Uit Verre Streken /From Distant Shores - Tefaf 2024 - Zebregs&Röell by zebregsroell

Uit verre streken Guus Röell & Dickie Zebregs

Guus Röell & Dickie Zebregs

Uit verre streken from distant shores

To Jan.

You will be missed.

Amsterdam & Maastricht, Tefaf 2024

Indonesian Archipelago 5

1. A Dutch colonial ebony cabinet with brass mounts Batavia (Jakarta), 2nd half 17th century The cabinet has two massive ebony doors opening to reveal thirteen various-sized drawers. The outside of the cabinet and the drawer fronts overall densely carved with scrolling vines and flowers. When closed, the doors show two small snakes turned away from each other in the upper center. The brass mounts probably later. H. 80.5 x W. 91.2 x D. 54.3 cm Provenance: - With Francesca Galloway, London - The Edith & Stuart Cary Welsh Collection

Jan Veenendaal classifies the robust carving on this cabinet as ‘Batavia Type I’. This type of decoration emerged in the period from 1680 to 1720, and features deeply carved floral motifs. Although we use the term ‘high relief’ to indicate the significant difference, ‘half relief’ would be more appropriate. A comparison could be made with Dutch and also Batavian silver, which is now adorned with deeply embossed large flowers after a period of primarily engraved decorations. In this period, the Dutch had a fondness for flowers in gardens and indoors. For example, Dirck van Ryswyck (1658 - after 1679) was known for his marquetry in touchstone. Jan van Mekeren (1658-1733) created particularly rich cabinets with marquetry on the doors in various exotic woods of vases filled with a selection of flowers. These artists, like the VOC merchants who ordered textiles in India, had a wide choice of Dutch books with engravings of both European and exotic flowers for inspiration. The floral motifs on the furniture arose through an interaction of Dutch and Indian artistic conceptions. Although these pieces of furniture were also found in South India and Sri Lanka, we nonetheless refer to this style as Batavian, because around 1900, when there was a lively interest in it, so many examples were found in and around this historical city. Ebony and coromandel furniture, adorned with large flowers, was used by residents of Batavia, Colombo, and the VOC settlements in South India but was only sporadically present in the Netherlands at that time. In other words: we see here a unique furniture style that originated in Asia and was beloved by the Dutch there, their Indian descendants, and wealthy Indonesians, Peranakan Chinese, and Sri Lankans (Sinhalese and Tamils). The present cabinet is a result of a unique and new style that emerged from a fusion of Asian and European ideas. To learn more about who the furniture makers were, we must look to South India, where in the seventeenth century a continuous series of wars and famines alternated. For example, in 1661, the situation in Tanjore was so dire that the entire region was abandoned by the population. Two years later, driven by hunger, cotton painters sold themselves to the Dutch. They were mainly transported to Sri Lanka to improve the production of chintz. Although the starved Tamils were weak and carried many contagious diseases, the Dutch were the main customers of the traders

in enslaved people. Craftsmen were especially welcome in Batavia and other VOC settlements. Contemporary documents indicate that there was a large influx of enslaved people capable of making the new style of furniture in Batavia. An important point here is that craftsmen of the same profession lived in the same villages or city districts. Often, they were also from the same family. This means that furniture makers and woodcarvers lived together and that when a disaster struck their area, they all left together. In this way, an entirely new textile industry emerged in Sri Lanka due to the aforementioned exodus of textile painters. It is quite possible that an entire community of woodcarvers and furniture makers from the Kammalan caste was shipped to Batavia simultaneously. This would explain how the sudden demand in the rapidly expanding city of Batavia could be met so easily. An additional reason is that from 1657 the local industry was supported by import tariffs on household goods. On the Coromandel Coast, beautifully carved gravestones were used to cover the graves of the Dutch. As early as the beginning of the 17th century, large gravestones were shipped from Sadraspatnam (India) to Batavia, Colombo, and the Cape (South Africa). In Sadraspatnam and Negapatnam, many of these gravestones are still in situ. In Jakarta, Colombo, and Cape Town, a number can also be found. From 1680, these gravestones were carved with a frame of flowers, some of which are the same as those on the ebony and calamander furniture from Batavia, like the present cabinet. On the doors of the present cabinet and others alike, within an arch-shaped space, flowers are arranged on branches that seemingly sprout randomly from the base. Above the arches, two slender snakes facing each other are carved out. Snakes have a special meaning in Hindu mythology. For example, they can turn into arrows and protect their owner. In the Javanese version, they can still take revenge, even if the evil has already occurred. When the snakes face each other, they are made by an Indian craftsman. When the snakeheads are turned away from each other, the carving is done by a Javanese woodcarver. The snakes refer to Naga, the Sanskrit word for a deity or class of entity or being, taking the form of a giant snake. In Hindu religious culture, Nagas are considered nature spirits closely associated with water, rivers, lakes and seas as protectors of springs. Hence, they are regarded as protectors of valuables, which is perfect for a precious cabinet with possibly even more precious contents. Sources: - Jan Veenendaal,Wonen op de Kaap en in Batavia 1602-1795, Titus M. Eliëns ed., Waanders, Zwolle, 2002, pp. 30- 32 - Jan Veenendaal, Aziatische kunst en de Nederlandse Smaak, Waanders, Zwolle, 2014

2. An Indonesian mother-of-pearl inlaid mastic betel box with silver mounts Jakarta (Batavia), circa 1720-1730, the silver hinges marked for Batavia, maker’s mark HS or SH, part of the silver reconstructed H. 10 x W. 26 x D. 17.5 cm In this manner, only one other sirih box in motherof- pearl is documented. It is in the collection of Kip-Lee-Kip in Singapore (Peter Lee et al., Port Cities: Multicultural Emporiums of Asia, 1500-1900, Asian Civilizations Museum, Singapore, 2016, p.206, no. 166).

3. A small Indonesian tortoiseshell betel box with gold mounts Jakarta (Batavia), late 18th century, apparently unmarked L. 14 x W. 9.5 x H. 4.7 cm

4. An Indonesian betel box with gold mounts and monogram CM Sri Lanka or Jakarta (Batavia), late 18th century, apparently unmarked L. 16.2 x W. 10.3 x H. 5.7 cm

5. A rare Indonesian tortoiseshell betel box with gold mounts Batavia (Jakarta), early 19th century, apparently unmarked H. 5 x W. 18 x D. 13 cm

6. A superb Indonesian royal gem-set gold overlaid silver betel box Probably Sumatra, 19th century, marked with initials HDL The box is overall overlaid with fine openwork and hammered gold and on the lid it has an applique in the form of a crowned flower surrounded by laurel wreaths, with beneath a crescent moon and initials HDL. H. 5 x W. 18 x D. 13 cm

7. A Balinese keris taken from the body of a Princess Bali, 19th century L. 56 cm Provenance: Private collection, the Netherlands

The keris bears an inscription in pen and ink reading: Lombok, 6 November 1894, Toh-Penti Aangetroffen in den borst van eene Balineesche Prinses

This keris was found in the chest of a Balinese princess, according to the inscription. Toh-Penti may refer to the Sasak harvest festival, celebrated from the early to mid-November. Keris daggers were usually for peaceful ritual and worship, but in times of war and imminent capture or death, the Balinese would commit ritual suicide or puputan. It might well be that this Princess committed suicide when the Dutch attacked Lombok. The keris is rather plain for a Princess, which might point out that a female servant killed herself in the name of the Princess against the promise of a large sum of money to her family. Such actions were observed more often, for instance, when a deceased King or Prince was about to be cremated, and his wife had to join him (alive). The promise of riches to one’s family could persuade a lady of a lower kaste to take the place of the Princess. The latter then would disappear too but live her life elsewhere. The above almost makes one forget that it doesn’t matter who was killed with the dagger, for it probably was an innocent mother with children at home, anyway. Something one nowadays sometimes seems to forget. The Dutch intervention in Karangasem in 1894 was a crucial event in the Dutch colonial expansion in Indonesia, leading to the full colonisation of Bali and Lombok by the early 20th century. Initially, Lombok was under the influence of Balinese rulers from Karangasem, with the Mataram group gaining control over the island by 1839. Following interactions with the English, the Dutch established a treaty with Mataram in 1843 to halt English influence in the region. Mataram allied with the Dutch during their intervention in Bali in 1849 and gained overlordship over Karangasem. Conflict arose in 1891 when the Muslim Sasak of Eastern Lombok rebelled against the Balinese ruler, leading to a violent confrontation that lasted until 1894. The Sasak sought Dutch intervention, initially limited to a blockade and demands for Mataram’s submission. Following the blockade’s failure, the Dutch launched a military expedition in July 1894, which faced fierce resistance, culminating in a significant Dutch defeat at Mayura Palace in Cakranegara in August 1894, where over 500 Dutch soldiers and allies were killed. The Dutch returned with reinforcements in November 1894, launching systematic attacks that destroyed Mataram and resulted in the deaths of around 2,000 Balinese, leading to the Dutch victory and control over Lombok and Karangasem. This intervention marked a significant expansion of Dutch influence in the region, with Lombok’s royal treasures seized and the region administered from Bali thereafter. The conflict underscored the Dutch colonial strategy of military intervention to consolidate control over the Indonesian archipelago.

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8. A Hindu-Javanese gold keris hilt in the form of a Rakshasa Indonesia, East-Java, Majapahit, Blambangan Kingdom, 15th century or earlier Cast in 12 karat gold in the lost wax technique, this hilt probably comes from Blambangan, but shows Balinese influence. It depicts a Raksasa on the Tumpal throne with club in hand, ferocious fangs and curly in warrior mode strung hair. H. 9.5 cm Weight 71.6 grams In the world of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, Rakshasas were a populous race. There were both good and evil rakshasas, and as warriors, they fought alongside the armies of both good and evil. They were mighty warriors, expert magicians and illusionists. As shape-changers, they could assume different physical forms.

Provenance: Purchased in Indonesia in the 1930s and by descent to Frank Wiggers, Portugal

9. A Peranakan Chinese gold tali pinggang Indonesian Archipelago, Straits Chinese, circa 1890-1910, marked MWL and with Chinese characters L. 82 cm Weight 620 grams This gold Straits Chinese belt features a pending (belt buckle) and has linked panels decorated with auspicious motifs. The panels and the buckle were decorated using various metalworking techniques such as kerenchang (or kerenwang, meaning ‘piece work’), figured appliqué and repoussé. It has been suggested that belts with panels belonged to a later period, whereas earlier ceremonial belts were made with many interlocking links and rings. Belts like the one present were worn by Nonyas (Peranakan women) on ceremonial occasions, as those for daily use were simple and relatively unadorned. The sheer weight of this belt shows it must have belonged to a wealthy family. For another Peranakan gold belt, but overall set with diamonds, see the collection of the Peranakan Museum, Singapore (access.no. 2015-01994).

10. A Dutch colonial ebony box with silver mounts Batavia (Jakarta), or Sri Lanka, circa 1680-1720 The document or money box is densely carved with fine scrolling vines and lotus flowers. It has a charming heartshapes silver lock-plate and compartments inside. H. 18 x W. 31.5 x D. 23 cm Provenance: Private collection, Portugal

Jan Veenendaal describes this type of carving as ‘Batavia II’. It can be recognised by elegantly waving calyxes that look like stylised lotus flowers. The borders of the present box and other type II furniture are almost like

stylised rope. Veenendaal argues that only the most skilled Tamil and Bengali craftsmen made these finely carved pieces. Around the date this box was made, the Dutch had selected only the best craftsmen among their enslaved people. However, the people from South Asia were soon outnumbered by immigrants from the nonMuslim Indonesian islands and Madagascar. With the disappearance of the Indian and Bengali enslaved and contract woodworkers, the vogue for ebony also halted in the Dutch colonies. Another reason for the latter could be that by then, the Dutch had almost cut down every ebony tree around the Indian Ocean into extinction to cater to their craze for the black gold. Source: Jan Veenendaal, Aziatische kunst en de Nederlandse Smaak, Waanders, Zwolle, 2014

11. A superb royal Sumatran gold hilted pedang Indonesia, Sumatra, Sultanate of Palembang, late 18th/early 19th century L. 79 cm (overall) / L. 18.5 cm (hilt) Provenance: Private collection, the Netherlands

This highly refined sword with a pamor sanak blade has a floral makara (celestial sea elephant) shaped grip, which points towards Sumatra and probably the Sultanate of Palembang. Because of the opulent use of gold, one can safely assume that it once was worn by someone at Kuto Besak, the kraton palace. On June 25, 1821, the Dutch colonial forces overthrew the Palembang Sultanate. By July 1, 1821, the Dutch had officially seized control of the Kuto Besak palace. Anticipating the takeover, the Sultan ordered destroying the palace’s treasures. Consequently, when the Dutch soldiers entered the palace, they found only books, a few coins and pieces of gold, and 74 cannons. Sultan Mahmud Badaruddin II and his family were exiled to Ternate in the Maluku Islands on July 13, 1821. Mahmud Badaruddin remained in exile until his death on September 26, 1852.

12. An extremely rare, possibly unique, Dutch colonial ebony child’s chair Probably Sri Lanka, late 17th/early 18th century H. 55 x W. 40.5 x D. 40.5 cm H. 27.5 cm (seat height) The chair is overall densely carved with a scrolling flower motif on four connected turned legs and bun feet, with cane seating. Often, normal-sized furniture with similar bold carvings was made by enslaved people from Bali in the Moluccas, where ebony was abundant in the 17th century. These bold relief carvings are also often seen on ebony furniture from Batavia, made by Tamil woodworkers. However, because this chair turned up in England, it is perhaps more likely to have come from Sri Lanka than from Indonesia. Jan Veenendaal argued that the inspiration for the carved flower decoration on this type of ebony furniture is from Dutch flower prints. For instance, from Den Blomhof by Crispijn de Passe de Jonge (first edition 1614). He also notes that the flowers are drawn from Dutch kwab or auricular lobed decorated silverware by the Van Vianen brothers, which became very popular in Holland around 1660. No other chair with such small dimensions is known to us. The carving is of such high quality that it must have been made for a child of exuberantly wealthy parents. Provenance: Private collection, England Sources: - Jan Veenendaal,Wonen op de Kaap en in Batavia 1602-1795, Titus M. Eliëns ed., Waanders, Zwolle, 2002, pp. 30- 32 - Jan Veenendaal, Aziatische kunst en de Nederlandse Smaak, Waanders, Zwolle, 2014

Indian Ocean 19

13. An exceptional Indo-Portuguese colonial mother-of-pearl veneered casket with silver mounts India, Gujarat, 2nd half of the 16th century, the silver mounts Goa or probably Lisbon H. 16 x W. 24.6 x D. 16.1 cm An exceptional Gujarati casket with a rectangular box and truncated pyramidal lid (with slopes on each side and a flat top) made from exotic wood, probably teak (Tectona grandis), covered with a mother-of-pearl mosaic. The tesserae, cut from the shell of the green turban sea snail (Turbo marmoratus, a marine gastropod) in the shape of fish scales, are pinned to the wooden structure with silver ball-headed nails. The casket is set on bracket feet on the corners. The masterfully engraved decoration of the silver mounts follows the most refined and erudite Mannerist repertoire of rinceaux and ferroneries dating from the mid-16th century. The high quality and refinement of the silver mounts and, likewise, the silver nails that replaced the original brass pins used to hold the mother-of-pearl tesserae in place indicate the work of a silversmith probably working in Lisbon in the second half of the 16th century. The Indian origin of this production, namely from Cambay (Khambhat) and Surat in the present state of Gujarat in north India, is, as for the last three decades, consensual and fully demonstrated, not only by documentary and literary evidence - such as descriptions, travelogues and contemporary archival documentation - but also by the survival in situ of 16th-century wooden structures covered in mother-of-pearl tesserae. A fine example is a canopy decorating the tomb (dargah) of the Sufi saint, Sheik Salim Chisti (1478-1572) in Fatehpur Sikri in Agra district in the state of Uttar Pradesh, north India. This is an artistic production, geometric in character and Islamic in nature, where usually the mother-of-pearl tesserae form complex designs of fish scales or, similar to the dishes also made using the same technique, with the thin brass sheets and pins, stylized lotus flowers. The truncated pyramidal

shape corresponds, like their contemporary tortoiseshell counterparts also made in Gujarat, to a piece of furniture used in the Indian subcontinent within the Islamic world prior to the arrival of the first Portuguese. This shape, in fact, is very old and peculiar to East-Asian caskets, chests or boxes used to contain and protect Buddhist texts, the sutras. A similar chest is the famous and large reliquary chest from Lisbon cathedral that once contained the relics of the city’s patron saint, Saint Vincent. Both match in shape, having the same kind of socle or pedestal and bracket feet, and in their engraved silver mountings, featuring the same type of refined, erudite decoration. Their differences lie in the silver borders that frame the entire length of the edges of the chest (both the box and the lid), pinned with silver nails, and on the lock plate, shaped like a coat of arms in the Lisbon example. Given the exceptional dimensions of the reliquary casket from Lisbon cathedral (48 x 65 x 42 cm), the goldsmith responsible for its mounting opted to place two bracket-shaped side handles instead of a top handle, as in our casket. Another similar example, probably mounted in the same Lisbon workshop as the other examples from this small group, belongs to the Seville Cathedral and remains almost unknown. It shares many features in common with the one in the Lisbon cathedral, namely the use of engraved silver borders running along the edges, protecting the casket. An aspect that distinguished it from the others is the use of tesserae cut from Turbo marmoratus, which show a higher iridescence but also cut from the shell of the pearl oyster, probably Pinctada radiata or Pinctada maxima, given the whitish hue of the base colour. Nevertheless, the type of square-like lock plate is similar to our casket.

14. A large set of sixteen fine Dutch colonial ebony side chairs and an armchair Coromandel coast, probably Masulipatnam, circa 16501680 Each chair has an open back with superb pierced and carved decoration, the crest rail with a central winged female head flanked on either side with a nude female figure or absara and a mythical sea creature or makara on the upper edge. Between the crest rail and the lower back rail is a row of eight twist-turned balusters with scrolling foliate capitals, the balusters alternating with seven turned knobs, a winged female head flanked by a pair of makaras at the centre of the lower back rail. The tapering uprights are decorated with scrolling vines, the uprights support finials in the form of birds. The drop-in rectangular seats are re-caned, and the seat rails are carved and pierced with a pair of confronting birds at the centre, with twist-turned legs and a box stretcher. Several chairs bear the (remains of) a label which reads ‘The Property of the Trustees of the Will of ARTHUR GEORGE EARL OF ONSLOW’, and numbered ‘28’ confirming that they were previously part of the furnishings of Clandon Park House, a famous listed Palladian mansion in Surrey and seat of the Earls of Onslow. H. 97 x W. 53.5 x D. 47cm (side chairs) H. 100 x W. 65.5 x D. 61 cm (armchair)

Provenance: - Clandon Park House, Surrey - Rainer Zietz Ltd., London, (1994) - Private collection, Germany - Earl’s Court Road Antiques dealer, London (circa 1960) - Cary Welch, London

This type of chair usually turns up in England and seldom in Holland, although they were probably ordered by the Dutch on the Coromandel Coast of India. Possibly the Hindu motifs of animals and humans in the carvings of these so-called “Kust stoelen” were eventually not greatly appreciated in Muslim/Calvinist Java/Batavia. These high points in ebony furniture making were made by Hindu craftsmen in South India converted to Roman Catholicism by the Portuguese in the 16th and 17th centuries. They combined Hindu and Christian motives in a manner not seen again in furniture from India after the 17th century. As in other known examples, the carving is in the round. The carvings on these two chairs bear a close resemblance to the carving of the head- and foot-boards of the ebony rocking cradle in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam (inv. no. BK-1966-48, illustrated in Asia in Amsterdam, 2015, cat. 26, p.108). No other group of Indo-European furniture has been as misunderstood as carved ebony furniture made in India, Sri Lanka and the former Dutch East Indies in the second half of the seventeenth century. The furniture itself is of solid ebony, pierced or carved in various degrees of relief,

with twist-turned components. Among the forms made were large suites of chairs and settees; and, less commonly, tables, cradles, beds, cabinets and boxes. The production of solid ebony furniture of this type seems to have first began along the Coromandel coast, a textile-producing region settled with European trading factories. Dutch traveller Georg Rumphius (1627-1702) recorded that the coast ‘is exceptionally richly provided of this [ebony] as the natives make from it all kinds of curious work, as chairs, benches and small tables, carving them out with foliage, and sculpture’. Carved ebony chairs of this type have been recorded in English collections from as early as the mid-eighteenth century, and much of the confusion about their origin is due to the belief, current in the second half of the eighteenth and most of the nineteenth century, that they were surviving examples of early English furniture. This idea was supported by the rigid, rectilinear forms of the furniture, which looked antiquated to eighteenth-century eyes; the use of twist-turning, which was believed to be typical of Elizabethan furniture; the bizarre, intricate carving, which often included mythic beasts and figures that seemed to have been conceived before the vocabulary of classical ornament began to influence English design; and the colour, black, which was commonly associated with furniture of great antiquity. For Horace Walpole (1717-97), who appears to have been responsible for this attribution, notions about the age of such furniture based on its physical attributes were confirmed by the existence of examples

in houses with Tudor associations. In 1748 he saw carved ebony chairs at Esher Place, Surrey, and believed them to be the property of Cardinal Wolsey, who had lived there after 1519. Buying chiefly at auction, Walpole acquired pieces of carved ebony furniture for his Gothic Revival house, Strawberry Hill. By 1759 he had furnished what was to become the Holbein Chamber with ‘chairs & dressing table’ of ‘real carved ebony’. The decoration of Strawberry Hill was widely publicised, both by the numerous visitors to the house and through well-circulated published descriptions (1774; 1784). By the early 19th century, Walpole’s view that carved ebony furniture of this type was both English and of early date had become firmly established. In his drawings of ‘Ancient Furniture’ (1834), A.W.N. Pugin featured a carved ebony chair of the type at Strawberry Hill depicted beneath a portrait of Henry VIII. In Specimens of Ancient Furniture (published monthly from 1832 to 1836 and then in a single volume in 1836), Henry Shaw included a carved ebony chair of the same type formerly in Walpole’s collection. Works such as these, which were used by antiquaries as reference texts, established the significance of carved ebony in houses with Gothic and Tudor-style interiors, whether old or newly created. Source: Amin Jaffer, Luxury Goods From India: the art of the Indian CabinetMaker, London, V&A, 2002, pp. 46-47

The Strawberry Hill Table.

