, but also to its inhabitants. The local fishermen, their faces showing endurance and hardship across all seasons, became a source of inspiration for Van den Bergh throughout his career.

Rooted to the past by a refusal to don modern dress. the inhabitants are emblematic of a time that had all but vanished. Weather-beaten faces and powerful hands underline the harshness and endurance needed for life upon the sea. The sitters, paid models portrayed in their traditional costume, recur in different drawings. One of Van den Bergh’s most popular models was Frerik Schokker (1857-1943), known as grote (big) Frerik. Their outfits are predominantly black, with pants going back to seventeenth century sailors. The fur hat is worn in winter, as is the krawats, a black scarf, and of course, the famed wooden shoes.

Klaas (Pinkhof) Zwarthoed & Frerik Schokker, ca. 1935 Waterlandsarchief, no. WAT 006003732

26 Willem van den Berg (1886-1970) Volendammer (Jan Jonk), 1941 Black pencil on paper 9 7/8 by 6 1/4 inches (25 by 16 cm.)

Signed & dated 'Willem vdBerg 23 Sept. 1941'

Provenance Private collection, The Netherlands The fisherman in our drawing can be identified based on a portrait of Jan Jonk (1858-1945), executed five days prior in the Openluchtmuseum. Since many family members in Volendam have the same names, people are identified by their nicknames: Jan Jonk was known as Jan van Aal.

Willem van den Berg Volendammer man, 1941 Black & blue pencil on paper 24.8 x 16.1 cm.

Signed & dated ‘Willem vdBerg 17 Sept. 1941’ Nederlands Openluchtmuseum, Arnhem, inv.no. PR.10725

27 Dan Fischer David Hammons, In the Hood, 2020 Graphite on paper 16 7/8 by 12 5/8 inches (42.9 by 32.1 cm.)

Provenance Alison Jacques, London, 2020 Exhibited New York, The FLAG Art Foundation, Dan Fischer, May 1-August 14 2021 Dan Fischer’s (b. 1977, Brooklyn, NY) dedicated practice of Xerox realism asks a question of the very act of reproduction and appropriation, previously challenged by his predecessors of the Pictures Generation in the 1980s. Fischer is forthcoming about his indebtedness to art historical originators. For over two decades, the New York-based draughtsman has used graphite – and sometimes ballpoint – to meticulously reproduce images of iconic artworks or the luminaries who brought them to fruition. Having settled upon a specific photographic reproduction– in this case David Hammons’s 1993 In the Hood–Fischer photocopies the image, overlaying it with a grid as the point of departure for his drawing. While Fischer’s work is engaged with the processes of quotation and retelling, the manner in which original narratives disseminate and develop via facsimiles, there is a notable deviation between his delicate graphite and the cold appropriations of his forebears. Fischer makes no attempt to conceal his own involvement in the (re)construction of these images: his reproductions do not derive from skepticism but from deep admiration.

Fischer’s choice to draw the wrenchingly direct In the Hood during the lockdown and Black Lives Matter protests, underscores the artists inventory of the iconic canon of modern and contemporary art. First shown in 1993 at New York’s Mnuchin Gallery, Hammons nailed the torn-off hood of a sweatshirt like a hunting trophy on a wall. Evoking a lynching or perhaps Zurbarán’s Saint Francis, regardless of the intended reference: Hammons’s almost two-decade old hoodie clearly stands for race and racism. Installed and photographed numerous times since its inception, Fischer selects a specific reproduction of the evocative work, one that leads him to disseminate the image for his own original copy.

David Hammons In the Hood, 1993 Sweatshirt hood with wire 23 x 10 x 5 inches

Index

Baes, Firmin Bastien-Lepage, Jules Beekman, Chris Berg, Willem van den Boldini, Giovanni Donnay, Auguste Fischer, Dan Hoytema, Theo van Laguna, Baruch Lopes de Leão Le Brun, Georges Looy, Jacobus van Menzel, Adolphe von Moreau, Gustave Müller, Carl Nijmegen, Willem van Solomon, Simeon Toorop, Jan Jan Jansz. van de Velde Veth, Jan Welie, Antoon van Wit, Jacob de Wouters, Wilm

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