15. A superb colonial ebony side table formerly in the collection of Strawberry Hill Coromandel coast, probably Masulipatnam, circa 16301650 The table, of rectangular shape, consists of a case and a stand. The case features a simple top bordered by gadrooning and contains two front-facing drawers with knob handles. The drawer fronts and the case’s sides and back are adorned with scrolling foliate patterns. The stand is supported by four legs and includes an apron and a box stretcher. Both the upper section of the stand and the leg tops are decorated with scrolling foliate motifs. The intricately carved and pierced apron showcases a central winged cherub’s head, lions, mythical creatures, and parrots. The legs are twist-turned and rest on turned disc feet. H. 76.3 x W. 94.5 x D. 67.5 cm

Provenance: - Strawberry Hill House, Collection of Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (1717-97), Twickenham, until 1842 (acquired between 1759 and 1763) - George Robins, A Catalogue of the Classic Contents of Strawberry Hill collected by Horace Walpole, London, Covent Garden, 13 May 1842, lot 77 - Eaton Hall, Robert Grosvenor, the 1st Marquess of Westminster (1767-1845) - The Dukes of Westminster, by descent (until 1960) - Perez & Co., London - Cary Welch, London (acquired from the above in c. 1960-61) Literature: - G. Robins, A Catalogue of the Classic Contents of Strawberry Hill collected by Horace Walpole, 25 April - 24 May 1842, p.176, lot 77 - W. Chaffers, Catalogue of the Museum of Ornamental Art at the Art Treasures Exhibition, Wrexham, 1876, no.143 - Ian Kennedy, “The ‘Wrexham Art Treasures’ exhibition of 1876” in: The British Art Journal, Vol. 19, No. 3, Winter 2018/2019, pp. 80-86 - A. Jaffer, Furniture from British India and Ceylon, London, 2001, p.139 Exhibited: Art Treasures Exhibition, Wrexham, England, 1876

Walpole purchased his first set of ebony tables and chairs in 1759, which were then used to decorate the Holbein Chamber at Strawberry Hill, as detailed by Jaffer in 2001 (pages 130, 138-9). Walpole mentioned this particular table in his 1784 description of Strawberry Hill (Walpole 1784, p.43), and the Holbein Chamber was depicted in a 1788 watercolour by artist John Carter (now housed in the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale University). In the painting, the table is visible on the left side, adjacent to the matching chairs (referenced in Jaffer 2001, p.130; it is noted that the table in the painting appears to have bulky feet, unlike our table; however, upon closer examination, it appears the lower sections of the present table’s four legs have been trimmed, explaining the difference in appearance). The Strawberry Hill curator, Dr Silvia Davoli, has confirmed the present table belonged to the house collection.

John Carter, Holbein Chamber, c. 1788, from: Horace Walpole, A Description of the Villa…at Strawberry-Hill, Strawberry Hill, 1784. (collection of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. Folio 33 30 Copy 11, fol. 117)

16. An Indian ebony low chair formerly owned by the Dukes of Westminster Coromandel coast, possibly Masuliptnam, 1680-1700 Overall densely carved with an array of mermaids, birds, fish, mythological figures and floral and vine motifs, the back rail has centrally a parrot (the attribute of Kama, the Hindu god of love) below a scallop shell (an attribute of Aphrodite/Venus) with a fleur-de-lis (a symbol of the Virgin Mary), the shell supported by two small human figures and a pair of mermaids, another European element, but also a representation of the Hindu snake goddess Nagini, with crouching figures as finials, reminiscent of deity figures. H. 85 x W. 50.5 x D. 45 cm H. 41.5 cm (height of seat) An identical chair is illustrated in Het Hollandsche Koloniale Barokmeubel, Dr. V. I. van de Wall, .1939, fig. 26. The provenance of that chair is given as the Duke of Westminster, Eaton Hall, Cheshire. Before restoration, the present chair had an identical upholstered seat and the same casters as the chair of the Duke of Westminster. Therefore, it seems safe to assume that the present chair’s provenance is also the Duke of Westminster, Eaton Hall in Cheshire. The chair’s seat rail is numbered, and it came from a set of six with the known provenance and same upholstery as the one in Het Hollandsche Koloniale Barokmeubel, presuming it was part of an even larger set

The Duke of Westminster declaring the building open at the Wrexham Art Treasures Exhibition,1876. Two chairs from Eaton Hall, which the Duke of Westminster loaned to the exhibition, can be seen in the image. The chair present is identical to the ones depicted and has the Eaton Hall provenance.

Provenance: - Probably Strawberry Hill House, Collection of Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (1717-97), Twickenham, until 1842 (acquired between 1759 and 1763) - Probably George Robins, A Catalogue of the Classic Contents of Strawberry Hill collected by Horace Walpole, London, Covent Garden, 13 May 1842, lot 77 - Eaton Hall, Robert Grosvenor, the 1st Marquess of Westminster (1767-1845), Cheshire - The Dukes of Westminster, by descent (until 1960) - Arthur Tooth (1828-1900), a London art dealer, thence by descent

17. A splendid Dutch-colonial Sinhalese ebony two-door cabinet with silver mounts Sri Lanka, Kandy, 2nd half 17th century, the mounts later The cabinet with a central drawer with hidden compartment and the top drawer divided into four compartments. The surface carved all-over with scrolling plants issuing fleshy lotus palmettes, and in addition the exterior of the doors with a pair of kinnaris, the top with a seated deity encircled by birds, the back with a central lotus rosette flanked by quadrupeds and birds, and lastly the sides with a serapendiya, bordered by narrow diaper kundi rakkan bands. H. 29 x W. 32.5 x D. 23 cm Provenance: Private collection, United Kingdom Peter Lang, United Kingdom

The richly decorated panels carved in differing degrees of relief reveal the skill of the Sinhalese craftsmen and the scrolls issuing a richness of flowers and fruits are indicative of the island’s vegetal abundance. Their stylization is result of a cross-fertilization of Dutch and Sinhalese decorative elements that appear on furniture, textiles and silver that later appeared across the Asian VOC territories. The mythical kinnaris, serapendiya and the kundi rakkan banding are typical forms of Sinhalese ornamentation, but not often seen on furniture for the Dutch.

Comparable Sinhalese furniture and objects with related carved decoration can be found in the Royal Collection Trust (21610, 21611), the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (1993.29) and the British Museum (1943.0712.4), Sources: - Jan Veenendaal, Furniture from Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India during the Dutch period, Museum Nusantara, Delft, 1985. ill. 25, 29 & 58 - Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Mediaeval Sinhalese Art, Pantheon Books, New York, 1908

18. A superb inlaid walrus ivory and blue glass Ottoman knife Ottoman Empire, Turkey, probably Constantinople (Istanbul), late 17th/early 18th century L. 19.7 cm (overall) Provenance: With Runjeet Singh, London

The hilt is formed of faceted blue glass, while the blade of steel exhibits faux-watering and is inset with beads of coral at three equidistant slots just beneath the spine. The surface of the blade has also been etched over the greater part of its length with an inscription on one face with a part of the Nada ‘Ali quatrain and on the other with “… Muluk (?) sultan malik tahir (?)” (“… of Kings (?), Sultan Malik Tahir (?)”) among vine tendrils that exhibit remnants of the original gilding. Gilt stellar motifs also line the spine of the blade. The scabbard is inset with a generous array of khatamkari roundels depicting celestial motifs with gems, motherof-pearl and various metals. Of particular splendour are the ebony tesserae, which are overlaid with pointed stars in gold, some of the larger examples decorated at their centres with inset turquoise or gold concentric circles. The craftsman has expended great efforts to ensure almost no space is left unfilled, inviting the spectator to inspect the scabbard’s surface as one might survey a busy night sky. It is interesting to note, too, that the central roundel of the front face is decorated on a shimmering white ground in mother-of-pearl, whilst that on the reverse is black (ebony) as if the front and reverse of the scabbard signified the day and night skies respectively. The scabbard’s gilt-silver collar and chape are punched and chased to depict stylised leaves and roundels in imitation of the scabbard’s central surface,

and are further inset with small turquoises as well as coloured gemstones, the chape terminating in a cross-hatched acorn finial. This remarkable knife brilliantly exemplifies the artistry so often applied to exceptional pieces of arms and armour, its scabbard proficiently decorated throughout with roundels in a dazzling array of colours and patterns. Remarkably, the side of the scabbard shows a zig-zag motif, to some immediately recognisable from Japanese Namban export lacquer ordered by the Portuguese (see for for instance no. 3 in this publication). This lacquerware was not intended for the Portuguese market only and was often given as diplomatic gifts to different courts, including the Ottoman court. The resemblance is so uncanny that it is tempting to suggest that the craftsman took inspiration from such a piece. After all, it is widely known that at the Ottoman court, Chinoiserie was also in fashion. A comparable knife and scabbard can be found in the Schatzkammer of the Bavarian Palace in Munich (inv.no. 1235 or 1819/20). According to the museum the knife entered the collection through the Pfälzer Wittelsbacher line, who, in the 16th and 17th centuries, were known to collect Ottoman artefacts as Turquerie, also known as Turkomania, was in vogue.

The Munich Schatzkammer knife showing the same inlays

Europe & the Americas 35

19. Gesina ter Borch (1631-1690) Portrait of Moses ter Borch as a two-year old Signed Gesina Ter Borch lower right Annotated A: i647. Ætatis.Sua.2. upper left Oil on canvas, H. 56 x W. 45 cm Provenance: - Gesina ter Borch (1631-1690), by descent to - Catharina ter Borch (1634-before 2 October 1704), by descent to - Hillegonda Schellinger (1674-1750) & Jean de Lambert (c.1660-1733) Probably - David van der Kellen Jr. (1804-1879) - Auction, Amsterdam, J.C. van Pappelendam and G.J. Schouten, at ‘De Brakke Grond’, 30 March 1874, lot 102 - Purchased for 36 guilders by Mr. A. Wolff, possibly the Parisian art critic Albert Abraham Wolff (1835-1891) - Collection Loynel d’Estrie, France, by descent to - Jean Jacques Loynel d’Estrie (1920-1995), Paris, by descent to - Private collection, Paris - Antiques dealer, Paris, purchased from the above in October 2023 - Zebregs&Röell Fine Art & Antiques, Amsterdam

Fig.1 Gesina ter Borch, Moses ter Borch with a feathered hat drumming, and surrounded by toys, signed bottom right:‘Gesina Ter Borch’ and inscribed upper left: ‘A: i647. Ætatis Sua.2.’, oil on canvas, 56 x 45 cm. The Netherlands, Private collection

A Testimony of Love: A Memorial Portrait by Gesina ter Borch of Moses ter Borch as a Two-year old By Dr Carla van de Puttelaar with Dr Fred G. Meijer Recently, an unusual and endearing portrait of a two-yearold boy (fig. 1) emerged from a French private collection, where it had been kept for several generations as a work by Gerard ter Borch II. However, it turned out to be fully signed by Gesina ter Borch, and the little boy can be identified convincingly as her brother, Moses ter Borch. In this article, the portrait is analysed and placed into context. The ter Borch family belongs to the most well-regarded families of artists from the seventeenth-century Northern Netherlands. The family was based in Zwolle and consisted of father Gerard ter Borch I (1582/83-1662), Gerard ter Borch II (1617-1681), Anna ter Borch (1622-1679), Gesina ter Borch (1631-1690), Harmen ter Borch (1638-before 1677), and Moses ter Borch (1645-1667), of whom Gerard ter Borch II became the most prolific and best-known member of the family, painting and drawing a substantial number of portraits as well as genre scenes. Their other siblings did not have an artistic output. Members of the ter Borch family, Gerard’s sister Gesina in particular, regularly served as his models. Gerard ter Borch was born from his father’s first marriage, with Anna Bufkens (1587-1621) from Antwerp. Gesina, Harmen, and Moses were three of the nine children from their father’s third marriage, with Wiesken Matthijs (1607-1683). Their father, Gerard ter Borch the Elder, was a draughtsman who chose to work as a licence master in Zwolle and gave up his artist’s career. However, he continued to promote the artistic qualities in his children and gave drawing lessons to the most talented ones. Gesina may have followed (some) lessons together with her younger brothers, Harmen and Moses, though only one known drawing by her is annotated by her father (fig. 19), whereas more drawings by her brothers bear their father’s annotations.1 Initially, Gesina’s drawings were influenced by the drawings of her brothers Gerard and Harmen and she also copied several of their drawings, but later on she developed a distinct individual style. In the 1650s she developed a relationship with the Amsterdam merchant Henrik Jordis (active 1650s-1660s), who frequently contributed texts to her albums, until 1662. In the 1660s the amateur writer Sijbrant Schellinger (c.1645before December 1699) appeared in her life.2 He married her sister Jenneken (Johanna) ter Borch (1640-1675) in 1668. They named their two firstborn sons Moses, but both boys died after a few months.3 The couple emigrated to Curaçao in 1672. After Jenneken had died in 1675, their three remaining children, Gerrit (Ger(h)ard) (born 1671), Cornelis (1672-1698), and Hillegonda Schellinger (1674-1750), came to live with Gesina in the house on Sassenstraat.4 She must have cared deeply for them, as they are mentioned as important beneficiaries in her will. Gesina lived on Sassenstraat until her death on 16 April 1690. At that time, Hillegonda was still living with her (fig. 2). Three of Gesina’s albums have survived, the Materiboeck, De papiere Laure Krans (poetry book) and the Konstboek (an art book, or more of a scrapbook, in which

many drawings, also by her father and brothers, and texts were collected). In her will, Gesina decided that her sister Catherina ter Borch (1634-before 2 October 1704) should receive the care of the studio legacy, which consisted of albums, sketchbooks, documents, and nearly 700 drawings. This collection was later inherited by Hillegonda Schellinger and her husband Jean de Lambert (c.1660-1733), who also became the owners of the house on Sassenstraat in 1711. The collection stayed in the family for generations until it was sold at auction in 1886 by Hillegonda’s great-grandson L.F. Zebinden.5 The majority ended up in the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. No oil paintings by Gesina were part of the sale.6 Harmen ter Borch showed some talent as a painter and draughtsman, but he gave up his artistic career in 1661 when he took over his father’s job as licence master. Moses ter Borch was a highly talented artist who made expressive, well-observed and well-executed portraits when he was in his teens, mainly in the form of drawings. Several extant self-portraits show a confident handling of brush and pen. Sadly, Moses decided to join the Dutch navy when he was almost twenty years old and died in 1667 during the siege of Fort Languard near Felixstowe.

A collaboration of love From the Konstboek (a sketchbook in which she also pasted drawings by her father and brothers, but which primarily consists of numerous drawings in ink and watercolour by Gesina herself), started in the 1650s, it becomes clear that Gesina, more than other family members, had a very hard time to come to terms with the death of her much beloved younger brother Moses, to whom she must have been very close and who she perhaps had helped to nurse, together with her mother, as Moses was Gesina’s junior by fourteen years. She made several drawings of him in the later 1660s and 1670s, particularly after his death in 1667 (figs. 5, 19, 20 and 21), and also lamented his death in verses, see, for example, figure 3. Shortly after Moses’ death, Gerard ter Borch II and Gesina ter Borch collaborated on a memorial portrait of Moses, signed by Gerard, now in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum (see fig. 4). In any case, the face and the hands were painted by Gerard and probably the general figure as well. However, other motifs were done by Gesina: the background, (part of) Moses’ costume (particularly the sleeves), various objects with an allegorical reference to Moses’ death, such as a skull (death), an hourglass (time), and animals such as the dogs (fidelity), butterfly (transformation, freedom, and rebirth), snail (patience, perseverance, and resilience) and a serpent (evil), and military objects and shells, referring to the sea and Moses’ military career.7 In a signed drawing by Gesina, which is dated (or bears the date) 1667, Moses wears the same costume as in the painting (fig. 5). It appears that this drawing preceded the painting, in which case Gerard may well have used it as a starting point for his portrait of Moses.8

The oil painting, the signature and the inscription

Fig. 2 Gesina ter Borch, Portrait of Hillegonda Louise Schellinger (1674-1750) in Curaçao, signed and dated, ‘Gesina Ter Borch.F.1680’, watercolour on paper, 243 x 360 mm (size of the sheet). Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. BI-1887-1463-92

No paintings in oils signed by Gesina ter Borch were known until now. She was primarily regarded as a draughtswoman who made many drawings and watercolour paintings, who only once collaborated with her half-brother Gerard on the memorial portrait in oils of their deceased brother Moses, though the art historian Sturla Gudlaugsson mentioned in his book on Gerard ter Borch II that Gesina took some lessons in oil painting from her brother Gerard.9 The newly discovered portrait, however, is clearly signed at bottom right ‘Gesina ter Borch’ in the distinct calligraphy of Gesina’s signature on, among others, the drawings in figures 2 and 5. In the upper left is an inscription ‘A: i647. Ætatis.Sua.2.’ in yellow ochre paint, which might be in a different hand. It could have been done by one of the poets who wrote poems for her, for example Joost Hermans Roldanus (c.1595-1682), a schoolmaster at the Latin school in Zwolle, who also calligraphed an ode below one of Gesina’s self-portraits (fig. 8). On the other hand, the inscription does not differ substantially from examples of Gesina’s calligraphy on paper (cf. fig. 5). It must have been done by someone who could work with oil paint. Both the signature and inscription were clearly painted at the same time as the rest of the painting as the fine lines of the craquelure run through the paint, and the signature and inscription remained fully intact during cleaning. This can be very well observed through the microscopic images of part of the signature and the inscription (figs. 6a, 6b, 7a and 7b). Fig. 3 Sijbrant Schellinger (poet), Gesina ter Borch (calligrapher), Poem in honour of Moses ter Borch, ink and pen on paper, 243 x 360 mm (size of the sheet). Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. BI-1887-1463-82

Fig. 4 Gerard ter Borch II and Gesina ter Borch, Memorial portrait of Moses ter Borch (1645-1667), 1667-1669, signed, lower left: ‘G. ter Borch’, oil on canvas, 76.2 x 56.5 cm (detail). Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. SK-A-4908

Fig. 5 Gesina ter Borch, Moses ter Borch on the beach at Harwich, signed and dated, ‘Gesina Ter Borch i667’, watercolour on paper, 243 x 360 mm (size of the sheet). Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. BI-1887-1463-83

Figs. 6a and 6b Letters ‘G’ and ‘a’ in the artist’s signature in black paint, see: technical report Redivivus, The Hague, 2024

Figs. 7a and 7b Letters and the digit 2 of the inscription in yellow-ochre paint, see: technical report Redivivus, The Hague, 2024

Fig. 8 Gesina ter Borch, Selfportrait, with a poem by Joost Hermans Roldanus, 1661, watercolour and ink on paper, 243 x 360 mm (size of the sheet) (detail).

Fig. 9 Gerard ter Borch (II), Study of Moses ter Borch, c.1653-1654, black chalk, and ink on paper, 87 x 97 mm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-T-00-52

Fig. 10 Detail of the painting in fig. 1

Fig. 11 Moses ter Borch, Self-portrait (detail). 1661, black and white chalk, and possible ink or watercolour on blue paper, 144 x 109 mm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-T-1887-A-1052

Fig. 12 Moses ter Borch, Self-portrait, 1660-1661, oil on canvas, 26.5 x 18 cm (detail). Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. SK-A-2241

The identification: Moses ter Borch and a possible Orangist connection The date and year mentioned in the inscription fit for Gesina’s brother Moses, who was 2 years old in 1647. The boy also has his characteristic features, the upturned nose, the ginger curly hair and full cheeks known from several drawings and paintings, for example, by Gerard ter Borch II, such as in the drawing in figure 9 and notably several (later) self-portraits by Moses (figs. 11 and 12) in which the young boy can easily be recognised. Moses was a very gifted artist who started drawing when he was only 7 years old. If he had pursued a professional artistic career, he probably could have become an artist of very high esteem, like his half-brother Gerard. Moreover, the sitter indeed clearly looks like a little child of about two years old, with his toys spread around him. To the left is a black toy horse on wheels with a green base, which is worn where it had been stepped on many times (probably also by other siblings), with a little horsewhip next to it.10 In the other lower corner of the painting a flute, a violin and bow, and a long thin stick with ribbons can be seen just above a toy sword attached to a gold-embroidered sash that nearly touches the signature below it. Little Moses is beating a drum (fig. 1). From a long golden chain on his chest a golden coin or medal is suspended. It might depict Frederik Henry of Orange, who died in 1647 (figs. 13 and 14).11 It is rather similar in type to the golden chain with the coin of Maurice of Orange (1567-1625) shown in an anonymous painting of a boy from 1604, possibly representing Louis of Nassau (1602-1665), later Lord of Beverweerd, de Leck, Odijk, and Lekkerkerk (figs. 15, 15a). Also, the Orangist flag to the left appears to refer to support for the House of Orange. It might be that objects such as the sword on the floor, and the idle instruments refer to the death of the statesman. After all, Moses had joined the navy in defence of his country.

Fig. 15a Detail of fig. 15 of the medal with the portrait of Maurice of Orange

Fig. 13 Detail of the painting in fig. 1, the medal

Fig. 14 Double Pistole or 4 Ecu d’or. Obv. bust of Frederik Henry of Nassau to the right FRED· HENR· D· G· PRIN· AVR· CO· NAS. Rev. combined crowned coat of arms SOLI· DEO· HONOR· ET· GLOR. Image: https://www.sixbid.com/en/schulman-bv/10512/southernnetherlands/9107406/dubbele-pistool-1641-over-1640

Fig. 15 Anonymous, Portrait of a boy, possibly Lodewijk of Nassau (1602-1665), later Lord of Beverweerd, de Leck, Odijk and Lekkerkerk, dated and inscribed: ‘Aetatis Suae 18. Mens Aº 1604’, oil on panel, 90 x 69 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. SK-A-956

Date of the painting judging from the costume Despite the inscription at upper left, there are several distinct features that contrast with the date of 1647. First and foremost, the costume with the exuberant ribbons worn by the toddler was in fashion around 1665-1670 and is certainly not appropriate for 1647. A date of around 1667 would be spot on. A portrait of a boy by Hendrick Berckman (1629-1679), which is signed and dated 1667 shows a highly similar garment (fig. 16) as in the portrait of Moses: the flat, square collar with a lace border, the abundant ribbons on the hat, shoulders and sleeves, the long white apron over a coloured silk(?) dress and the long golden chains are all very similar. The same date fits for the black hat with the feathers. Moreover, it appears that Gesina, in the late 1640s and 1650s, consistently signed as ‘Geesken’ (figs. 17 and 18) and only started to sign her work as ‘Gesina’ around 1660, in the exact same calligraphy as on the oil painting (fig. 1). Moreover, Gesina was sixteen-years old in 1647 and her drawing style in the late 1640s and 1650s was much more linear, less skilled, less lively, and less individual, and her use of watercolours was less opaque and intricate than after 1660 (figs. 176, 19 and 26). Moreover, her earliest known drawing, of a series of figures, dates from 28 April 1648 (fig. 19).12

Fig. 16 Hendrick Berckman, A young boy with a dog, signed and dated, ‘HBerckman. F / 1667.’, oil on mahogany panel, 79.5 x 63 cm (detail). With Lawrence Steigrad Fine Arts, 2011

Fig. 17 Gesina ter Borch, Two Women, signed and dated, ‘Geesken Ter Borch 1654.’, watercolour on paper, 243 x 360 mm (size of the sheet) (detail). Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. BI-1887-1463-117

Fig. 18 Gesina ter Borch, Portrait of a child in an interior, signed and dated: ‘Geesken Ter Borch 1657’, black chalk and ink on paper, 255 x 190 mm (size of the sheet). Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-T-1887-A-1196

Comparison with other work, handling of the paint and attention to details Comparing the newly-found painting in oils of little Moses with watercoloured drawings from the 1660s in Gesina’s Konstboek results in distinct similarities beyond the signature, such as the drawing-like handling, the strong contours, and the display of the various objects scattered around a figure. The way the toys are placed in the portrait shows a very strong similarity with the portrait of Moses in the Rijksmuseum (fig. 4). They fill voids in the painting and are identical in style and handling. The handling of the paint does not suggest that it was done by an artist very familiar with working in oils. This can be observed particularly in the costume, which is detailed and has a drawing-like rendering, while there is a strong emphasis on the meticulously portrayed toys and other details. It is highly likely that the painting was intended by Gesina ter Borch as another memorial portrait of her brother Moses, recalling him as a toddler. Dating it to around 1667-1669, the same time when the other memorial painting (fig.4)

originated, is far more plausible than to interpret the inscription as providing the date of origin. Also, a drawing Gesina did of her brother Moses around 1670 shows the same handling of the costume as can be observed in the painting of little Moses, such as the strong contours in the lace and other aspects of the costume, the use of strong blacks in the darkest parts of the costume and the large black pupils of the eyes (fig. 20).13 Moreover, Gesina’s in testament, made up in Zwolle on 16 (?) April 1690, it is stated that: ‘En zullen al mijn conterfeitsels, en van broeder Moses en van vader en moeder en bestevader en bestemoeder, alsmede al mijn zilverwerk en het huislinnen dat ik van moeder geërft hebbe mede niet verkoft, maar voor de kinderen bewaart moeten worden’ (all my portraits, and those of brother Moses and of father and mother and grandfather and grandmother, as well as my silver and the linen I inherited from my mother must not be sold but will have to be kept for the children).14

Fig. 19 Gesina ter Borch, Figure Studies, dated 28 April 1648, watercolour and ink on paper, 155 x 211 mm (size of the sheet). Part of the Materi-Boeck van Gesina ter Borch. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. BI-1890-1950-10

Fig. 20 Gesina ter Borch, Moses ter Borch, c.1670, watercolour, ink and egg white on paper, 243 x 360 mm (size of the sheet). Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. BI-1887-1463-84

Fig. 21 Gesina ter Borch, Moses ter Borch, in the countryside around Zwolle, signed and dated, ‘Gesina Ter Borch.F.1666’, watercolour on paper, 243 x 360 mm (size of the sheet). Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. BI-1887-1463-79

Fig. 22 Gesina ter Borch, Moses ter Borch at the English coast, c.1667, signed, ‘Gesina Ter Borch’, watercolour on paper, 243 x 360 mm (size of the sheet). Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. BI-1887-1463-81

Below the surface To allow thorough understanding of the picture, technical research has been performed. One issue was to establish whether Gesina used an underdrawing for her painting, which turned out to be the case. Interestingly, part of the underdrawing had become visible in a small spot on the drum where the upper paint layer was lost. Distinct drawing lines are visible through the microscope (fig. 23). Also, it becomes clear from this image that the artist made the underdrawing directly on the light ground layer. More of the underdrawing can be observed with the aid of Infrared Reflectography (IRR) (fig. 24), particularly in the drum. Additionally, it has become clear that Gesina ter Borch originally planned to depict a longer and wider skirt which is clearly visible in the IRR photo (fig. 24).15 Apparently, the longer skirt was never fully executed. It does, however, support the assumption that the portrait was made around 1667-1668 and not in 1647 when Moses was actually two years old, as the artist appears to have started with a taller figure rather than with a two-year old modelling for her. One might wonder, however, on which sketches or paintings she based Moses’ face and posture in the portrait and whether a study of his toddler’s face existed by her father or by her brothers Gerard or Harmen. Interestingly, it appears that the face in the painting disappears in the x-ray image that was made, which indicates that hardly any whites were used in painting it (fig. 25). The sketch she made around 1650 (fig. 26, after a drawing by Harmen ter Borch) may depict Moses with his curly red hair playing his violin. Most likely, she had made other sketches of him during those years. The handling, however, is simpler, more doll-like than her more individual intricate sketches from the 1660s on, but as this appears to be a copy after her brother’s drawing, the handling is difficult to assess. The violin in the drawing differs somewhat in shape, and the flowers on the soundboard of the violin in the painting are different (fig. 27).

On close inspection of the IRR of Moses’ hat in the oil painting, it appears it may have been changed in the process. Just above the rim of the hat some lighter strokes (hair or ribbons?) are visible. It might be that originally it looked more like a black beret or a falling hat (also called a bumper or pudding hat), such as the one with green ribbons or with the blonde hair peeping out from above of the head of Gerrit Schellinger, one of Gesina’s little nephews, whom she portrayed several times (figs. 28, 29 and 32).16 The bumper hat and black beret were also depicted by Gesina in a drawing from around 1660 of women and children (fig. 30). But it could also be that the hat was painted over the hair and has (in part) become transparent over time.17 The rendering of Moses in the oil painting shows further similarities with drawings of the late 1660s and 1670s. For example, with the drawing of Sijbrant Schellinger and Jenneken ter Borch with two of their children (probably Gerrit (Gerard/Gerhard) and Cornelis) in an interior. The faces of the persons appear to display the same kind of treatment with strong round black eyes, rosy lips, and strong contours and rather thick drawing-like handling of the clothes. Moreover, in the painting there are intense shiny black parts (notably the black hat and wooden horse, and some shadow areas) which remained extra black and shiny after cleaning (figs. 1 and 31). The explanation may be the use of extra finely ground black pigment, which causes a dense and shiny effect.18 It may be, however, that Gesina ter Borch added extra layers of a thin pigment glaze on these black areas to gain a glossy and intense black effect. Apparently, she used a similar method in her drawings: to achieve intense black in some parts of her drawings she glazed/washed those areas with egg white. In this respect, it is interesting that the black in the eyes appears to be rather well preserved, whereas often in portraits in oils, it has suffered. Moreover, this appears to indicate a direct relationship between her way of working and thinking concerning her drawings and paintings.

Fig. 23 A loss in the paint of the drum shows the preparatory drawing material underneath (applied directly on the ground), see technical report Redivivus, The Hague, 2024

Fig. 24 IRR image of the painting in fig. 1

Fig. 25 X-ray image of the painting in fig. 1

Fig. 27 Detail of the painting in fig. 1 (lower right), the musical instruments and sword. Fig. 26 Gesina ter Borch (after Harmen ter Borch), Portrait of a small child playing the violin, c.1650, watercolour and ink on paper, 155 x 211 mm (size of the sheet) (detail). From the Materi-Boeck of Gesina ter Borch. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. BI-1890-1950-17

Fig. 28 Gesina ter Borch, Gerrit and Cornelis Schellinger as children in an interior, signed and dated: ‘Gesina Ter Borch i672’, watercolour and ink on paper, 163 x 222 mm (size of the sheet) Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. BI-1887-1463-72 Fig. 29 Gesina ter Borch, Probably Gerrit Schellinger as a young boy, c.1672, watercolour and ink on paper, 243 x 360 mm (size of the sheet) Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. BI-1887-1463-105

Fig. 30 Gesina ter Borch, Three women and their children in an interior, c.1660/61, signed bottom left in brown ink: ‘Gesina ter Borch’, watercolour and ink on paper, 163 x 222 mm (size of the sheet). Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. BI-1887-1463-21

Fig. 31 Detail of the panting in fig. 1, the horse

Fig. 32 Gesina ter Borch, Sijbrant Schellinger and Jenneken ter Borch with two children in an interior, signed and dated: ‘Gesina Ter Borch. 1669.’, watercolour and ink on paper, 243 x 360 mm (size of the sheet). Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. BI-1887-1463-74

Daily life at home Many drawings by Gesina ter Borch have a homey feel, and many actually depict daily life at home. This sense and illustration of life at home is also visible in the painting of her brother Moses. The boy is actively playing. It feels as though he is caught in a moment of it. He is drumming, was perhaps playing the violin earlier, did some horse riding and sword fighting. For just one split second he looks at us (through his sister, who captured him in this particular moment). As said, the depiction of all these toys in a very lifelike way is unusual in the portraiture of children, particularly when it concerns an actual portrait

and not a genre scene. The fact that Gesina was a female artist who observed life around her with grown-ups and children on a daily basis, may very well have intensified the urge to document these observations by way of her art. In the drawing of the three women with children (fig. 30), a busy life at home with children playing, running around, horse riding, and with one woman breastfeeding, it gives the ultimate impression of life in a household with many children. The depiction is so lifelike and full of movement that is not difficult to imagine the sounds of children’s voices and footsteps.

Fig. 33 Interior of the apartment at Place Furstenberg as featured in L’Oeil, October 1965

Fig. 35 Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, Philip Prosper, Prince of Asturias, 1659, oil on canvas, 129 x 100 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. no. Gemäldegalerie, 319

Fig. 34 The portrait of Moses ter Borch by Gesina ter Borch as featured in L’Oeil, October 1965

The painting’s history In October 1965, the portrait of Moses ter Borch was published in L’Oeil, a French magazine, in which the interior of the apartment at Place Furstenberg in Paris of the collector and dentist Jean Jacques Loynel d’Estrie (1920-1995) was featured (fig. 33). The apartment showed an enormous number of art objects, and it becomes clear that the collector had many interests. After his death, the Musée du Louvre received his impressive collection of verre émaillé in lieu of inheritance tax in December 1997, and subsequently deposited it at the Musée de Nevers in 1998.19 In the 1965, publication the portrait of Moses was singled out (fig. 34) with the following caption: ‘Gérard Terborch [sic]: Philippe Prosper, Infant d’Espagne, à l’âge de deux ans, en 1647. Il existe au Rijks Museum [sic] d’Amsterdam un autre portrait de l’infant par Terborch, exécuté l’année précédente. Celui-ci vient de la famille maternelle de M. Loynel d’Estrie, qui était fixée en Franche-Comté à l’époque où cette province était encore possession espagnole’ (Gérard Terborch: Philippe Prosper, Infant of Spain, at the age of two, in 1647. Another portrait of the infant by Terborch, made the previous year, exists at the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam. This one comes from the maternal ancestors of Mr. Loynel d’Estrie, who were settled in Franche-Comté at the time when that province was still a Spanish possession). The mentioned sitter is Philip Prosper, Prince of Asturias (1657-1661), who was actually born 12 years later than the boy (Moses) in Gesina ter Borch’s portrait. Prince Philip was portrayed as a two-year old in 1659 by Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) (fig. 35). Both the age of the Spanish boy and his likeness by Velázquez make it fully clear that the identification was incorrect. Lastly, it is mentioned that the painting had come down to Loynel d’Estrie through the maternal line and that that family had settled in Franche-Comté when the province was still under Spanish rule. However, since Franche-Comté was ceded to France in 1678 in the Treaty of Nijmegen, such an early provenance is impossible, as the painting must have remained in the ter Borch family until well past the time

of Gesina’s death in 1690. The painting is almost certainly the Portrait d’Enfant by Gesina Terburg [sic], lot 102, oil on canvas, 54 x 45 cm (this is slightly smaller in height than the actual measurements, the catalogue probably gave the sight size of the framed painting), that was sold on 30 March 1874 in Amsterdam with J.C. van Pappelendam and G.J. Schouten at hotel ‘De Brakke Grond’ (fig. 36).20 In the auction catalogue is written that the consignor of the portrait and several other paintings by and of the ter Borch family members (and many other old master paintings) in the sale was David van der Kellen Jr. This is probably, the engraver (among others) who was born on 25 September 1804 in Amsterdam and who died there on 30 March 1879. His son David van der Kellen III (1827-1895) was also called Jr., which complicates matters, also because he had the same occupations as his father besides being a museum director. The painting was sold for 36 guilders to A. Wolff, who also bought three other paintings in the sale.21 It may well have been the Parisian art critic Albert Abraham Wolff (1835-1891) through whom the portrait of Moses ended up in Paris, and subsequently in the family of Jean Jacques Loynel d’Estrie. Whether the owner, David van der Kellen Jr, was a descendant of the ter Borch family is yet unclear, but as he had eight paintings in his possession that were related to the ter Borch family, there may well be a family connection. Moreover, the group of paintings consigned by van der Kellen appears to concur with the group of portraits of which Gesina had ordained in her will that they ‘must not be sold but will have to be kept for the children’.22

It might be that the memorial portrait of Moses ter Borch, painted by Gerard ter Borch II and Gesina ter Borch, originally came from this group of paintings as well. That portrait was bought in Paris before 1853 by Thomas Jefferson Bryan (1800?-1870) an American art collector who came to France when he was 21 and who stayed in Paris for the following thirty years, acquiring an extensive collection of European Art. He took his art collection, including the portrait of Moses by Gerard and Gesina ter Borch, to New York where he opened a gallery in that year.23 After the death of Jean Jacques Loynel, the painting was inherited by family and finally sold privately in October 2023 to a French antiques dealer, from whom acquired by Zebregs&Röell,who sold it to the present owner, who consigned it back to Zebregs&Röell after they had discovered the signature of Gesina ter Borch.

Fig. 36 Auction J.C. van Pappelendam and G.J. Schouten at hotel ‘De Brakke Grond’, 30 March 1874: ‘Gesina Terburg [sic] [lot] 102 - Portrait d’Enfant Toile. Hauteur 54, largeur 45 cent.’ Scan of the auctioneer’s copy of the auction catalogue with annotations. The Hague, RKD

A unique testimony of love The newly found portrait of Moses ter Borch by Gesina is a unique expression of the deep affection that Gesina must have felt for her much younger brother. It is the only signed portrait by the artist in oils and the only original depiction by her of Moses as a toddler. Painting it must have been a way for her to conquer the loss she felt upon the sudden death that had separated her from a very dear

brother. Again, love and art prevailed over death, just like it did in her watercolour The Triumpf of Painting over Death in 1660 (fig. 37) and by guarding his legacy and that of other family members causing it to survive almost intact through the centuries, so it can still be admired and loved by many. As will this portrait now that it has re-emerged with the correct names of the sitter and the artist, Moses ter Borch and Gesina ter Borch.

Fig. 37 Gesina ter Borch, Triumpf of Painting over Death, 1660, signed: ‘Gesina Ter Borch’, watercolour and ink on paper, 243 x 360 mm (size of the sheet). Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. BI-1887-1463-2

We are indebted to Gwendolyn Boevé-Jones and Rebecca Chipkin of Redivivus for their information on technical aspects of the painting, to Marjan Brouwer for sending us her book on Gesina ter Borch, and to Dickie Zebregs for giving us the opportunity to do research and to write this essay. 1 See A. McNeil Kettering, Drawings from the Ter Borch Studio Estate in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1988, pp. 92, 93, cat. nos. GJr 1 and GJr 2. 2 https://gw.geneanet.org/cofranssen?lang=en&n=schellinger&oc=0&p=sijbrantm, accessed 12 February 2024. 3 This clearly shows that Jenneken and probably Sijbrant as well were also much affected by Moses’ death in 1667. Moses Schellinger, baptised, 17 March 1669, Stadsarchief Amsterdam (SAA), DTB Dopen (Baptisms), archive no. 5001, inv. no. 63, p.47, deed DTB 63, buried 27 June 1669, DTB Begraven (Burials), archive no. 5001, inv. no. 1056, p. 8 and p. 9, deed DTB 1056; Moses Schellinger, baptised, 12 March 1670, Stadsarchief Amsterdam (SAA), DTB Dopen (Baptisms), archive no. 5001, inv. no. 44, p. 272, deed DTB 44, buried 14 April 1670, DTB Begraven (Burials), archive no. 5001, inv. no. 1056, p. 29 and p. 30, deed DTB 1056. 4 M.E. Houck, Mededeelingen betreffende Gerhard ter Borch, Robert van Voerst, Pieter van Anraedt, Aleijda Wolfsen, Derck Hardensteijn en Hendrik ter Bruggen, Zwolle 1899, p. 160. 5 Houck 1899 (note 4), p. 160; S.J. Gudlaugsson, Katalog der Gemälde Gerard ter Borchs sowie biographisches Material, 2 vols, The Hague, 1959-1960, vol. 2, p. 45. 6 See McNeil Kettering 1988 (note 1), p. 362; https://resources.huygens. knaw.nl/vrouwenlexicon/lemmata/data/Borch, accessed between 20 January and 14 February 2024; M. Brouwer, De Gouden Eeuw van Gesina ter Borch, Zwolle 2010. 7 See also: A. McNeil Kettering, ‘Portret van Moses ter Borch door Gerard en Gesina ter Borch’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum, 43, 1995, pp. 317335. 8 See also: A.K. Wheelock Jr., A. McNeil Kettering and A. Wallert, Gerard ter Borch, Zwolle, 2004-2005, cat. no. 46, p. 168. 9 Gudlaugsson 1959-1960 (note 5), vol. 2: 38, 285-287. The author mentions as only fully signed (and dated 1665) painting by Gesina ter Borch a Simson and Delilah in the Municipal Museum in Zwolle, a painting that was later unmasked as by Hendrik Bloemaert (C.J.A. Wansink, ‘Simson en Delila, niet Gesina ter Borch, maar Hendrik Bloemaert’, Oud Holland 102, 1988, pp. 236-242). Gudlaugsson further singled out eleven paintings, mainly previously attributed to Gerard ter Borch II, among them the collaborative work with Gerard (also in his catalogue of that artist, no. 227). His catalogue number 9 ‘Bildnis eines Kindes’ Leinwand 54 x 45 cm, auctioned in Amsterdam with J.C. van Pappelendam and G.J. Schouten at “De Brakke Grond”, 30-31 March 1874, lot 102, is most probably the newly discovered painting discussed here (see paragraph of the history of the painting), his catalogue number 10, supposedly signed and in an American collection, he had only heard of and not seen. The attribution to Gesina ter Borch of the remaining eight works, judging from photos, holds no ground. A small full-length portrait in oils of Moses ter Borch, now in the National Gallery in Washington DC (inv. no. 2022.106.1), has been published as ‘Ter Borch family Studio. Attributed to Gesina ter Borch and Gerard ter Borch the Younger’, see Salomon Lilian Old Masters 2022, pp. 16-27, cat. no. 2, catalogue entry by J. Hillegers. Most probably this is the painting that was offered for sale in the same auction on 30 March 1874, lot 99, Portrait de jeune homme, dit Mozes Terburg [sic] le frère du peintre by G, [Gerard] Terburg [sic], panel, 36 x 28 cm, which also came from David van der Kellen Jr. and did not sell, as it did not attain the reserve price of 200 guilders (bidding stopped at 115 guilders). See fig. 36 in this essay of the catalogue page. 10 With thanks to Alexander Christian Stal who observed the difference in colour, verbal communication 6 February 2024. 11 From her will of 16[?] April 1690 it becomes clear that Gesina owned several gold and silver medals and coins: ‘Neeve Gerhard ter Borch zal hebben mijn groote gouden pennink daar op de eene zijclt de wijnparsse staat, en Tomas ter Borch de vierdubbele pistolet van 36 gl. zoo hij mij overleeft, anders zal die in ’t gemeen zijn aen de drie neven Jacobus ter Borch en Gerhard en Cornelis Schellinger, noch zal Jacobus ter Borch hebben een gouden ducaton van 15 gl. ’t stuck, met een ducaat van 5 gl. en Gerhard Schellinger sal hebben mijn grootste zilveren medalie daar een oog aan is dat men ze hangen kan, met een 155 klein zilveren penninkjes en een gouden ducaat van 5 gl.’, Houck 1899 (note 4), pp. 154, 155.

12 H. Luijten, ‘“Swiren vol van leer, amblemsche wijs geduijt”. Een opmerkelijk zeventiende-eeuws poëzie-album van Gesina ter Borch’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum, 36, 1988, pp. 315-342. 13 The costume and template of the drawing was copied by Gesina after the portrait of François de Vicq, later Burgomaster of Amsterdam, from 1670 by Gerard ter Borch II, now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. no. SK-A-2417. 14 Houck 1899 (note 4), p. 156. 15 See technical report of Redivivus, February 2024. 16 The falling hat, used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was usually a sausage-shaped bumper roll with an open top with ribbons that was often fastened with ribbons under the chin, see https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Baby_bumper_headguard_cap, accessed 9 February 2024. 17 Email correspondence with Gwendolyn Boevé-Jones, 12 February 2024. 18 With thanks to Gwendolyn Boevé-Jones, who pointed this out to us, 6 February 2024. 19 http://www2.culture.gouv.fr/public/mistral/joconde_fr?ACTION=CHERCHER&FIELD_98=APTN&VALUE_98=%20Jean%20Loynel%20 d&DOM=All&REL_SPECIFIC=3, accessed 10 February 2024. 20 The painting was also mentioned by Gudlaugsson 1960-1961 (note 5), p. 286 (see also note 5). 21 A. Wolff also acquired: Circle of Rachel Ruysch (lot 92), Manner of Ostade (lot 88) and an anonymous portrait of a woman (lot 62). 22 See above and note 14. In the auction of 1874, this concerned the following lots: Inconnu 58. - Portrait d’un homme d’Age (dit le père du peintre G. Terburg). Bois Hauteur 66, largeur 55 cent. Inconnu 59. - Portrait d’une dame d’Age (dit le mère du peintre G. Terburg). Bois Hauteur 66, largeur 52 cent. L. de Jongh 64. - Portrait du peintre Gérard Terburg. Bois Hauteur 71, largeur 63 cent. L. de Jongh 65. - Portrait de la femme de Gérard Terburg. Bois Hauteur 71, largeur 68[?] cent. G. Terburg 99. - Portrait de jeune homme, dit Mozes Terburg, le frère du peintre. Bois Hauteur 36, largeur 28 cent. G. Terburg 100. - Portrait de savant. Toile. Hauteur 40, largeur 33 cent. Maniére de G. Terburg 101. - Portrait de Gesina Terburg. Bois. Hauteur 27, largeur 21 cent. Gesina Terburg 102. - Portrait d’enfant. Toile. Hauteur 54, largeur 45 cent. 23 https://medievalartus.ace.fordham.edu/exhibits/show/bryan-gallery/thebryan-gallery--a-first-for, accessed 11 February 2024.

About the authors Carla van de Puttelaar (1967) graduated from the Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam (1996). She holds a PhD in art history from Utrecht University (2017). In 2021 her seminal book Scottish portraiture 1644-1714 was published. She is a specialist on Dutch, Flemish and British portraiture 1500-1800. Carla has written essays for exhibition catalogues and art journals, and was co-editor and author for three libri amicorum. She is currently the Co-chair and Journal Editor of the Scottish Society for Art History. Her photographic work has gained worldwide recognition, being exhibited in several museums and galleries, and appearing in publications including eight monographs. Carla is the creator of the portrait project Artfully dressed: Women in the art world (www.womenintheartworld.com). Fred G. Meijer (1955) worked in the department of Old Netherlandish Painting at the RKD, Netherlands Institute for Art History, from 1980 until mid-2017, when he founded Fred G. Meijer Art History (www.fredgmeijer. com). His main field of interest is still-life painting from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but his specialist knowledge concerns many areas of Dutch and Flemish art from c.1600-1850. He has published numerous articles, contributed to catalogues, and wrote catalogues on still-life collections in Rotterdam (1989) and Oxford (2003). He has also published a dictionary of Dutch and Flemish still-life painters with A. van der Willigen (2003). In 2016 he received the degree of doctor at the University of Amsterdam for his research concerning the still-life painter Jan Davidsz. de Heem (1606-1684). This year his monograph on this artist will be published.

20. An extremely rare New Amsterdam commemorative spoon and fork Possibly Dutch colonial, New Amsterdam (New York), circa 1672, apparently unmarked, The unusual triangular handles are decorated with zoomorphic ornaments in the ‘kwab-stijl’, the Auricular or lobed style, made popular in the Netherlands by silversmith Paulus van Vianen in the first quarter of the 17th century, the spoon engraved to the back of the bowl “SARA LEWES. Obijt 7 Iunij 1672” and the fork engraved to the back of the centre prong “SARA LEWES Ob. 7 Iunij 1672.” L. 16.5 / 16.3 cm Weight spoon 43 grams Weight fork 34 grams Commemorating a deceased relative in silver was a Dutch tradition in the 17th and 18th centuries. In the Dutch East Indies, particularly in Jakarta (Batavia), commemorative salvers were made in large quantities, and still many survived, although undoubtedly most have been melted down over time. Sometimes salvers made in Holland were later engraved in Batavia. Commemorative spoons made in Batavia are very rare, and only a few colonial ones are known.1 The first time the present spoon and fork were described was by Stephan Welz in Cape Silver (1976).2 Welz assumed the set was made in the Cape colony, which seems very unlikely. No ‘kwab’ decorations are known in Cape silver because all silversmiths in the Cape were of German or English origin. Besides, Cape silver spoons are, without exceptions, always in Hanoverian or Old English style, and no Cape silver spoons are known that date from before the early 18th century. The second mention of the set is by Kevin Brown, who bought the set in Cape Town.3 He argues that the set is the earliest known New York silver. In two further articles.4 Kevin Brown substantiates his supposition that the set was made in New York. The ‘Kwabstijl’ was very popular in Holland and Friesland, and many spoons with zoomorphic finials were made there in the first quarter of the 17th century. Later in the 17th century, in the 1650s, Christiaan van Vianen, along with Theodorus van Kessel, was responsible for the publication of “Constighe Modellen, van verscheijden silvere vaten, en andere sinnighe wercken”, featuring various silver vessels and other ingenious works found and designed by the renowned nobleman, crafted mainly by him from a single piece of silver, very useful

for all lovers of art, with prints of the work of his father. Jacob Lutma (c. 1624–1654), son of Johannes Lutma, quickly followed with a series on the work of his father. Cornelis Danckertsz. I (c. 1603–1656) released a collection titled “Verscheyde Constige Vindigen om in Gout, Silver, Hout en Steen te wercken”, with prints by Michiel Mosyn. All these publications were provided with texts in multiple languages and were apparently intended for the international market. It is important to note that Dutch silver spoons are practically always marked. In New York, one other spoon in the ‘Kwabstijl’ is known, made and marked by Cornelius Van Der Burch (New Amsterdam 1653 – New York 1699), commissioned for the funeral in New York of Henricus, son of Pieter and Hester Deursen in 1692 (collection of the Yale University Art Gallery). The form of this spoon is almost identical to the present spoon. Sara Lieuwes was born in Leeuwarden, Friesland, in 1643, as the younger sister of Sytske Lieuwes (b. 1642). Sytske married Gerrit de Wees in 1662, and in 1663, they moved to New Amsterdam, America, where Sytske appears in the records of the Dutch Reformed Church, with the name Lieuwes spelt as “Lievens”. The Frisian name “Lieuwes” apparently was not well understood by the church recorder and was transformed into the common Dutch/Amsterdam name “Lievens”. As New Amsterdam was conquered by the English in 1664, in the same way, in 1672, Lieuwes may probably was anglicised into Lewes. There are no records of Sara’s presence in New York. Presumably, Sytske and Gerrit had the set made in New York (by Cornelius Van Der Burch?) to memorialise Sara Lieuwe’s death in 1672 in Leeuwarden, as every few months post would arrive from the Netherlands.

The silver was analysed by the Dutch authorities on gold and silver Waarborg Gouda and showed that the silver is of the same origin as Dutch silver of suggested date. There are no modern metals or chemicals that one would expect in newer silver. It is very likely that silver in New Amsterdam/New York is the same as Dutch silver, as often settlers would bring silver coins with them. This was then taken to a silversmith who would make the requested object with it.

Sources: 1 Guus Röell & Dickie Zebregs, Schenkpirings: Social Media in Silver,

The other possibility is that Sytske and Gerrit already had the set with them when they moved to New York and had it engraved in 1672, but this is unlikely since the set shows no wear. Memorial spoons were made to commemorate a deceased loved one and certainly not for practical use. In addition to the set being the oldest memorial silver from North America, this would make the fork the oldest known silver fork made in New York.

March 2021, no. 3 2 A.A. Balkema, Cape Silver, Rotterdam, 1976, pp. 90-91 3 Kevin Brown, “A 1672 Dutch Memento Mori Spoon and Fork Set”, in: Silver Magazine, September/October 2008, pp. 20-24 4 Kevin Brown, “A Dutch Memento Mori Spoon & Fork set, 1672 from New York?”, in: The Finial, Journal of the Silver Spoon Club of Great Britain, December 2011, Vol. 22, pp. 5-10; Alena Buis and Kevin Brown, “Trifling Things? The Sara Lewes Memorial Lepel and Vork”, in: Dutch Crossing, Vol. 36, No. 6, November 2012

21. A Virgin Island ‘scrimshaw’ turtle shell commemorating the Transatlantic slave trade Probably Danish Virgin Islands, St. Thomas, circa 1917 The Giant Amazon Arrau River turtle shell (Pdocnemis expansa) is engraved with centrally three enslaved Africans in chains flanked by canons, the US, British and Danish flags, with clockwise depicted middle left a slave ship annotated ‘THE SLAVE SHIP “FREDENSBORG’; above a scene of enslaved Africans on a beach about to board a ship; middle right a fort flying the Danish flag annotated ‘SLAVE STATION FORT CHRISTIANSBORG GOLD COAST’; and below a fort flying the US flag with a ship in moored front annotated ‘THE “JOHN BARCLAY” UNLOADING SLAVES ON ST. THOMAS IN THE CARIBBEAN’. Scrimshaw takes the form of decorated pieces of whale tooth, baleen, ivory or turtle shells. Whalers, sailors and other craftsmen would use a sail needle or other sharp instrument to scratch out pictures and messages. Ink, candle black, soot or tobacco juice would then be rubbed into the marks to make the images stand out. L. 65 x W. 40 cm Provenance: - Antwerp antiques trade (purchased in the 1980s) - Private collection, the Netherlands

A Violent Past, Visualized on the back of a Turtle. It would be easy to suggest that this carapace would be a late 18th- or early 19th-century creation to commemorate the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in the Danish West Indies. However, it defies easy dating, and it was likely made in the early 20th century, most probably coinciding with the 1917 transfer of the Danish West Indies to the United States. The inclusion of the U.S. flag suggests a creation date no earlier than the late 19th century and more likely from the early to mid-20th century. The flag shown features 39 stars—a variant never officially adopted but briefly produced in 1889 when it was anticipated that the Dakotas would enter the Union as a single state. Whether the shell’s maker accurately captured the flag’s star pattern is uncertain, yet the sheer number of stars, along with the term ‘Caribbean’ being used, hints that this is from the suggested period.1 The word ‘Caribbean’ was used in 17th-century Britain but was uncommon in 18th-century Danish vernacular, which preferred “West Indies.” The images of the forts and the Fredensborg ship seem to be lifted from print reproductions, indicating a creation steeped in print culture. However, we have been unable to trace a slave ship named John Barclay. The Danish flag’s presence on the Ghanaian fort Osu Castle, formerly known as Christiansborg Castle, is more symbolic of a historical Danish presence in the slave trade than a reflection of a specific time or celebratory event. The

Fredensborg ship’s depiction likely emulates an anonymous 1788 painting held in a Danish private collection, a reproduction of which the Maritime Museum of Denmark holds. Widespread reproduction of this image probably began in the early 20th century.2 This object’s complexity raises profound questions: why represent the Danish slave trade, especially in this form? The artefact likely did not originate from a Danish artisan but instead points to an American or possibly Virgin Island creation. The African Caribbean community on the Virgin Islands, aware of its history under various colonial regimes— St. Croix is in local parlance called “the island of the seven flags”—and probably sought to visualize its violent past, including periods under Danish, British, and American governance. In summary, the artefact is a layered historical narrative, a retrospective amalgamation likely conceived in the early 20th century, echoing the Danish colonial legacy in the West Indies with a visual language informed by both American influences and the colonial history reflected in the Virgin Islands’ cultural memory. The change of ‘ownership’ of the islands from Denmark to the United States undoubtedly evoked the feeling of ‘the end of an era’ by the formerly enslaved African inhabitants. Therefore, the skilled craftsman who made this engraved carapace created this piece of art commemorating the history of his or her ancestors.

Detail of the turtle shell showing the Fredensborg ship.

The Fredensborg on a drawing from circa 1788, whereabouts

unknown.

The Fredensborg Constructed in 1753 in Copenhagen, the frigate, initially named Cron Prindz Christian in honour of the future Christian VII of Denmark and Norway, was refitted for the transatlantic slave trade, later known as the Fredensborg. Her early operations in the triangular trade proved ineffectual, leading to her relegation to a Caribbean merchant until 1756. Subsequently purchased by a Danish company and renamed Fredensborg after a Dano-Norwegian fort on the Ghanaian coast, she was commandeered by Captain Espen Kiønigs. Her infamous voyage began on 24 June 1767, reaching the West African coast by October, where she procured captives at Fort Christiansborg and Fort Fredensborg. Setting sail for the former Danish West Indies on 21 April 1768, she landed 235 of her original 265 captives in St. Croix on 9 July, reflecting an 11% loss of life among the ‘cargo’. The ship’s crew also suffered, with 12 of 40 perishing during the voyage –about 30%. This significant loss among crewmembers was very common on many slave ships because crew costs money, while enslaved were profit. The vessel’s leadership transitioned from Kiønigs to Johan Frantzen Ferentz before her homeward journey on 14 September. The Fredensborg met its end in a storm off Tromøya near Arendal, Norway, on 1 December 1768. The wreck’s discovery in September 1974 by divers Leif Svalesen, Tore Svalesen, and Odd Keilon Ommundsen led to extensive documentation by Leif Svalesen, who endeavoured to illuminate the ship’s historical context.3 A noteworthy design feature of the Fredensborg was the inclusion of deck-mounted ventilation funnels intended to supply oxygen to the slaves held beneath decks. This system highlights the concern for the well-being of the enslaved, not out of humanitarian obligation but to preserve them as merchandise. The Fredensborg stands as a somber testament to the brutality of the slave trade, her remnants and history offering insight into the pragmatic yet callous measures taken to sustain human lives during the harrowing Middle Passage.4

John Barclay The most famous John Barclay (1726-1787), to an extent, founder of Barclay’s Bank, is linked with the slave trade. John became a partner in his father’s linen and merchant house in Cheapside with his brother David Barclay. The business had strong links with the North American trade during the mid-18th century, but the brothers began to retreat from these as political tensions grew in the 1760s. By the 1780s, the brothers had moved away from the linen trade and into banking and brewing. Upon the death of their mother, Barclay inherited a share in the Freame Bank, the oldest Quaker bank in London. This became Barclay, Bevan and Bening of Lombard Street, later part of the merger that formed Barclays Bank. The firm was financing the West India trade and Caribbean plantation economy. Sometime in around 1785 John and David Barclay took possession in lieu of debts of a 2000 acre cattle pen named Unity Valley (Portland) in Jamaica. David Barclay determined to manumit all the enslaved living and working on the estate. Following advice from their attorney in Jamaica, Alexander Macleod of Spanish Town, it appears John did not support immediate emancipation; however, upon John’s death in 1787 he left his share in the pen to his brother, who with the support of John’s family, carried out the manumission in 1795. The brothers were also mortgagees of an estate called Vaucluse and the enslaved people attached to it on Barbados c. 1780.5 We are grateful to Art Historian Prof. Mathias Danbolt of Copenhagen University for his insights while researching this turtle shell. Sources: 1 William Rea Furlong & Byron McCandless. So Proudly We Hail: The History of the United States Flag, Washington, D.C, Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 98-101. 2 Jan Rogoziński. A Brief History of the Caribbean: From the Arawak and the Carib to the Present. New York, Plume. 2000; Leif Svalesen, Slave Ship Fredensborg, Indiana University Press, 2000; Albert van Dantzig and Barbara Priddy, A Short History of the Forts and Castles of Ghana, Accra, Liberty Press, 1971; 3 Leif Svalesen, Slave Ship Fredensborg, Indiana University Press, 2000. 4 The design and purpose of the deck-mounted ventilation funnels are discussed in maritime engineering journals of the period, which analyse ship modifications for the Middle Passage (International Journal of Maritime History, 1975). 5 An account of the emancipation of the slaves of Unity Valley Pen, in Jamaica, by David Barclay, London, 1801.

22. An exceptionally rare British-colonial Jamaican engraved tortoiseshell box with engraved silver mounts Jamaica, Port Royal, circa 1670-1680, attributed to Paul Bennett (act. 1670-1692) The rectangular hinged cover is engraved with the coat-ofarms of Jamaica, and inscribed IAMIACA with to the left a monogram AVG, flanked by a pair of trees enclosed by a floral border, the front, sides and reverse with sprays of flowers, the corners and front heightened with engraved silver mounts, the sides applied with silver handles, raised on four silver ball feet, with some charming old restorations from the period. H. 9.5 x W 25 x D 15.5 cm

Provenance: - Private collection, South Africa (inherited from an ancestor stationed in Jamaica); thence by descent - Cape Town Antiques Trade - Private collector, Stellenbosch (acquired in the 1970s)

23. A British-colonial Jamaican engraved tortoiseshell comb-case and two combs Jamaica, Port Royal, dated 1688, attributed to Paul Bennett (act. 1670-1692) The front of the case engraved with the coat-of-arms of Jamaica, and inscribed IAMAICA 1688. The reverse is engraved with a palm tree and breadfruit. Both combs have been restored in the past with small charming brass mounts. The engravings have been accentuated with lime, with some traces of yellow colouring, which was used to make it look like inlaid gold. H. 19.5 x W. 11.3 x D. 1.1 cm (comb-case) Provenance: - The Henrietta and Chauncey Goodrich Collection (since the 1920s) - Private collection, United Kingdom

24. A British-colonial Jamaican engraved tortoiseshell comb-case with silver mounts and a comb Jamaica, Port Royal, dated 1690, the case attributed to Matthew Comberford (act. 1688-1692), the comb to Paul Bennett (act. 1670-1692) The case is inscribed PORT: ROYAL IN IAMICA: 1690 above the coat-of-arms of Jamaica. The reverse with native fruit trees, the corners with silver panels engraved with flowers, with a double-sided tortoiseshell comb, similarly engraved. H. 16 x W. 10.2 x D. 1.1 cm (comb-case) Provenance: Architect Thomas Wallis (1873–1953), who designed the Tate Gallery, London; thence by descent - Gifted to the previous owner by the son of Wallis in the 1970s

Jamaican Engraved Tortoiseshell A Beautiful but Poignant expression. After England’s conquest of Jamaica on the Spanish colonists in 1655, Port Royal developed into a large city and the thriving commercial centre of (the then archipelago) Jamaica. However, this all ended when a massive earthquake devastated the city and swept two-thirds of it under the sea in 1692. Combs made of materials such as ivory, wood, and horn were quite common in medieval and early modern Europe and a well-known status symbol. These tortoiseshell combs are objects created from familiar forms to reflect new cultural structures in a quickly changing society.

‘INDUS UTERQUE SERVIET UNI’ Taken home after the ‘colonial adventure’ as mementoes of Jamaica, they proved their owner’s worldliness and newly gathered fortunes by perfectly balancing the ‘exotic’ and the familiar, thus being a tool to obtain a higher social status upon arrival. The tortoiseshell was engraved with tulips and sunflowers, inspired by late-17th-century English embroidery. Often, they are engraved with the new coat-ofarms of Jamaica as well. These were granted in 1662, seven years after Britain seized the island in 1655 by Admiral William Penn and General Robert Venables and eight years before Spain’s official recognition of British claim to the island in the Treaty of Madrid, 1670. The arms are often combined with crops that – together with the labour of enslaved people (African and Indigenous) - made the economy thrive, such as sugar cane, cotton, fruit trees and coconut palms. Prior to Jamaica securing independence in 1962, the coat-of-arms reflected the Latin motto “INDUS UTERQUE SERVIET UNI” meaning “The two Indians will serve as one”. This refers to the collective servitude of the Taino and Arawak Indigenous to the British colonisers. The combs taken to England as a ‘souvenir’, therefore, also served as propaganda of the colonial ideas. The narrow-toothed comb probably was intended for extracting lice, and the wide-toothed comb was for fixing wigs. It seems, however, that they were not for use but for show and display only. These combs could have been made for clients of mixed descent. However, it is known that British company officials often had children with one or more of their enslaved women. These children would become an integral part of upper-class society and would sometimes even move to England. Such an elaborate culture of comb-making might well be connected to the African roots of this community. The Hawksbill Turtle’s shell was a widely used material and can be regarded as plastic avant la lettre, having the ability to bend when heated. These turtles were common in the oceans until they were hunted down almost to extinction, only to be (successfully) protected in the 20th century. This set is a beautiful but poignant expression of a painful cultural moment. Bought with wealth generated by enslaved Africans and indigenous peoples, it embodies the English appreciation of Jamaica’s glorious culture and natural history and the simultaneous savaging of it.

Attribution: Bennett or Comberford? The Institute of Jamaica in London has eleven tortoiseshell combs, one large box with combs and one powder box. The first comb for the Institute of Jamaica in London was purchased by members of the West India Committee in 1923. It was described by H.M. Cundall in the West India Committee Circular from 1923 as “probably one of the earliest art objects made in the British West Indies displaying European influence.” The tortoiseshell works in the Jamaica Institute’s collection are thought to be from the hands of two craftsmen working in Port Royal between circa 1671-1684 and 1688- 1692, respectively. The present box is linked to the first group. Philip Hart, in his article Tortoiseshell Comb Cases, for the Jamaica Journal, reveals that research found an Englishman called Paul Bennett, in Port Royal, listed in 1673 as a comb maker.Therefore, it’s likely that Bennett was the maker of this first group, and an apprentice or assistant was the maker of the second group. Other works supposedly by Paul Bennett include the Sir Cuthbert Grundly comb case, dated 1672, a round powder box lid and comb case in a private U.S. collection, dated 1677, and the ‘Lady Smith’ casket, which is considered the artist’s masterpiece. The earliest known comb-case with two combs, inscribed Sarah Henley and dated 1670, was sold by us in 2023 and can now be found in the collection of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts (see: Guus Röell & Dickie Zebregs, Uit Verre Streken, March 2023, p. 43, no. 14). New research by Ms. Jade Lindo, a V&A/RCA History of Design MA student 2021-22, proved that the other craftsman making tortoiseshell combs was Matthew Comberford. Most boxes, cases and combs have a very particular style of engraving, but the present comb case with silver mounts shows a whole different style. Hence, it could have been made by Bennett’s colleague-comb maker Comberford – and the pun was probably intended. Another comb-case of the same quality and style, but dated 1688, was sold in New York in 2018. Remarkably, the comb in this case, too, was different in style than the case itself, which might point towards a cooperation between Bennett and Comberford of some sort. Did they own the company together, or was Comberford perhaps the successor of the business? Literature: - Philip Hart, ‘Tortoiseshell Comb Cases: a 17th century Jamaican Craft’ in Jamaica Journal, the quarterly journal of the Institute of Jamaica, Vol 16, No 3, August 1983 - H.M. Cundall, “Early Jamaican Handicraft”, in: The West India Committee Circular, 29th March, 1923 - Frank Cundall, “Tortoiseshell carving in Jamaica”, in: The Connoisseur, July 1925, p.154 - Frank Cundall, Tortoiseshell - Carving: A Notable Specimen in Jamaica, London, National Art Library, 1929 - Jen Cruse, “Colonial Craftsmanship in Jamaica, in America in Britain” in: Journal of the American Museum in Bath, XXXIX, pp.18-25 - Evelyn Haertig, Antique Combs and Purses, Carmel CA, Gallery Graphics, 1983 - Donald F. Johnson, “From The Collection” in: Winterthur Portfolio, 43,2009, pp. 313- 334

25. A large Brazilian colonial silver basin and ewer Rio de Janeiro, circa 1780, with an unidentified maker’s mark HSC, and town mark R for Rio de Janeiro L. 53 x W. 39 x H. 4 cm / Weight: 2480 grams (basin) H. 30 x W. 12 cm / Weight: 2040 grams (ewer) The quality of this ewer and basin, both in form and in chiselling and engraving truly is exceptional. They probably are by the same maker as a very similar ewer in the Catedral São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro, and an ewer and basin, in the Mosteiro de São Bento, a monastery in Rio - both unmarked and dated second half 18th century. The most obvious difference is the handle which in these two ewers is in the form of a dragon instead of a woman. Brazilian silver, even very large pieces, mainly when ordered by the church, is very seldomly marked, and so far, no research into Brazilian silver marks has been conducted. The use of these hand-washing basins and ewers at the

table was a welcome requirement due to the frequent absence of cutlery.

Provenance: Private collection, United Kingdom Literature: - Humberto M. Franceshi, O Ofício da Prata no Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, 1988, p. 182-185 - Manuel Gonçalves Vidal, Marcas de Contrastes e Ourives Portugueses, Lisbon, 1974

26. An important Peruvian silver plaque with hammered decoration of the legendary wedding of Martin de Loyola and Beatriz Clara Coya, ‘the Spanish Prince and the Inca Princess’ Viceroyalty of Peru, 17th/18th century or later The plaque depicts the famous couple surrounded by a feline, dog, monkey, parrot, flowers, child (possibly their daughter Ana María Lorenza de Loyola) and a servant holding an umbrella (achiwa). It was likely used in wedding ceremonies. The plaque could have been a breastplate and part of the attire of either an Inca priest who officiated weddings or a dancer participating in a wedding. H. 22 x W. 29 cm Provenance: - Collected by a KLM (Royal Dutch Airways) pilot in the 1970s - Amsterdam antiques trade

Don Martín García Óñez de Loyola (1549-1598) and Beatriz Clara Coya (1556-1600) were assumed to be the first married persons in Peru who were from a different royal lineage. One of the Conqueror and the other of the Conquered. Martín was a Spanish soldier of noble descent and the Royal Governor or Captain General of Chile. Beatriz was a ñusta, an Inca princess - the last Inca princess, to be exact. On the plaque, she wears dress robes typically worn by Inca nobility. The couple can be

identified by a set of very distinguishable iconographical aspects in the art history of South America. Princess Beatriz became a symbol of Inca royalty. She was a valuable match, not just because of her royal lineage’s political weight but also due to her territorial and political influence. She inherited strategic valleys such as Yucay, Pissac, and Xaquixaguana from her father and even governed Chile. During her life, numerous sources speak about her, of which one is awe-inspiring: “The value, the virtues and the being of all the Incas belong to her because she is a descendant of all these powerful Lords; thanks to her, her ancestors enjoy eternal memory.” (Historia del origen y genealogía real de los Reyes Inças del Peru, Martín de Murúa, 1590). Holding this position was another way of demonstrating her royal status. As women in the Habsburg Empire who governed territories acted as viceroys or served as regents and were usually from the royal family.

Mr Ramón Mujica Pinilla, Curator to the Gold Museum Peru and member of the National Academy of History of Peru, has not given his opinion about the object.

27. A magnificent pair of Spanish-colonial Viceregal mother-of-pearl inlaid bureau-cabinets Viceroyalty of Peru, Lima, 18th century, circa 1720-1760 Each with a moulded giltwood cornice and on a foliate carved giltwood base, possibly later and English. The cabinets, with silver mounts, are made of cedar, overall inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The interior is veneered with teak, American crabwood, Gele kabbes, and boxwood. H. 213 x W. 115 x D. 52.5 cm (each) Provenance: Noble collection, United Kingdom; thence by descent

These spectacular bureau-cabinets are part of a fascinating production of decorative art and furniture from Lima, the affluent capital of the Spanish Vice-Royalty of Peru. Included are mother-of-pearl covered altarpieces, lecterns, caskets, boxes, tables, coffers, cabinets, and presumably the rarest: impressive bureaux such as the present pair. They are exquisite material examples of cultural cross-pollination in South and Central America, bridging multiple influences from Asia and Europe in a result that is both visually and historically impactful. Indian, Korean, Chinese, Japanese and Arabian influence This pair of cabinets is especially appealing for its shimmering surface of mother-of-pearl veneer, which was described as enconchado in inventories. It has as precursors the ‘Indo-Portuguese’ caskets, jugs and bowls, often silver mounted, produced in the Indian region of Gujarat in the 16th and early 17th centuries. These were shipped from Goa, the Portuguese colonial trade post on the west coast of India, to Portugal intended for the greatest monasteries, cathedrals and palaces of the country. Already in 16th century these lustrous Gujarati caskets, with nacre veneer fastened with silver nails in a fish-scale pattern were considered so precious in Europe that they were classified as jewellery in the inventories of royal collections and even nowadays they still are regarded as the most sought after works of art. The Portuguese used the shimmering treasures from Gujarat as diplomatic gifts, which is how they ended up in the famous Habsburger kunstkammers of Vienna and Dresden. More important in this case are the reliquary caskets and

Lacquer box, Korea, Joseon dynasty,18th century

other religious wares that ended up in collections of several Spanish monasteries and churches, as well as the gamesboards and table-tops that were centrepieces in the homes of the most notable Spaniards.

Detail of a Japanese Namban lacquer box from our collection

With the establishment of more Portuguese trade routes within Asia, the Indian mother-of-pearl objects influenced the Japanese lacquer production. In large numbers the Portuguese ordered lacquerware for the purpose of being exported to Europe or big colonial cities like Spanish Manilla. The Spanish Manilla Galleon trade brought these objects to South America and, thus, to the Viceroyalty of Peru. It didn’t take long before there was a true rage for furniture decorated with nacre. However, the Portuguese controlled the market as they had monopolized access to the ports where the pieces could be ordered, such as Gujarat and Japan. Paying high prices, the Spaniards exported the goods to the Viceroyalties, where they enjoyed enormous popularity amongst the affluent class, particularly in Mexico and Peru. It wouldn’t be long before the Spanish brought Asian craftsmen to South America to produce these iridescent works of art themselves. By the 18th century, the regular flow of the Manilla galleons from Manilla to Acapulco introduced an enormous quantity of Asian luxury items in both the Vice-Royalties of New Spain and Peru, with immediate and apparent influences on the local craftsmen and taste of the elites. The Asian influences in technique and motifs arrived from goods and

Collection LACMA (inv. no. M.2000.15.148)

through Asian craftsmen. Japanese and Chinese workers brought the techniques of inlaying materials (lacquer, a sort of gum or tree sap called mastic, wood, tortoiseshell, and much more) with mother-of-pearl. Arabs, who had to ‘convert’ to Christianism before they were allowed to immigrate, brought in Múdejar skills and their distinctive abstract approach to ornament without the imagery of animals or humans, as stated in the Quran. These cabinetmakers with all sorts of backgrounds in Mexico and Peru started to produce the finest inlaid and or veneered furniture and objects in the 17th and 18th centuries in their own style – each influenced by various available techniques and motifs. The most popular among the buyers would eventually become dominant. Reflecting the syncretic nature of the present bureaucabinets, the floral design of the mother-of-pearl veneers appears to have been inspired by ancient Korean designs from the Joseon or Chosõn Dynasty, seen in porcelain and objects with mother-of-pearl inlays on wood grounds. These designs are also seen in another Peruvian technique, which uses mother-of-pearl inlays on a tortoiseshell ground. However, most Far Eastern mother-of-pearl techniques find their origins in Korea. European influence The most visible influence is the European. First of all, the form of these bureau-cabinets was based on English

prototypes, which were made and exported to the Iberian peninsula throughout the 18th century, often in pairs, becoming part of the vocabulary of Iberian aristocratic interiors – and soon produced by the Iberians too. The English production of cabinets in pairs is only seen for the export market, and it is interesting to see how this taste was carried out across the Atlantic Ocean. They were listed in local inventories as ‘buró-libreria’ or ‘escritorio-papelera’ and are frequently described as ‘a la Inglesa’.1 Secondly, the interiors of the upper parts and the inside of the fall-front desk, using local hardwoods, present a lozenge pattern, which originates in 16th and early 17thcentury Southern Netherlandish and, therefore, Spanish furniture designs. A product of the former Habsburger global domination and cultural flow between their territories. The artisans Spanish ‘government’, (naval) military officials and soldiers, tradesmen, craftsmen, and priests and monks of various religious orders moved to these far-away destinations as representatives of the Spanish Crown. They all carried out their important ‘evangelising mission’, justifying their presence. The murder, war and looting of the land’s riches were justified, too, in this matter. Notably, people from other parts of the Spanish colonial empire also arrived. There is evidence of migration from Japan to the coasts of Peru in the 17th century. There is proof that Japanese

Vista de la Plaza Mayor de Lima antes del terremoto de 1687, a view on the main plaza in Lima. Many people from different cultures can be destinguished, amongst who probably Africans, Arabians, Indigenous, Europeans and quite a lot of South Asian or Indian looking figures. This might point towards the Gujarati, who could work mother-of-pearl so well. (Museo de América)

Enconchado ecclesiastic objects such as lecterns, like these two, dating from Peru, 2nd half of the 18th century.

people settled in Lima around 1607. “The 1613 census, carried out in Lima to register ‘Indians’ (Asians were considered as such) revealed a total of twenty Japanese, who were called “japonex”. The Japanese who arrived in Peru during this period came from the Philippine Islands. At that time, Japan had close ties with Manilla. Some of them had been enslaved by the Portuguese |…] in Lima they became free. Some had been born in Japan, but others, in Goa (India) of Japanese parents or grandparents. The Japanese who arrived in Peru during this period came from the Philippine Islands. At that time, Japan had close ties with Manilla [...]. Some of them had been enslaved by the Portuguese [...] ...in Lima, they became free. Some had been born in Japan, but others, in Goa (India), were of Japanese parents or grandparents.”2 It is nearly certain that, over time, some of them would become craftsmen and carpenters trained in the decorative technique of lacquer, which was developed in Japan. Later, they would pass their skills to local Spanish (of mixed descent), Creole, Arabian and indigenous or native craftsmen, who, in turn, would add their motifs and designs to the objects. In the Peña Prado cabinet, the strong influence of Japanese Namban lacquer can be seen. Such motifs are already found in 13th- 16th-century Chinese and Korean lacquerware inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Probably recognised by the Portuguese from the Moresque motifs in their home country, and thus ordered this kind of motifs. Style Comparing the Peruvian inlaid furniture with other pieces produced in Latin America, Peter Gjurinovic Canevaro states “...they are dramatically different from those made in Peru. Thus, it can be shown that, due to an Eastern influence, these inlaid pieces were developed with their own characteristics in their respective countries.” For the Peruvian pieces, later, strictly Baroque ornamentation was selected to convey a strong feeling of opulence; the pieces also featured a distribution of elements alien to the Japanese style, which was slowly

left behind. The profuse decoration reveals the horror vacui characteristic of these kinds of pieces. A preliminary sketch was drawn by craftsmen trained in the Namban lacquer technique, which they combined with their artistic background of both Mudejar and indigenous roots, thus resulting in truly Peruvian pieces of furniture rich in cultural symbiosis, like the present pair of cabinets. It is worth noting the natural inclination of the Arab craftsmen living in the Viceroyalty of Peru to abstract motifs, which were critical to their style and the distinctiveness of their way of viewing art. Those motifs are also seen in the geometric transformation of ornaments, friezes, and ribbons, which repeatedly appear, reflecting a Spanish influence typical of Spanish-Mudejar furniture. Mother-of-pearl only Within the various styles nurturing inlaid furniture production, it is necessary to emphasise the technique consisting of the almost exclusive use of mother-of-pearl.

A Viceregal bureau cabinet, Lima, 18th century Victoria&Albert Museum, London (access.no. W.3:1-7-1943)

A large enconchado armoire, Lima, 18th century Museum Pedro de Osma,Lima

And the application of stylised decorative schemes within a near-invisible or very thin wood or tortoiseshell filet. This type of finishing should be associated with the one seen in the production of caskets veneered with mother-of-pearl from Gujarat, India. It can be assumed that this source of inspiration reached the west coast of the Americas or even through Portuguese-Spanish connections on the Iberian peninsula. In the Sala de los Tratados of Palacio de Torre Tagle, in Lima, there is an example of a fully mother-of-pearl veneered bureau-cabinet whose quality is just as remarkable as the pair presented by us. It was a generous donation made in 1978 by Doña Teresa Blondet de Cisneros in memory of her husband, Don Manuel Cisneros Sánchez, who had acquired it. The piece alludes to the Rococo style enthusiastically adopted in Lima under Bourbon’s influence. However, this cabinet is crowned by a fretted cresting, with a double-headed eagle at the centre, flanked by fretted rinceaux on the front and the side combs. Technique The incredibly time-consuming technique is most likely an important reason for the rarity of these bureau cabinets. The number of mother-of-pearl pieces used in such a bureau is in the region of 7000, each made from an individual section of shell, sawn delicately, ground smooth and then sawn again to

the shape of a paper template, after which it was grounded again to the desired thickness showing the perfect lustre. It probably took over fourty minutes to work on each tiny piece. One should not forget that the extreme fragility of a fraction of a millimetre thick piece would only result in a usable piece about one in ten tries.3 Due to the similarity of method and designs applied, it can be suggested with near certainty that all of these cabinets and related smaller pieces of furniture come from the same workshop or interrelated workshops, which unfortunately has or have not yet been identified. The only surviving pair? This appears to be the only surviving pair within the small group of Viceregal fully mother-of-pearl veneered bureaucabinets. The ones known today are an example in the Palacio Torre de Tagle, today the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Lima, with a crest showing the Habsburg double eagle; another in an important private collection Mexico, one with an openwork crest in the collections of the V&A Museum, London (inv.no. W.3-1943); one in a private collection in Italy; and another example, in Rough Point House Museum, Newport, the home of the collector and philanthropist Doris Duke (inv. no. 1999.437). In the Sala Buenos Aires Capital del Virreinato, at the Museo de Arte Hispanoamericano Isaac Fernández Blanco, in the city of Buenos Aires, there is a coffer which was part of the collection of architect Martin Noel, a great collector of American colonial art who spent long periods in Lima throughout the 20th century. Here he built what would later become the Argentine Embassy in Peru. The technical features of this coffer are similar to those of the bureaucabinets. This coffer has an upper lid, a front lock and an aside drawer. It rests on four claw-shaped legs made from engraved silver. The external decoration, with a distinct Japanese influence, was the result of applying the inlay technique using almost white tones. The piece has flat surfaces covered with a profusion of scales made from nacre fragments fileted with light-coloured wood – just as in the cabinets. The pair presented here comprises an exciting discovery, a remarkable example of global cross-cultural material culture, reflecting the epitome of elite taste of the exuberant Viceregal societies in Spanish-colonial America. Lastly, they are in remarkably good condition, so one can conclude that because of their high value and luxury status at the time, these pieces were treated as art objects – and were solely used for the most expensive goods used in the house, such as crystal, glassware, silver or gold tableware, porcelain and linens. Sources: 1 Gabriela Germana Róquez, “El mueble en el Perú en el siglo XVIII: estilos, gustos y costumbres de la elite colonial”, in: Anales del Museo de America, vol. 16, 2008, p. 198

A Viceregal bureau cabinet and a side table, Lima, 18th century

2 Mary Fukumoto, “Migración Japonesa al Perú”, in: Boletin de Lima, 20, vol. XX, 1998, no. 114, p. 81

Palacio de Torre Tage, now the Ministery of Foreign Affairs, Lima

3 https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/0109845/desk-and-bookcase-unknown/

Decorative Art in XVIII Century Perú:

Prestige and Power By Silvia Vega-LLona, PhD. NYC The cabinets presented by Zebregs&Röell at Tefaf 2024 brought me back to my country of origin, Perú, and its capital city, Lima, with all their lore and elegance. I recall the Casonas at the Old Historical Center, where influential and aristocratic families dwelled. They were characterised by elegance, beauty, and a sense of aesthetics that integrated local artistry and craft with imports from other continents. Decorative art has historical, aesthetic and symbolic value. The furniture at the Casonas was highly designed, and at the same time, it had functional value; it was used in daily life or for soirées marked by a celebratory and ritualistic spirit. Some Casonas were built and created soon after the origins of the Viceroyalty of Perú in 1542. Lima was “la Ciudad de los Reyes” (the city of the King and Queen), the capital of one of the largest empires during the XVIII Century. It is within this context that we should visually imagine the original place where the mother-of-pearl inlaid bureau cabinets with elaborated silver mounts had a home.

This global movement across continents influenced the local workshops where alliances between experts in the different arts and crafts worked together. Archival material indicates that in one workshop, one could find the expert in wood and carpentry, the specialist in enconchado, and the maestro in metalwork. These talented people would combine their mastery and skills in the creation of one piece like the present pair of cabinets. This attests to the convergence of cultures in the decorative arts and the complexity of the cabinets, both in their visual delicacy and cultural value. Expanding our meditation and analysis of these pieces is relevant to mention their political and social symbolic value. In Viceregal Perú, the enconchado furniture (motherof-pearl) mainly was kept in private homes (casonas) and was displayed throughout different ambiences within the house. The more valuable and complex the furniture, the more it served for self-presentation and political power. These casonas were designed conveying structures of hierarchy—the most valuable enconchados were displayed in the rooms to entertain the significantly influential guests, or for resting areas of respected guest that came from other cities and continents. Research further indicates that this type of furniture could also be found in ecclesiastical institutions and religious rituals like the canonisation in Rome of Francisco Solano in 1726, whose Major shrine is in Lima. The XVII and XVIII century archives attest that mother-of-pearl had commercial and luxurious value. For example, it is documented that if the cabinets were used as dressers or chests by aristocratic women, these would be presented as part of the patrimony before the wedding. It is worth noting that the XVIII century Viceroyalty went through changes in the social hierarchy; the old Monarchy was dissolving, and a new commercial class bought novelty titles, or in other instances, the Crown offered the individual the title for his services to the Monarchy. This was an affluent class of landowners or merchants with controversial standing in a hierarchical society marked by an unequal distribution of wealth. This emergent class showed its power, in part, through the quality of the furniture they had in their homes. The furniture stood as signifiers of wealth and taste and contributed to their identity as a part of the new nobility. Studies suggest that mother-of-pearl furniture made in Lima during the XVIII century had symbolic exchange value and served as carriers of power, prestige, and wealth.

Cristóbal de Aguilar, Señora doña Rosa Juliana Sánchez I Marquesa de Torre Tagle, c. 1743-1756, Palacio de Torre Tagle, now the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Lima

It was during the XVIII century, in particular, when the local artists were given more freedom to move away from religious themes - one of the reasons being the circuits of exchange with the Orient. The Viceroyalty of Perú was influenced by the Orient due to its geographical position bordering along the Pacific Ocean—material culture and immigrants arrived at the Peruvian coast. Luxurious objects would also make their way from Spain, Asia, and New Spain.

Sources: - Exhibition catalogue, Behind Closed Doors: Art and Identity in Spanish American Homes, 1492-1898, Brooklyn Museum of Art, 2013 - María Campos Carlés de Peña, A surviving Legacy in Spanish America: 17th and 18th-century Furniture from the Viceroyalty of Peru, Madrid, Ediciones El Viso, 2013 - Museo Pedro de Osma, Lima, Perú (webpage) - Gabriela Germaná Róquez, “El Mueble en el Perú en el Siglo XVIII: estilos, gustos y costumbres de la elite colonial” in: Anajes del Museo de América, 16, Museo de Arte de la Universidad Mayor de San Marcos, 2008, p. 189-206 - Anthony Holguín Valdez. “El Mobiliario de Concha de Perla en España en las Colleciones de Lima en el Siglo XVIII in: Relaciones Intervirreinales en América, 1521-1821, Paulina Hernández Vargas (ed.), Acer-VOS, 2023, vol 22

China & Japan 79

28. A pink, yellow and green enamelled porcelain VOC teapot and saucer Japan or China, circa 1730 Porcelain decorated in rose-pink, yellow and soft bluegreen enamels, on a shield a lion rampant crowned, holding in his left paw a bunch of seven arrows symbolising the seven provinces of the United Netherlands, and in his right paw a sword, the whole supported by two lions rampant and crowned. Below the monogram of the VOC, above the date 1728 and surrounding the inscription CONCORDIA RES PARVAE CRESCUNT (unity makes small things grow), the heraldic motto of the Dutch Republic. H. 14.5 cm (teapot) Diam. 13.5 cm (saucer)

Provenance: Private collection, the Netherlanfds; thence by descent

The tea service to which this cup and saucer belonged was arguably commissioned by the Company to commemorate the successful launch of its new coinage and may possibly have been used by its employees at the Company’s different official bases throughout the Far East. Other pieces from this service include cups and saucers in the V&A Museum, London (acc.no.645 and a-1907), in the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands, and in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; a plate in the Mottahedeh collection (Howard and Ayers, 1978, vol.I, pl. 191); a plate, teapot, cup and saucer at the Musees Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels, Belgium (Jorg, 1989, no.36); a teapot without lid in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (Lunsingh Scheurleer, 1974, no.267), and a teapot in the Africana Museum, Johannesburg, South Africa (Woodward, 1974, pl.Al). (Op. Cit. The British Museum, Franks.979).

29. A pink, yellow and green enamelled porcelain VOC plate Japan or China, circa 1730 Diam. 23 cm Provenance: The Dreesmann Collection, the Netherlands

Until recently, this type of porcelain was attributed to Chinese kilns, but it is more likely Japanese. This could solve the debate on whether these dishes are modern Chinese forgeries. One has been found in the old Japanese Shibata collection and can be found in the , which makes the latter impossible. After discussing it with many colleagues in the China trade porcelain business, as well as collectors and curators, this conclusion seems to fit. The enamel’s hues and the porcelain’s colour are, after all, more

Japanese than Chinese.. Lastly, this type of porcelain has always been described as rather early chine de commande. However, there wasn’t a lot of trade between the Dutch and China in the 1730s, and the trade in porcelain, lacquer and other goods with Japan was far more lucrative for the VOC. A near identical dish was in the Ann & Gordon Getty collection, purchased by them in 1985 at Christie’s, London, 12 November 1985, lot 305, and sold again by them at Christie’s in 2023. Literature: The Kyushu Ceramic Museum, Commemorative Exhibition of the Shibata Donation, The splendor of Ko-Imari, Japanese exhibition catalogue, Saga, 2002, vol. 8, p. 101, no. 176 (ill.)

The Stamford Raffles Secretaires. 30. A pair of Japanese Kyoto-Nagasaki style export lacquer secretaires by ‘Lakwerker Sasaya’ each with the name ‘Olivia’ Kyoto, Edo period, circa 1800-1813 Both secretaires are made according to the French taste of the late 18th/early 19th century. However, they are fully executed in black lacquer over sugi wood (cedar, Cryptomeria japonica), decorated with gold powder, silver powder, mother-of-pearl and gilt metal mounts. They are a superb example of the KyotoNagasaki style of export lacquer, featuring Chineseinspired landscapes based upon model drawings from the Sasaya Workshop. These drawings can currently be found in the collection of the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. AK-MAK-1734-4). The upper section of each secretaire has two doors flanked by twisted maki-e decorated columns with gilt metal bases and capitals. The capitals are perfect miniature copies after lifelike examples of the To-Kyou, the upper bracket complex, of columns in traditional earthquake-resistant temple-building, with each tiny element separately stacked. The finely drawn columns are from the early Edo period and have been reused for their fineness. Underneath a retractable board, possibly for candles, a large fall-front writing slope reveals several partitions and drawers decorated with scattered flower sprays. The inside of each fall front boldly displays the signature ‘LAKWERKER SASAYA’, written in gold within an oval border. The lower sections have two large drawers decorated with Chinese-style landscapes within an oval cartouche. H. 176.5 x W. 101,5 x D. 48 cm (each) Provenance: - Antiques dealer, Brussels - Private collection, Paris (purchased in the 1980s/early 1990s) - Thence by descent in 2019 and sold at auction in Paris right after

The Stamford Raffles Secretaires Remarkably, both secretaires bear the name ‘Olivia’, written in elegant hira-maki-e penmanship on the outside, just above the fall front.1 There can’t be any doubt that the present pair of secretaires were presented to Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, as a gift for his wife Lady Olivia Mariamna Stamford Raffles née Devenish (1771-1814). However, some other options must first be explored to come to a solid provenance. To start, Olivia was a completely unknown name in the Netherlands or the former Dutch East Indies. The first Olivia, or at least the only Olivia from 1750 till 1850, registered in the Dutch East Indies, was the wife of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, who was Lieutenant-Governor of Java from 1811 to 1816. Olivia, Olivia, and… Olivia. There may be two alternative possible explanations for the name on the two secretaires. Thanks to Lady Raffles, the name Olivia did become popular among the anglophile Dutch in Batavia. For instance, Piet Couperus, from one of the most eminent Dutch families in Batavia (Jakarta), christened his son Willem Jacob Thomas Raffles Couperus.2 Piet’s brother-in-law, Jan Samuel Timmerman Thyssen (1782-1823), in 1809 married Gesina Couperus and named a daughter born in 1813, Olivia Ambrosina Gesina Hendrina Timmerman Thyssen (1813 -1878) and another sister of Couperus called her son Stamford William Raffles Timmerman Thyssen. Olivia and Raffles were godparents to all three ‘Raffles’ babies of the Couperus family. Outdoing them all in Anglophiliac seal was Louis François Joseph Villeneuve, vice-president of the catholic church council in Semarang and aides-de-camp to Field Marshal and later Governor-General Herman Willem Daendels (Raffles’ predecessor). He and his wife, Jeanne Emilie Gerische, baptised their Catholic daughter on the 10th of May 1812, naming her: Olivia Mariamne Stamford Raffles Villeneuve.3 Soon after, Olivia Villeneuve’s father’s mission was accomplished, for he became Raffles’ comptroller. Her parents were such anglophiles (and focused on getting up higher in society) that they did their very best to find her a British husband. On 18 October 1824, Olivia Mariamne Stamford Raffles Villeneuve (at twelve years of age!) married the Englishman William Hinson Beaver in Semarang, and in 1826 their child Henriëtte Louise Beaver was born in Tegal. Concluding, there were several Olivias in the former Dutch Indies at the time, but who would give one of these oneor-two-year-old Olivias two large secretaires as a gift? One would have to wait many years before they would be of age. This would, firstly, only be possible if the secretaires arrived in Batavia later or were stored for years. Secondly, it would only be possible if the name Olivia was lacquered in Batavia. However, the name Olivia was certainly written in hira-maki-e gold in Japan. Therefore, the secretaires were already intended for an ‘Olivia’ in Japan, but, surely not for one of the babies Olivias. Then, the question arises whether the secretaires were ordered for one of the Olivias when they were older, even after the British occupation of Java, which can be easily answered. This type of furniture was quickly out of fashion

in Europe after the downfall of Napoleon in 1815, and fashion reached the colonies much sooner than earlier thought.4 By the time the other Olivias were not small children anymore, secretaires like the ones present were out of fashion and no longer ordered to be made. Besides, it is certain that Jan Cock Blomhoff (1779-1853) ordered the secretaires in Deshima just before Raffles became Lieutenant-Governor of Java.5 French in Holland, English in Indonesia, Dutch on Deshima In 1792, revolutionary France attacked the Republic of the Netherlands, which capitulated in 1795.5 The Stadholder Prince William V of Orange fled to England, and the Netherlands was officially proclaimed a client state of France in 1806, becoming part of the French Empire. One of the first acts of the exiled William V, who resided in Kew Palace in London, was to write his ‘Kew letters’, instructing all Dutch colonial governors to hand over the colonies to the British. As long as the motherland was occupied by France, Holland had to prevent France from taking possession of their colonies and trade posts. Malacca, Ambon, Sumatra, Sri Lanka (Ceylon), Guyana, and the Cape were quickly ‘occupied’ by the British without much opposition. In November 1795, an American ship brought the news of the exile of the Stadholder and his ‘Kew letters’ to Batavia. For the time being, the Indonesian city remained Dutch. Starting in 1806, the British Royal Navy maintained a blockade of Javanese ports, paralysing Dutch shipping and trade in Asia.6 In 1808, Napoleon appointed Daendels, a Dutch francophile republican general, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies in Batavia. with the task, among other things, to improve the defence of Java against a likely British occupation. The (again, relatively autonomous) Dutch on Java knew perfectly well that the British would try to conquer Java and that Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (based in former Dutch Malacca) strongly propagated occupying Java as a crucial step towards furthering Britain’s maritime supremacy in the Archipelago. Furthermore, it wasn’t a secret that Raffles was likely to become the British Lieutenant-Governor in Batavia and of the future ‘British East Indies’.7 It was only after 1817 that the first Dutch ships from Holland arrived in Batavia again under normal circumstances. Between 1799 and 1817, Holland was a vassal state later occupied by France and Dutch shipping between Holland, Batavia and Japan was almost nonexistent.8 Mainly American or Danish ships, neutral countries in the Napoleonic wars between England and France, were chartered by the autonomous Dutch authorities in Batavia to sail to Japan. The last Dutch ship, De Goede Trouw, sent by Governor-General Daendels arrived in 1809 in Japan with Jan Cock Blomhoff (17791853) on board. Jan Cock Blomhoff and Hendrik Doeff, men on a mission In 1805, as a soldier, Jan Cock Blomhoff arrived for the first time in Batavia. Before, he had served in the Dutch military as a royalist or Orangist, supporting Stadtholder William

V of Orange, fighting the French (and the francophile republican Dutch) in the Netherlands and Germany. In Indonesia, Blomhoff served in the military under GovernorGeneral Daendels.10 On paper recognising his skills, Daendels in 1809, decided to send Blomhoff to Deshima as pakhuismeester (warehouse master) and second in rank after Opperhoofd Hendrick Doeff. One can assume that the real reason was that the Patriotic francophile Daendels probably saw the Orangist Blomhoff as a problem which needed a solution. Blomhoff arrived with the last Dutch ship that would go to Deshima, where he met Hendrik Doeff. Doeff had arrived in Batavia in 1796 and was sent to Nagasaki as dispenser and scriba (secretary) in 1799, to become pakhuismeester and secunde11 in 1801, and finally Opperhoofd in 1803. Doeff certainly was informed by the American or Danish captains of the situation in Europe, of the ‘Kew letters’ and the likelihood of Java being occupied by the British. Eyes on the prize: Raffles in Japan Now that the Netherlands was occupied by France, and therefore officially French, it was thus at war with the British. The latter intercepted, wherever they could, all Dutch shipping and trade in Asia, so Blomhoff and Doeff started to get nervous on Deshima as their resources were limited. In 1811, the English occupied Java, and Thomas Stamford Raffles was appointed Lieutenant-Governor in Batavia. Ships arrived in Japan only two times during the English period on Java, both times sent by Raffles. First, the Charlotte and the Mary in 1813 and in 1814, the Charlotte again. Dr. Donald Ainslie was sent with two ships, forcing their way into Nagasaki Bay by flying the Dutch flag and using secret signals provided by Willem Wardenaar, a former Opperhoofd who was on board together with Anthony Abraham Cassa, the intended successor of Opperhoofd Doeff. They had the order from Raffles “to take possession of the Dutch factory.”

The Dutch, as well as the Japanese, were deceived into thinking they were Dutch ships. In Deshima, although isolated from the outside world, it was nevertheless probably known that Java was occupied by the British. In his official letters, Doeff writes he was surprised, but he hardly could have been. However, one would not write such things down in official letters when the motherland is invaded by France and your Asian headquarters by the British.10

Raffles had furnished Ainslie with numerous presents for the “Emperor of Japan” (the Shogun), including sheep, birds, wine decanters, a clock, an Egyptian mummy, and a five-year-old elephant from Sri Lanka. The Shogun gladly accepted the gifts presented to him by Opperhoofd Doeff as if they were Dutch gift except for the clock, which was engraved with ‘barbaric’ symbols, and the elephant, which could not be lowered onto a boat and would have sunk it anyway. The Japanese came out to stare at and draw her, but she never disembarked.

31. A pair of Japanese Nagasaki-style export lacquer boxes, one with the name ‘Olivia’ Kyoto or Nagasaki, Edo period, 1800-1820 Each box in black lacquer decorated with scattered flowers and birds inlaid with mother of pearl, all very similar to the landscape decoration on the two secretaires. H. 10 x L. 37.3 x D. 19 cm Ainslie handed a letter by Raffles over to Opperhoofd Doeff demanding to hand over the factory. Doeff flatly refused, but since the factory hadn’t been visited by any ship since 1809, he owed at least 112,000 taels11 to the Nagasaki Money Chamber for merchandise he had bought, and he was more than willing to make some kind of trade settlement with the English. The English ships returned to Batavia carrying mainly copper, camphor, and, most importantly, some lacquerware.12 Jan Cock Blomhoff boarded the ships as well and was sent by Doeff to ask Raffles to recognise the Dutch factory and to continue the trade with Deshima under the Dutch flag. However, Raffles exploded, “how did a small servant of a state that no longer existed dare to uphold its flag and to send all the presents of the mighty Albion to the Shogun as if it were gifts from an imaginary Dutch king! What an impudence!”13 Doeff really couldn’t have done something else. The Japanese had allowed only the Dutch to trade with Japan, so Doeff had to pretend that the ships Raffles had sent were commissioned by the Dutch. The Japanese probably knew better - especially the local Daimyo of Nagasaki, who would rather keep up appearances than lose his life because of letting the British set foot on the Shogun’s land. Raffles, however, took revenge by confiscating the ships’ loads without sending the promised payment to Doeff and arrested Blomhoff. The British ships’ loads did include lacquerware, but there was no specific mention of secretaires. Besides, because they were British ships, no Dutch loading lists are available.14

It is, however, rather unique that lacquerware was mentioned, which could point towards an official order of lacquerware.15 In the Java Government Gazette of 9th of June 1814, there was an advertisement stating that “anybody who owed or owed something to J. Cock Blomhoff from Japan should address himself immediately to J. van Reenen.” Jan van Reenen, with his own business, van Reenen & Co, in Batavia, was Blomhoff’s representative in Batavia in this case. This is a clear sign that the ships didn’t only carry copper and camphor but also held private orders of lacquerware. Either way, official order or illicit private trade, secretaires were almost certainly aboard these ships. Four secretaires: two for the king and two for the usurper? There is a pair of secretaires, of which one is in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. NG-401) and one in the Maritime Museum in Rotterdam (M1913). They are decorated, respectively, with the depiction of the Landing of the British-Prussian troops near Petten, and with the Sea Battle of Kamperduin.16 When Blomhoff arrived in Japan, he most likely carried the two prints after which these depictions were made. Both were published in 1800.17 This was one of the largest commissions ever made, and only a very rich or highly important person could order such exuberant pieces. Both the Sea Battle at Kamperduin and the Landing of the British-Prussian troops at Petten were victories of the Orangists, supported by the British, on the Patriot’s Batavian Republic, supported by the French. Therefore, these two secretaires, or at least two of them, may have been ordered by or for Stadholder Willem V. Doeff remained on Deshima since 1799, so it must have been Blomhoff who took the prints and ordered the secretaires.

At first glance, there are no depictions of famous Orangist victories on the Olivia secretaires. However, through close inspection by the restorers, a small section of unidentifiable maki-e that was not part of the present composition was discovered. The decision was made to take out all the panels from both secretaires and have them photographed with X-ray.18] To great enthusiasm and surprise, the remains of an earlier decoration were revealed on each Olivia secretaire. On one, the Battle of Kamperduin can be seen, and on the other, the Landing of the troops near Petten. Now, the Olivia secretaires and the two Orangist secretaires are connected to each other, confirming the date of order, manufacture and arguably delivery. Creating a market It becomes clear why Doeff and Blomhoff wanted some kind of trade settlement with Raffles so badly. The Dutch owed at least 112,000 taels to the Nagasaki Money Chamber for merchandise they had bought, including four expensive secretaires. However, they would not have put all their bets on one horse. As soon as the latest news reached Deshima, whether through Chinese merchants or American or Danish ships, Blomhoff ordered the lacquer workers to redecorate the central panels of two of the four secretaires. After all, with the motherland in French hands and Indonesia in British hands, there were no future clients for the Orangist/Royalist secretaires. The battles were partially sanded down where the raden (mother-of-pearl inlay) decoration was placed, but where the background is lacquered black, the maki-e still remains behind it. The level of craftsmanship and detail suggests that the secretaires were amongst the most precious examples of Japanese export lacquer of the era, destined for highly affluent and powerful clients. What’s intriguing, though, is that the Olivia pair had its maki-e battle scenes erased from sight and replaced by much more politically neutral imagery of Chinese landscapes. Apparently, the original client for the two secretaires with the erased scenes disappeared from sight and had to be replaced by a new potential client. Since Deshima was completely locked off from the outside world after 1809 and badly needed money to survive and pay for the debts it was running up in Japan, Blomhoff and Doeff may have been hoping for the return of US ships like the Franklin and the Margareth who’s captains Devereux and Samuel Derby had bought many lacquered pieces of furniture in 1799 and 1801 for the American market. However, no more US ships turned up in Deshima after 1809, and all four costly secretaires remained in Deshima, unpaid for.

they were probably sent as presents to the Stadholder. In 1968, the Stichting Frans Wortelman bought the secretaire with the Sea Battle at Kamperduin at the Delft Antiques Fair from antiques dealer Beeling & Son, who had obtained it the previous year from the London Antiques dealers Philips Son & Neale. The secretaire with the Landing of the BritishPrussian forces, according to the Rijksmuseum, was bought in the Dutch antique trade in 1958, but also came from England. How could Sir Stamford Raffles be pleased, when he would get a ‘no’ upon his request to hand over Deshima? Perhaps by gifting (or selling, knowing the Dutch) him a pair of grande secretaires with depictions of British victories, and his wife Olivia Stamford Raffles with a pair of secretaires decorated with spectacular antique Edo-period columns and her name ‘Olivia’ finally lacquered on each of them? Research by the restorers indicates that the text ‘Olivia’ was done in Japan, but not when the secretaires were manufactured or redecorated. The only option left is that the additional writing was done in Nagasaki, by a lacquer worker connected to Sasaya.

Lakwerker Sasaya The restorers also revealed Japanese characters on the inside of the top sections, which mention a certain “Hashi Lacquer Coating Studio”, accompanied by an address in Kyoto’s Nishi-Rokujo (西六条) area. The text is particularly meaningful for export lacquer research, as it seems to confirm the long-held suspicion that Lakwerker Sasaya was not a lacquer artisan and should instead be perceived as a businessman or producer. He probably only commissioned joinery, coating, sprinkling, and pearl inlay work from various craftsmen in Kyoto before eventually moving his business to Nagasaki.

The redecorating of only two secretaires is an argument for the royal destination of the other pair. Often, an official order of custom-made lacquer was accompanied by an additional order of the same type or object by the official placing it. For instance, together with the pair of Deshima cabinets for Amalia van Solms in the 17th century, another single cabinet and a smaller cabinet were ordered. Presumably the first for the personal collection of the VOC official placing the order of the gifts to Amalia, and the smaller for the King of Siam, as a diplomatic gift.19

Arguably the only business doing so, he took specific orders from the Dutch based on prints they brought (possibly illegally). Based (partially) in Nagasaki, Sasaya was close to the Japanese interpreters, who were powerful within the trade but could also aid in writing Latin script on objects. Who else would be able to write ‘Olivia’ when there is no example in print? Furthermore, the lack of traces of the describing text (like on the Organist pair) on the upper panels of the Olivia secretaires, suggests that the text was lacquered later than the decoration, albeit in Kyoto or Nagasaki.

This is further confirmed by the provenance of the two Orangist secretaires. They both turned up in England, where

The ‘signature’ of lacquer worker Sasaya is written on at least three other items; two lacquered copper plaques,

Left: From top to bottom in the first row you can see the x-ray with on, respectively, the right ad left side the images of the secretaires in the Rijksmuseum and Maritiem Museum. Beneath are six images, of which the first three are of the central panel of the Olivia secretaire, the x-ray of the Olivia secretaire, and the print after which the museum secretaires were made.

one with a scene of the Sea Battle at Dogger Bank and the other with a scene of Rome, on both is written in Dutch in gold: “verlakt bij Sasaya in Japan Ao 1792.” In the same script as on the four secretaires, “LAKWERKER SASAYA” is signed inside a writing box decorated on the lid with the “DE REEDE VAN BATAVIA” (the anchorage of Batavia) together with the coat-of-arms of the city of Batavia, after an engraving by Matthias de Sallieth, published in 1782.20 An early occurrence of the name Sasaya is found in the ‘Dagregisters’ of 1776, where the lacquer worker Sasaija Tjobe of Kyoto is mentioned. Again, in 1778, Sasaya is mentioned, but as a ‘booth keeper’ in Nagasaki, where illegal copper was found in his storage. Lacquer worker/ dealer Sasaya was active for the Dutch between about 1775 and 1820, probably first working for Opperhoofd Isaac Titsing between 1781 and 1785, and Johan Frederik Baron van Reede tot de Parkeler between 1786 and 1789, as well as for J.A. Stutzer, a Swedish medical doctor who served in Deshima in 1787 and 1788. In the early 19th century, Jan Cock Blomhoff probably was the most important commissioner for lacquer work by Sasaya. Blomhoff and Raffles In 1813, on board the Charlotte, Blomhoff went back to Batavia to try and come to some kind of agreement with Raffles about the Dutch on Deshima. However, Raffles arrested him and sent him to England as a prisoner of war. In 1814, after Napoleon had been defeated in the battle of Leipzig and the son of the Stadholder had returned to Holland, Blomhoff arrived in London on board an English ship from Batavia, possibly with the two Orangist secretaires for the Stadholder on board. Blomhoff was set free immediately, as the Stadholder was back in Holland. Presumably, Blomhoff sold the secretaires in London. After all, he turned out to be a businessman with ‘an open mind’. When he returned to Japan far later, he even brought a pair of camels for the Shogun, paid for by the Dutch government. However, suspiciously they never ended up with the Shogun, but travelled Japan to make money for the upkeep of Blomhoff’s Japanese ‘wife’.21

to welcome the ship. Assuming it was a Dutch ship first, which turned out to be British threatening to bombard the Chinese and Japanese ships in the bay, the Japanese authorities became very anxious about any British ship entering their harbour. They had asked Opperhoofd Doeff how to drive off the uninvited foreigners, but while they were preparing to close off the bay and to attack the Phaëton with hundreds of small vessels with burning straw, the Phaëton lifted anchor and sailed off flying the Union Jack. The Phaëton incident did cost the Japanese governor of Nagasaki his life. He committed harakiri. The expedition of the Charlotte was as unsuccessful as the earlier attempt to take possession of Deshima, and Doeff gave Cassa a letter for Raffles stating that if the English would try again to take over Deshima, he would disclose everything to the Japanese and wouldn’t be able to protect the English against the anger of the Japanese. The Charlotte returned to Batavia with a cargo of copper and camphor, apparently paid for, or at least paying for Doeff’s court journey to Edo in 1815. The First Lady of Java Blomhoff was sent to London as prisoner of war by Raffles even though he already knew that Napoleon had been defeated by the Allied forces. Since the ‘Kamperduin’ and ‘Petten’ secretaires were both later, in the early 20th century, to turn up in England, Raffles could have allowed the ‘presents’ to the Dutch Stadholder family to be shipped with Blomhoff to London. But did Raffles accept the secretaires with Olivia’s name as a present for his wife? At least these secretaires did not later turn up in England, so presumably were not sent to London together with the Orangist secretaires, and therefore presumably remained in Batavia for the time being. Olivia Mariamna Raffles found herself in a peculiar world upon her arrival in Java, where the upper echelons of society spoke mostly Malay and indulged in luxuries alongside primitive customs. She was taken aback by the prominence of betel chewing among high-class ladies, a habit she promptly abolished from the Governor’s palace, earning the admiration and respect of society. Despite her foreign background and strict principles, Olivia quickly became a revered figure in Batavian social circles, bringing about reform and refinement in both attire and behaviour.22 Her influence was notable, as she encouraged the adoption of English dress over traditional garments and

In the meantime, however, Raffles hadn’t given up on his attempts to obtain the Dutch settlement in Deshima for the British East India Company, and therefore in August 1814 sent the Charlotte, again sailing under the Dutch flag, to take possession of Deshima, as he saw many profitable trade opportunities with Japan for England. On board again Anthony Abraham Cassa who was to replace Doeff as Opperhoofd. However, Doeff threatened to tell the Japanese that the Charlotte wasn’t a Dutch ship but a British one. Since the British warship Phaëton, under captain Fleetwood Pellew, in 1808, flying the Dutch flag, had entered the harbour of Nagasaki, taking hostage the Dutch who came Sir Thomas & Lady Olivia

was celebrated for her impeccable hosting abilities at large events. Her determination and charisma allowed her to navigate the challenges of her role, garnering the affection and respect of both the Dutch and the British. Although she struggled with Java’s climate and occasionally had to retreat to Salatiga’s cooler environment, being severely ill often. One example of Olivia’s popularity is the celebration of the birthday of Queen Charlotte January 18th, 1813, to which all the principal residents of Batavia had been invited a fortnight ahead. The Lieutenant-Governor and his lady, as we read in an account of the occasion, entered the hall, followed shortly after by the Army Commandant and Lady Nightingale. “The merry dance”, the account runs, “soon commenced, the Major-General leading off with the ‘lady Governess,’ who we were happy to observe appeared to enjoy the dance with her usual grace and spirit”. Olivia, who with her inimitable grace had devoted herself untiringly to the dance all the evening, presided later at the sumptuous supper, where four hundred guests sat, assuming the honours with supreme tact and charm. Some conception can be formed of what was required of the hostess who presided on such an occasion when is told (for instance) that there were needed: 2000 eggs, 26 ducks, 120 chickens, 666 bottles of beer, 396 bottles of Madeira, 24 capons, 72 bottles of port wine, 400 loaves of bread, two sheep, a whole cow, and a tun of salted meat.

was. It was to the Couperus family that she was most drawn and both Petrus Theodorus and his wife Catharina Rica, daughter of Cranssen, the Councillor of State and the only Hollander (besides Muntinghe) to sit in the Council during the British interregnum, were always welcome guests at the palace. Cranssen and Couperus, father-in-law and son-inlaw, were great personal friends of Raffles, besides, and no one was surprised when, upon the birth of a son, the names chosen for him were Jacob Thomas Raffles Couperus.” It could well be possible that one of the godchildren named after Olivia, Olivia Ambrosina Gesina Hendrina Timmerman Thyssen (1813 -1878) or Olivia Mariamne Stamford Raffles Villeneuve (1812-1858) inherited the secretaires. Olivia Timmerman Thyssen married Abraham Marie Bousquet (1807-1861), moved to the Hague, and remained childless. It could be that the secretaires were sold after her death, but they would probably have been taken apart and sold separately – so she inheriting them would be very unlikely. Olivia Villeneuve married William Hinson Beaver and had a daughter, Henriette Beaver (1826-1903), who died in Kampen in the Netherlands. Henriette had four children, of whom two died in the Hague after 1920 – most probably she inherited the pair of secretaires from her godmother Lady Olivia. What happened to Blomhoff?

Did Raffles and his wife decorate their Governor’s Buitenzorg (Bogor) palace with these secretaires? One for him and one for Olivia, hence the rubbed-out name on one of the secretaires? Or did Olivia receive them both as a gift? One thing is certain; she didn’t enjoy them for long because she died one and a half years after receiving the secretaires, on 26 November 1814, leaving her husband a broken man.

In 1813, after Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Leipzig by a coalition of Prussian, Russian and Austrian forces, the old Stadholder’s son, William VI, later to become King William I returned to Holland. When Blomhoff arrived in London in 1814, the peace treaty between the Netherlands and Britain had gone into effect and Blomhoff could return to Holland, a free man.

On 25 March 1816, Raffles left Java, arriving in England on 11 July. With him, he had his books, manuscripts, animal and plant specimens and drawings, his Javanese artefacts including 450 wayang puppets, 135 masks, twenty krises, Dutch torture implements from Malacca, his sets of gamelan instruments, bronze and wooden figures, the two great heads of Buddha and other pieces from the Borobudur, plus quantities of weapons, bowls, pots, boxes, coins, textiles, charms, paddles, hats and ornaments, in all thirty tons of weight. Practically all of his Javanese artefacts eventually would end up in the British Museum. No Japanese secretaires are known to have been part of Raffles’ shipment to England, so they presumably remained in Batavia. Raffles never returned to Batavia. On the 5th of July 1826, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles died in London.

In 1816 Blomhoff was back in Batavia with his wife and son. Presumably, all (or most) of his confiscated things were returned to him by J. van Reenen, but there is no mention of secretaires. In 1817 he was to return to Deshima, as Opperhoofd and with a mission to collect Japanese art and artifacts for the newly established Cabinet of Curiosities by King William I in The Hague. He returned with his wife, Titia, small son Johannes and the Dutch wet nurse Petronella Munts, to succeed Doeff as Opperhoofd. Since the Shogunate did not allow women to stay in Deshima, Titia, Johannes and Petronella had to leave Japan on the returning ship after just over three months. Blomhoff and his wife would never see each other again.23

Where did the secretaires go after Olivia’s death? An account of her close friendships in the Dutch colonial community might give an answer. “[…] The sickness took a favourable turn and before the year closed she seemed to be so far recovered as to be able to receive the visits of friends. First among these were: her sister-in-law, Mrs Loftie, a sister of Raffles’, who belonged to the vice-regal household. […] To the aristocratic Dutch families in Olivia’s time belonged the Couperuses, Meyers, Bauers, Vieruses, Timmermans, Thyssens, Veldhuises, Ysseldijks, Cranssens, Van Braams and Muntinghes, who were devoted, heart and soul, to the first lady in the land, foreigner though she

Mainly during his two Court Journeys, in 1818 and 1822, Blomhoff build up an extensive collection of Japanese art and artefacts with the aim of introducing Japanese and Japanese art, culture and customs to the early 19th-century Dutch public. During his brief sojourn in the Netherlands, Blomhoff married Titia Bergsma (1786-1821) on April 12th, 1815, in The Hague and their son Johannes was born on March 6th, 1816. During this time Blomhoff had also met Reinier Pieter van Kasteele (1767-1845), the director of the Royal Cabinet of Curiosities, King William I had established in The Hague on July 1st, 1816. They apparently discussed making a Japan collection, in accordance with the Cabinet’s mission to be ‘a place for the safekeeping of memorabilia for learning about foreign and domestic

products of industry and nature.’ In consultation with van Kasteele, Blomhoff, back in Japan, collected many Japanese objects destined for the Royal Cabinet, a very early museum to collect and display objects of art and industry from Japan specifically to inform the Dutch public about the customs and material culture – as well as the natural history and minerals – of that far away and then still isolated country. This collection is now mostly held in the Rijksmuseum of World Cultures in Leiden. No lacquered secretaires are known to have been part of the Blomhoff collection for the Cabinet of Curiosities or the National Museum of World Cultures in Leiden. In 1823 Blomhoff was back in Batavia and in 1825 he returned to the Netherlands, taking part of his large collection of Japanese art and artifacts with him. Most had already been sent with earlier shipments to the Netherlands. Again, there is no trace of any Japanese lacquer secretaire in these shipments. The final destination The present pair of secretaires, both with the name Olivia, was recently bought together in an auction in Paris in June 2019, consigned by the descendants of a Parisian private collector right after he passed away, who had bought them about thirty years earlier in the Brussels antique trade at the end of the 1980s or early 1990s. The two secretaires apparently have always remained together. Only a few months after the sale of the secretaires, two small export lacquer boxes from the same period appeared at auction somewhere else in France. One of the boxes has written on the inside of the lid in the typical Sasayastyle ‘OLIVIA’ in an oval reserve. Arguably, they were put up for sale by another descendant of the same Parisian collector who possibly bought the boxes together with the secretaires. These boxes could have been an order for (or of) Sir Stamford Raffles and his Olivia in addition to the two secretaires. Where the pair went after the tumultuous period of French occupation, the foundation of the Dutch Kingdom and British/Dutch Java remains unknown, but they clearly stayed in possession of the same family for a longer period of time after being owned by the Raffles couple. It is almost impossible for a pair of large pieces of furniture to stay together for such a long time unless, in a royal or institutional collection, they must have changed hands by sale only once or very few times – resulting in a short period with danger of being parted. Whether they were intended as a gift primarily for Olivia Mariamna Stamford Raffles from pakhuismeester Blomhoff and Opperhoofd Doeff to placate Raffles and his wife upon Blomhoff’s arrival - to discuss the precarious (financial) situation of the Dutch on Deshima - in 1813 or not, there is no doubt that Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, LieutenantGovernor of Java and founder of Singapore, purchased, confiscated, or accepted the secretaires as a gift: there is no doubt that these secretaires truly are the Stamford Raffles Secretaires.

We are grateful to Dave van Gompel, Patrick Peeters, Mamiko Masumura, Urushi Atelier Netherlands, and Lydia Randt for their insights and knowledge that contributed to the research of these secretaires. 1 On one of the secretaires, the name was severely worn and could only be read through the remnants and the underdrawings. We chose to have it reconstructed using fully reversible materials. 2 The first set of names honouring the boy’s maternal grandfather, W.J. Cranssen. 3 Jean Gelman Taylor, The Social World of Batavia: European and Eurasian in Dutch Asia, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1983, p. 112 4 Whose existence probably were unknown in Japan anyway. 5 Susan Legène, De bagage van Blomhoff en Van Breugel: Japan, Java, Tripoli en Suriname in de negentiende-eeuwse Nederlandse cultuur van het imperialisme, Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Amsterdam, 1998; Lydia Randt MA, ‘Een teakhouten beeld van een Europese vrouw met kind uit achtiende-eeuws Batavia’ (working title, still to be published) 6 This period is called the Patriottentijd or the ‘Time of the Patriots’ and was a period of political instability in Holland. Its name derives from the Patriots faction who opposed the rule of the stadtholder, William V, Prince of Orange, and his supporters known as Orangists. It is further important to note that the Netherlands always has been a republic, with a prince from the House of Orange as its ‘head of state’, named the Stadtholder (Stadhouder). 7 Indonesia was so profitable to the Dutch that it was highly wanted by the British and French. However, the Dutch presence on the island was still strong due to alliances with local rulers and the bad reputation of the British. The colony should be regarded as a separate factor in the Netherlands with a high degree of selfgovernance. After all, a certain autonomy was needed anyway, as the colony always had a hard time governing one-on-one from the Netherlands. 8 John Sturgus Bastin, Letters and Books of Sir Stamford Raffles and Lady Raffles: The Tang Holdings Collection, Didier Millet, Singapore, 2010 9 One should remember that it is not as black and white as it seems. News surely reached Deshima through Chinese ships coming from Canton, as the Chinese were also allowed to trade with Japan. 10 Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies from 1808 till 1811. 11 Secunde means second or vice-head merchant. 12 Hendrik Doeff, Herinneringen uit Japan, Bonn, 1833 13 Tael can refer to any one of several weight measures used in East Asia and Southeast Asia. In this case the ‘currency’ used by the Dutch to trade with Japan. 14 Oliver Impey & Christiaan Jörg, Japanese Export Lacquer, 15801850, Hotei Publishing, Leiden, 2006, p. 143-157 15 Albion, a literary term for Britain or England, is often used when referring to ancient or historical times. 16 From the very start of the VOC, the Dutch administration has been well-kept, and every ship or person travelling has been registered (excluding illicit private trade, unfortunately). These papers are being kept in the National Archive in the Hague and are a god’s gift. The British, however, unfortunately, were less punctual than the Dutch. 17 Or, because of the British occupation of Java, used as more weight for the money and resources Doeff desperately needed. 18 Respectively with text Het Landen der Engelschen Tusschen Petten en Calants Oog op den Zeven en Twintigsten Augustus Des Iaars 1799 and Zeeslag tusschen de Bataafsche en Engelsche Vlooten op de Hoogte van Egmond, den 11 October Des Iaars 1797. Staande de Bataafsche Vloot onder Bevel van den Admiraal DE WINTER en de Engelsche onder den Admiraal Duncan. 19 Custom-made orders in lacquer, especially small items like tobacco, snuff or writing boxes, oval portrait medallions and larger plaques, all with depictions after European prints, were in vogue in Europe then and fetched good money. There was a lively (illegal private) trade in these items, but they are never mentioned in the dagregisters or other administrations. (Jörg, 2005) - See collection Rijksmuseum : Landing van de Britten bij Callantsoog, 1799, Cornelis Brouwer, after Jan Anthonie Langendijk Dzn (inv. no. RP-P-OB-86.723) and Zeeslag bij Kamperduin (midden), 1797, Reinier Vinkeles (I), after Gerrit Groenewegen, 1798 (inv. no. RP-P-OB-64.553) 20 We are grateful to René Gerritsen of Art & Research Photography in Amsterdam for his assistance. 21 Sir Thomas Raffles, The History of Java: vol II, second edition, London, John Murrat, Appendix B. XXXII – XXXVI. 22 Musée des beaux-arts Dijon, “Un cabinet japonais oublié”, in: l’Oeuvre du Mois, June, 2011; Guus Röell & Dickie Zebregs, Uit Verre Streken, Zebregs&Röell, Amsterdam-Maastricht, March/Tefaf 2023, pp. 104-111, no. 59. 23 Guus Röell, Uit Verre Streken, Zebregs&Röell, AmsterdamMaastricht, June 2011, no. 2 24 Guus Röell & Dickie Zebregs, Uit Verre Streken, Zebregs&Röell, Amsterdam-Maastricht, November 2022, no. 54 & 56 25 Davies, ‘Olivia and Sophia Raffles’, in: Malaya in History: the magazine of the Malayan Historical Society 3, 1957, no. 2, pp. 104-107 26 R.P. Bersma, Titia. The first Western Woman in Japan, Amsterdam, 2002

32. A portrait painting of Takeaki Enomoto (1836-1908) Meiji period, late 19th century With a label on the original box Ink, colour and gofun on silk, H. 79.5 x W. 50 cm H. 103.5 x W. 64.5 cm (incl. mount) Takeaki Enomoto, a Meiji government official, is painted in very fine detail standing next to a Chinese style table upon which a globe, painted in white gofun and a book bearing a coat of arms. He is wearing a western frock coat and holding a cane. Takeaki Enomoto was a ket player in the events which led to the establishment of the Meiji government. He also made a significant contribution to Japan’s relations with the West in the late 19th century. He was born as a lower-ranking samurai, but rose up to hold various important posts in the Edo period government.

In spring 1869 Enomoto surrendered and peace was officially restored to the whole of Japan. When he surrendered Enomoto sent the notes he had made on navigation in Holland to the commander of the army, stating that they would be useful for the country. This conduct impressed the Meiji government and therefore he was imprisoned rather than executed. In 1872 he was pardoned and immediately appointed to office in the government. He was sent to St. Petersburg as a diplomat to negotiate over the ownership of Sakhalin and Kuril islands. He was successful in concluding a treaty giving Sakhalin to Russia but keeping the Kurils for Japan. His achievement was celebrated as the first in which Japan and a Western power were treated as equals. Enomoto rose to cabinet rank within the Meiji government and his positions included that of the Minister of Agriculture and Commerce. The globe and book here are clear references to Enomoto’s international experience. The book bears a coat-of-arms with notable similarities to that of Napoleon III (1808- 1870). During Enomoto’s time in the Tokugawa government negotiations between France and the Shogunate began. The first French military mission to Japan, sent by Napoleon III, arrived in 1867. With the mission came Captain Jules Brunet (1838-1911) a military officer who joined the last stand of the Shogunate “republic” in 1868 by fleeing north with Enomoto to Ezo. The Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo for Japanese (war) heroes keeps Enomoto Takeaki’s military uniform he is wearing in the present portrait. This uniform was presented by Napoleon III to Enomoto.

Enomoto studied Dutch naval science in Nagasaki, which during the Edo period was the only city in which the Dutch on the small artificial island Deshima, were permitted to stay and trade. He then continued his studies in Holland from 1862, and became fluent in Dutch and English. In 1867 he returned to Japan and was appointed to a senior naval post in the Tokugawa bakufu (government). However, in 1868, the Tokugawa bakufu was overthrown by the warlords of Satsuma and Choshu, and the Meiji Emperor was reinstated as the figurehead of a new government. Enomoto resisted the takeover of the Meiji government by fleeing with eight warships to Ezo (Hokkaido) and establishing a Tokugawa ‘republic’ as the last military stronghold opposing the new regime.

33. A rare Japanese Namban export lacquer coffer with Mon emblems Late Momoyama period, late 16th century The coffer is decorated in black lacquer (urushi) on cedar wood, decorated with gold dust and silver (maki-e and nashiji), motherof-pearl (raden) and red copper mounts in the Kõdaiji-style. H. 29.2 x W. 45 x D. 38.5 cm Provenance: - Private collection, the Netherlands - Private collection, Switzerland

Although the form of the box is European/ Iberian, the decoration with several mon that each identify a Japanese family, clan, or individual indicates that this box was probably intended for the Japanese domestic market and not the export market. Mon can be regarded more or less as the Japanese equivalent of the coat-of-arms in European society. The mon possibly originated over a thousand years ago from banners used by warriors on the battlefield in order to distinguish each other. There are 241 different kinds of mon known, but today, with all their variations, about 20.000 exist. In the Edo period, samurai used them to identify themselves, but some particular mon have always been reserved for the Imperial Court. The mon on the present chest include; Katabami (oxalis), Goshichi-no-kiri (paulownia), Sakura (cherry blossom), Yurokukiku (16 petals of chrysanthemum) and Shyppo (the 7 treasures). So most mon consist of stylised flowers. This coffer was made in the late Momoyama period, the time when Hideyoshi (1537-1598) reigned Japan. He was of peasant ancestry but, nevertheless, became a very powerful general, bringing the ‘Warring States period’ to an end and unifying Japan. He is also known for crucifying the ‘Twenty-six Martyrs of Japan’ in 1597 to set an example for the Japanese who wanted to convert to Christianity.

34. A collection of VOC silver ingots Eight stamped with VOC Amsterdam monogram, and with the Amsterdam assayer’s hallmark of the Grill family, silver assayers in Amsterdam, circa 1738 Weight approx. 1960 grams All bars are 98.7% pure silver

Eleven stamped with the VOC Zeeland/Middelburg monogram, with the Middelburg assayer’s hallmark of François Engelsen or with the assayer’s hallmark of Gerrit van Driel Weight approx. 1700 grams All bars are 98.7% pure silver The Amsterdam ingots were salvaged in 2004 from the wreck of the VOC East-Indiaman Rooswijk of the Amsterdam VOC Chamber. She sank on her second voyage to the Dutch East Indies off the English coast on the Goodwin Sands in 1739. The Dutch had little to offer in Asia but silver and gold. Therefore, VOC ships had to sail to Asia with silver and gold bars to pay for Asian goods. The bars were cast in private factories, run by assayers, from melted-down silver coins, mainly Spanish-American ‘reales’. Once in Asia, these bars were melted down again and minted into coins and silver objects that could be used to pay for purchases or as diplomatic gifts in the East.

The Grill family originated from Genoa, their name comes from the Italian Grillo, meaning cricket, and the family’s coat-ofarms displays a crane holding a cricket in its beak. Part of the family moved to Augsburg and Amsterdam where they became gold- and silversmiths. Some moved on to Sweden to become one of the wealthiest merchant families in Stockholm in the 18th century, having significant influence within the Swedish East India Company (SOIC). The Middelburg ingots were salvaged in 1986 from the wreck of the VOC East-Indiaman Bredenhof of the Middelburg VOC Chamber, heading for India and wrecked the 6th of June 1753 on a reef about 13 miles off the coast of Mozambique. The Bredenhof carried 29 crates with silver bars and a crate with 5000 gold ducats. To prevent looting the crew dropped the boxes containing the silver bars overboard, expecting to recover them later, and took the gold with them ashore. Attempts to recover the lost silver in 1754 and again in 1755 failed. The boxes falling on the reef broke and the silver bars moved about by the currents on the reef and in the sand lost weight and shape through abrasion. On a few bars, some of the very first bars brought to the surface in May 1986, a small drill test has been performed on the side for metallurgical assessment. In addition, the year of the find and the registration number have been punched. Silversmith François Engelsen jr. (1694-1754) was Dean of the Guild of Silversmiths in Middelburg in 1752.

35. A collection of Japanese blue-and-white porcelain VOC chargers and saucers Arita, 2nd half 17th century Diam. 39.4 / 35.5 / 32 / 22 cm These expensive dishes were primarily for use by VOC officials in the many different trade posts of the Company in Asia and at the Cape of Good Hope, and possibly also used as diplomatic gifts. To blatantly dine off such expensive custommade porcelain was exuberant, showing the sheer wealth made in Asia.

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The Long Tradition of Black Courtiers in European Art By Prof. Paul H.D. Kaplan

Rulers in the Christian zones of Europe began to feature Black Africans as distinctive members of their entourage at least as early as the last years of the twelfth century. Visual artists were quick to reflect such practices, occasionally in direct illustrations but more frequently by incorporating Black figures in imagery that celebrated royal status in both sacred and secular art. The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen (reigned 1212-1250), who both ruled over Black subjects in southern Italy and aspired to a kind of global sovereignty which Black African characters could efficiently denote, was a leading force in introducing images of this type. There is even a chance that his Africandescended chamberlain, Johannes Maurus (John the “Moor”), was to be understood as the subject of a surviving sculpture carved in grey stone.

Limbourg Brothers, Meeting of the Magi, f. 51v of the Très Riches Heures of the Duke of Berry, c. 1413-1416 (detail), Musée Condé, Chantilly

Head of a Black African (Johannes Maurus?), mid-13th century, Museo Civico G. Fiorelli, Lucera

While the Mediterranean slave trade brought only a relatively small number of sub-Saharan Africans to Christian Europe in the later Middle Ages, dark-skinned people continued to be prized as servants to the elite. The Limbourg Brothers’ Très Riches Heures (1413-1416) includes a portrait of the Duke of Berry’s nephew King Charles VI of France, in the guise of one of the three biblical Magi, attended by two Black African followers, Charles’ royal father, John the Good, had in 1354 received the gift of a presumably enslaved African man called Jehan Blanc from the King of Aragon. Another Black person was presented by the same Iberian ruler to the Duke of Berry himself in 1382.

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Andrea Mantegna, Camera picta, c. 1470 (detail of the oculus), Ducal Palace, Mantua

Titian, Laura Eustochia with a Black Child, 1520s, Kisters Collection, Kreuzlingen

Guillem van Deynen, Family Portrait of Doge Agostino Doria (detail), c 1603, Private collection, Paris

With the rise of the Atlantic slave trade in the course of the fifteenth century, the supply of Black courtiers increased. The Gonzaga rulers of Mantua in Northern Italy were especially avid consumers, as manifested by documents and several images by Andrea Mantegna, who depicted Black Africans as servants to aristocratic women. By the 1520s, the Venetian painter Titian had introduced an extremely influential pictorial template in portraiture, in which a Black servant attended upon a much larger and more central elite subject. Titian’s initial version of this format shows Laura Eustochia, the official mistress of Duke Alfonso I d’Este of Ferrara, receiving the worshipful gaze of a gorgeously dressed Black child.

Jan Mostaert, Portrait of a Man, c. 1525-1530, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Also from the 1520s is a striking portrait by the Netherlandish master Jan Mostaert of a Black man, armed and fashionably dressed in the contemporary European style. His identity remains unconfirmed, but it is plausible to see him as a Black courtier to the Habsburg rulers of the Low Countries, perhaps a man known in archival records as Christophle le More (Christopher the ‘Moor,’ or the Black). This approach to representing a Black courtier as the solitary subject of a portrait, which evokes the rediscovered portrait of Badin, remains a rarity in European art of the sixteenth century and seventeenth centuries. Instead, Titian’s template of the inclusion of the Black figure in a secondary role became the norm and, by the 1600s, to be commonly found in the Low Countries, France, England, and Italy. Some interesting variations do appear in Italy, however, such as Guillem van Deynen’s group portrait of the Doge of Genoa with his whole family, attended by a group of courtiers including the artist himself, as well as a very dignified Black man in a lace collar. The Medici in Florence were especially taken with Black courtiers: one man,

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Though not visible in these particular Medici works, after 1650 many images of Black courtiers display a disturbing new feature: the slave collar. Based on an ancient Roman usage which had been intended to constrain and humiliate recaptured fugitives from slavery, the slave collar in European art is typically a finely crafted object, often apparently made of silver, which is both a kind of embellishment and an inexorable marker of subjugation. Even young children serving as court pages, who could hardly have been expected to try to flee, are shown wearing such collars, as in the French emigré painter Antoine Pesne’s 1714 portrait of the crown prince of Prussia (later known as Frederick the Great) and his sister Wilhelmine.

Giusto Suttermans, Pietro Moro, Domenica dalle Cascine and La Cecca di Pratolino, 1634,St. Louis Museum of Art, St. Louis

called Pietro Moro, appeared as a servant in a conventional portrait of a young prince, but also in a triple portrait (1634) consisting entirely of servants, where he is accompanied by two white lower-status country women. A few decades later (1661), the Black courtier Giovannino Buonaccorsi (also called Giovannino Moro), a notable singer and performer in early opera, was juxtaposed with a white musician in another portrait that again omits elite subjects. Both men are shown as they make music, and the performance focus is interesting since we know that Badin also had a period at the Swedish court (1769-1771) when he performed as an actor and a dancer.

The actual legal status of Black court servants varied, though it is clear that most entered courtly service while they were still enslaved. Manumission was not infrequently granted, as was the case with Badin, whose 1776 portrait shows not a metal collar but a respectable white one. However, a 1770 portrait attributed to Francesco Guardi – a work which has some interesting parallels with the Badin picture – demonstrates that even as the concept of abolition began to gather adherents in the later eighteenth century, the slave collar did not immediately disappear. Guardi’s portrait focuses entirely on Lazzaro Zen (formerly known as Alì), the enslaved servant of the patrician Zen family of Venice. The picture commemorates his baptism after a period of several months of careful religious instruction in the Venetian pious institution of the Catecumeni. Lazzaro Zen, like Badin, was baptised with the family name of his aristocratic sponsors – Zen’s first name replicated that of a recently deceased young family member. His elaborate and expensive clothing articulates his affiliation with the family (the blue jacket and silvery fur replicate the colours of the family arms, also seen on his hat) just as the colours of Badin’s outfit are those of the Swedish royal family. The slave collar remains around Lazzaro Zen’s neck, even though the official baptism he experienced was supposed to trigger manumission. In this respect, Badin’s portrait presents its subject in a superior social position,

Il Volterrano, Panbollito and Giovanni Buonaccorsi (Giovannino Moro), 1661, Private Collection

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Antoine Pesne, Wilhelmine of Prussia and Frederick (later Frederick the Great) with a Black Attendant, 1714, Charlottenburg Palace, Berlin

Francesco Guardi, Lazzaro Zen, 1770, IRE, Venice

and it should also be noted that Badin does not wear an earring, as Zen does. The earring was an exoticising marker regularly attributed to Black subjects – especially court servants – by European artists. The earlier tradition of painted representations of Black courtiers was probably best known to Swedish artists through exposure to Danish and German examples. The Prussian court was particularly attracted to this motif, in works by Pesne (already mentioned), Wilhelm von Knoebelsdorf, and Anna Rosina Lisiewska. The Swedish queen, Louisa Ulrika, Badin’s primary patron and protector at court, was herself born a Prussian Hohenzollern princess, the sister of King Frederick the Great. While no portrait showing her with a Black attendant is known, Antoine Pesne’s 1744 likeness of her, made just before her marriage to the Crown Prince (later King) of Sweden, takes up the theme of the interplay between black and white in a more complex and allusive fashion. A bejewelled swatch of black fabric ornaments her hair, and its lower portion comes to a point on her pale forehead. Similarly, her right hand holds out an unusual carnival mask, which looks uncannily like Louisa’s pale face with a black layer overlaid from the tip of the nose upward. (In Venice, where such masks originated, both black and white versions were used, but the two colours did not appear in the same mask.) It is interesting to reflect not only on how Louisa Ulrika’s experience of Black Africans at the Prussian court may have shaped her interactions with Badin, but also on how Pesne’s imagery may have shaped her visual perception of the meaning of Blackness in a courtly environment. Pesne’s portrait of Louisa Ulrika accompanied her to Sweden, where it remains. Still, it is also important to emphasise that both the recently widowed Louisa Ulrika and Badin had spent a year (1771-1772) back at the Prussian court of Frederick the Great so that the many Prussian images of Black courtiers would have been fresh in their mind in the mid-1770s.

Antoine Pesne, Louisa Ulrika of Prussia (later Queen of Sweden), 1744, (detail), Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

Select Bibliography – Alff, Carolin, Susanne Evers, and Hatem Hegab, Prussian Palaces. Colonial Histories. Places, Biographies and Collections, Berlin, Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg, Sandstein-Verlag, 2023 – Bindman, David, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds., The Image of the Black in Western Art, vols. 2-4, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010-2012 – Earle, T. F. and K.J.P. Lowe, eds, Black Africans in Renaissance Europe. Cambridge (UK), Cambridge University Press, 2005 – Honeck, Mischa, Martin Klimke, and Anne Kuhlmann, eds, Germany and the Black Diaspora: Points of Contact, 1250-1914, New York, Berghahn Books, 2013 – Kaplan, Paul H. D., “Black Africans in Hohenstaufen Iconography”, in: Gesta, vol. 26, no. 1, 1987, 29-36 – Kaplan, Paul H. D., “Titian’s Laura Dianti and the Origins of the Motif of the Black Page in Portraiture”, in: Antichità Viva, vol. 21, no. 1, 1982, 1118, and no. 4, 1982, 10-18 – Kuhlmann-Smirnov, Anne, Schwarze Europäer im Alten Reich: Handel, Migration, Hof, Göttingen, V&R unipress, 2013 – Schreuder, Esther, “‘Blacks’ in Court Culture in the Period 1300-1900; Propaganda and Consolation, in: Black is Beautiful: Rubens to Dumas, Zwolle, Waanders, 2008, 20-31 – Wilbourne, Emily, Voice, Slavery and Race, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2023

About the author Paul H. D. Kaplan is a Professor of Art History at Purchase College, SUNY. He is the author of The Rise of the Black Magus in Western Art (1985) and Contraband Guides: Race, Transatlantic Culture and the Arts in the Civil War Era (2020). He is a contributor to volumes 2, 3 and 4 of Harvard University Press’s The Image of the Black in Western Art (new ed., 20102012). His most recent publication is African Venice (2024), a guide to the Black presence in the lagoon city.

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36. Studio of Francesco Trevisani (1656-1746) Allegory of Africa Oil on canvas, H. 74.5 x 61 cm Provenance: Private collection, Italy (including export permit) This is another version of one of the, at the time highly popular, preparatory studies in oil on canvas by Francesco Trevisani, for the allegories of the four continents as depicted in mosaic in the Baptistry of St. Peter in Rome. Commissioned by Pope Clement XI Albani (1649-1721) in 1709, Trevisani made the cartoons for the mosaics, which can today be found on the ceiling of the Baptistry.

The four continents America, Europe, Asia & Africa Collection National Gallery of Palazzo Barberini in Rome

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37. Follower of Andries Beeckman (1628-1664) African Woman with Tambourine (c. 1685-1725) Watercolour on paper, H. 31 x W. 20.5 cm The paper has an Amsterdam coat-of-arms watermark used between 1685 and 1700. Since paper could have been stored, this drawing might have been made slightly later, but probably in the last quarter of the 17th century. Provenance: - Private collection, United Kingdom - With Finch & Co, London

Andries Beeckman travelled to the Cape and Batavia (Jakarta) as one of the few artists early in the 17th century. Beeckman’s work provides valuable visual accounts of 17th-century life in the Dutch colonies. His works are characterized by intricate details and a keen observation of daily life, trade activities, and the diverse peoples of the former Dutch East Indies and the Cape. The African woman in this watercolour can be seen wearing ‘slave beads’. These had the symbolic function of reinforcing a woman’s social identity and, simultaneously to ward off evil (or potentially dangerous spirits). The beads were silent witnesses in one sense, and they were also exquisitely revealing in others. They spoke loudly to individuals familiar with their cultural framework. Ironically, one reason owners of enslaved Africans let women wear beads and other similar objects that expressed a woman’s African cultural identity was that the potent symbolism escaped ‘Western’ eyes. European or Euro-American men saw beads as simply decorative trifles: women’s things not worthy of much heed; thus, they survived. By diminishing the importance of jewellery, members of the dominant culture unknowingly permitted its use and, hence, its African symbolism to persist unchecked.

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According to the other copy in the Rijksmuseum, the original title of this drawing is ‘Een Kafferin’. The term Kaffer or Kaffir, is an exonym and an ethnic slur – the use of it for black people being particularly common in South Africa. In Arabic, the word kāfir (“unbeliever”) was originally applied to non-Muslims. During the Age of Exploration in early modern Europe, variants of the Latin term cafer (cafri) were adopted in reference to non-Muslim Bantu peoples even when they were monotheistic. It was eventually used, particularly in Afrikaans, for any black person during the Apartheid and Post-Apartheid eras, closely associated with South African racism. It became a pejorative by the mid-20th century and is now considered extremely offensive hate speech. This drawing is one of a series of illustrations depicting non-Europeans, often presented in an album. Andries Beeckman probably made several similar series that found a ready market among European collectors and owners of cabinets of curiosities. The Album de Paulmy in the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal in Paris contains fifty-five sheets of people and animals, of which two are signed by Beeckman. This series includes inhabitants and animals

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NG-2016-34-9

NG-2016-34-6

from Asia, Africa, and South America. Beeckman would have been able to see the Asian and African subjects on his journey to Indonesia, so most of them were probably drawn from his own observation. This is not the case for the South American animals because, as far as we know, Beeckman never visited that continent. Beeckman’s watercolour series were so popular that they were still being copied well into the 18th century. Fragments of at least three other series are known. > The Rijksmuseum acquired sixteen sheets. These early copies after Beeckman. To judge by the watermark and the style, they date from the last quarter of the seventeenth century or the beginning of the eighteenth. They may have been made after an original series by Beeckman that has not survived because several drawings in this series, like The Ternatan, The Persian and The Mestiza, are not in the Paulmy Album or other series. Research has revealed that eighteen sheets from the same series are still in private collections. This means that we know of thirty-four watercolour drawings in this series, sixteen of which are in the Rijksmuseum. The present drawing is part of another series of drawings since the Rijksmuseum already holds a copy of the woman with a tambourine. Due to the comparable watermark in both drawings, they were made at almost the same time and perhaps by the same hand.

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NG-2016-37-11

NG-2016-34-10 Sources: – Onishi, Norimitsu, “Jail Time for Using South Africa’s Worst Racial Slur?”, in: The New York Times, 27 October 2016. – Menno Jonker, Erlend de Groot, Caroline de Hart, Niels Bergervoet , Van velerlei pluimage : zeventiende-eeuwse waterverftekeningen van Andries Beeckman, Nijmegen, Uitgeverij Vantilt, 2014, p. 164, 167, no. 39. – Malika M’rani Alaoui, Jonathan Bikker, Jan de Hond, Frits Scholten, Eveline Sint Nicolaas, Matthias Ubl & Jeroen van Vliet, “Recent acquisitions” in: Rijksmuseum Bulletin, 2017, pp. 209-239, no. 9.

Follower of Andries Beeckman (1628-1664) African Woman with Tambourine (c. 1685-1725) Collection Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (object no. NG-2016-37-11)

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38. Joseph Savart (1735-1801) Four portraits of women of Guadeloupe Each signed, dated, and annotated À la Guadeloupe, Savart invt 3 mars 1769 and titled respectively ‘la Négresse’, ‘la Mestisse’, ‘la Cabresse’, and ‘la Mulatresse’on the backing One drawing has a label reading BULDET - Rue de Gesvie au grand Coeur Vend les vraix Verres de glace blanc, Estampes, Bordures de toute facons. A PARIS on the backing Pastels on paper, H. 40 x 34 cm (each) Provenance: Private collection, Belgium (at least since the mid-19th century); thence by descent Included is a letter from the Louvre to the ancestor of the previous owner, dated August 8th 1929, in which is stated that the Louvre, nor the Cabinet d’Etampes in Brussels, are aware of an artist named Favart. The owner of the drawings, Mr. Brisque, read the signature wrong and made a wrong enquiry.

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Joseph Savart: Four Creole women - Quatre femmes Creoles Séverine Laborie Conservatrice des monuments historiques à la Direction régionale des affaires culturelles de la Nouvelle Aquitaine (translation by Dickie Zebregs)

The recent appearance on the art market of four new pastels signed by the French painter Joseph Savart (Reims 1735 - Saint-Pierre, Martinique 1801) renews an unprecedented event that occurred in 2009 when a first pastel came up for sale in Paris. Signed and dated, the “Quatre femmes créoles” were made in Guadeloupe in 1770 (Fig. 1). The Schoelcher Museum in Pointe-à-Pitre (Guadeloupe) was able to acquire it, thus offering the people of Guadeloupe the opportunity to contemplate a unique work. It sheds light on a forgotten and unknown painting produced by an adventurous artist who went to the French colonies of the West Indies in the 18th century to seek his fortune. These four new works from the corpus of Joseph Savart, executed in Guadeloupe and predating the Schoelcher drawing by a few months, contribute to a better understanding of the artist and his interests and confirm previous hypotheses regarding the meaning of these representations. 1

L’apparition récente sur le marché de l’art de quatre nouveaux pastels signés du peintre français Joseph Savart (Reims 1735 – Saint-Pierre, Martinique 1801) renouvèle un inédit survenu en 2009, lorsqu’un premier pastel daté et signé représentant Quatre femmes créoles exécuté en Guadeloupe en 1770 (Fig. 1) était passé en vente à Paris. Le musée Schoelcher à Pointe-à-Pitre (Guadeloupe) avait pu l’acquérir et offrir ainsi au public guadeloupéen la contemplation d’une œuvre unique, levant un coin du voile sur une peinture oubliée et totalement méconnue, celle produite par des artistes aventuriers partis au XVIIIe siècle dans les colonies françaises des Antilles chercher fortune. Ces quatre nouvelles œuvres du corpus de Joseph Savart exécutées en Guadeloupe et antérieures de quelques mois, contribuent à une meilleure connaissance de l’artiste et de ses centres d’intérêt et confirment les hypothèses émises précédemment sur le sens de ces représentations.1

Rare and unique works of art

Si les collectionneurs se sont tôt intéressés à la production artistique dans les anciennes colonies françaises et anglaises des Amériques, le domaine d’étude de la peinture française du XVIIIe siècle aux Antilles est encore récent, souffrant d’un corpus restreint et d’archives lacunaires.2 Dans le contexte des débuts de la colonisation, ni les élites locales ni l’administration coloniale n’encouragent l’épanouissement d’une vie artistique et il est très rare de trouver dans les archives des traces de l’existence d’artistes de carrière, installés durablement. A la toute fin du XVIIIe et au XIXe siècle, après que le système colonial d’ancien régime a été une première fois ébranlé, les petites annonces de la presse témoignent pourtant de l’existence d’un marché de l’art aux Antilles. Vente de fournitures pour artistes, annonces d’encadreurs ou de ventes de tableaux sont autant de traces indirectes d’une activité et d’un intérêt pour les arts picturaux qui devait exister antérieurement mais dont les exemples sont très rares.3

While collectors have long been interested in the art produced in the former French and English colonies of the Americas, the study of 18th-century French painting in the West Indies is still recent and thus suffers from a limited corpus and fragmentary archives.2 In the context of early colonisation, neither local elites nor the colonial administration encouraged the development of artistic life, and it is very rare to find in the archives any trace of the existence of career artists who settled permanently. At the very end of the 18th century and during the 19th century, after the colonial system of the Ancien Régime had been shaken up for the first time, small advertisements in the press attest to the existence of an art market in the West Indies. Sales of supplies for artists, framers’ advertisements, or sales of paintings constitute so many indirect traces of activity and of an interest in the pictorial arts that must have existed previously but of which we have very few examples.3 Indeed, this important movable heritage was destroyed at various points in time. In the French West Indies or French Caribbean, many properties were burnt down during revolutionary unrest and during the constant wars between the French and the British; others were lost during natural or accidental disasters. The works that escaped such dire fate, being fragile by nature, may simply have succumbed to the ravages of insects and mould that thrive in tropical climates. Thus, most of the works that have reached us are those that travelled from the colonies where they were produced back to the countries of origin or residence of their first owners. This is likely to have been the path taken by the four pastels of Joseph Savart, which bear a label from the house of Denis-Charles Buldet, a framer and print dealer on the Rue de Gesvres in Paris, which proves that they were framed there shortly after their creation.4 Fig. 1. Joseph Savart ((1735-1801)- Quatre femmes créoles (1770) Collection Musée Schoelcher, Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe

Une œuvre rare et singulière

En effet, les occasions de destruction de ce patrimoine mobilier n’ont pas manqué. Dans les Antilles françaises, nombre d’habitations ont connu le feu des troubles révolutionnaires et des guerres incessantes qui ont opposé Français et Anglais ; d’autres ont été détruites lors de catastrophes naturelles ou accidentelles. Pour celles qui auraient échappé à ces destins funestes, le mobilier, par nature plus fragile, a pu simplement subir les ravages des insectes et des moisissures qui se développent favorablement dans les climats tropicaux. C’est ainsi que la plupart des œuvres qui sont parvenues jusqu’à nous sont celles qui ont voyagé depuis les colonies où elles ont été produites vers les pays d’origine ou les pays d’habitation de leurs premiers propriétaires. C’est vraisemblablement ce chemin qu’ont emprunté les quatre pastels de Joseph Savart qui portent une étiquette de la maison Denis-Charles Buldet, encadreur et marchand d’estampes rue de Gesvres à Paris, prouvant qu’ils y ont été encadrés peu de temps

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Officers, colonial administrators and officials, wealthy colonial landowners who in the second half of the 18th century preferred to entrust the management of their estates to a manager rather than reside there, brought back these works to the mainland as souvenirs at a moment in the history of taste that favoured exoticism. But what do these works tell us about these distant lands and their social and economic fabric? As it turns out, Joseph Savart’s depiction of Creole women is far more significant and militant than it might appear at first glance.

après leur création.4 Les officiers, les administrateurs et les fonctionnaires de la colonie, les grands propriétaires coloniaux qui dans la deuxième moitié du XVIIIe préfèrent confier la gestion de leurs domaines à un régisseur plutôt que d’y résider, ont ramené en métropole ces œuvres en souvenir, dans un moment de l’histoire du goût qui favorise les représentations de l’exotisme. Mais que nous disent-elles de ces ailleurs lointains et de leur tissu social et économique ? Joseph Savart livre à travers ces pastels de femmes créoles une vision bien plus signifiante et militante qu’il n’y paraît.

From Champagne to the West Indies

De la Champagne aux Antilles

The reasons that drove this son of a bourgeois family to seek adventure in the French Caribbean, first in Guadeloupe, then in Martinique, are unknown.5 He was born in 1735 in Reims, Champagne. By 1765, he had settled in Basse-Terre, the capital of the Guadeloupe colony, where he married the widow of a weaver, Miss Christine Elisabeth Rison. In the baptismal certificate of their eldest son, Marie-Antoine, in 1768, Joseph Savart is described as a “maître peintre” or master painter. This title, at a time when artists and craftsmen were still organised in guilds, identifies him as an experienced painter, practising his profession full-time and likely taking on students. It is difficult to evaluate the volume of activity in his workshop, and he probably had other sources of income. Nevertheless, the fact that Savart chose godparents for his children among the colony’s notables suggests a level of financial ease and social recognition.6

On ignore ce qui pousse ce fils de bourgeois né en 1735 à Reims en Champagne à tenter l’aventure aux Antilles françaises, d’abord en Guadeloupe, puis en Martinique.5 En 1765, il est établi à Basse-Terre, siège de la colonie de la Guadeloupe, où il épouse la veuve d’un tisserand, demoiselle Christine Elisabeth Rison. Dans l’acte de baptême de leur fils aîné Marie-Antoine, en 1768, Joseph Savart est qualifié de « maître peintre ». Cette appellation, à une époque où les artistes et les artisans sont encore organisés en corporations, fait de lui un peintre expérimenté, exerçant à plein temps sa profession et formant sans doute des élèves. Il est difficile de se représenter le volume d’activité de son atelier et il est probable qu’il ait eu d’autres sources de revenus. Quoi qu’il en soit, le fait que Savart ait choisi les parrains et marraines de ses enfants parmi les notables de la colonie tend à démontrer une certaine aisance financière et une reconnaissance sociale.6

It is also significant that out of the five works identified to date, Savart always signed and added the note ‘inv’ for invenit after his signature. This Latin term, often followed by et pinxit, highlights the artist’s creative input and the intellectual dimension of his work. By claiming to have invented these drawings, Joseph Savart emphasises the importance he places on his work as an artist and on the originality of his compositions. Furthermore, the quality of his portraits of these Creole women suggests that he specialised in portraiture. This more lucrative activity would have allowed him to mingle with the elite. The 18th century represented a golden age for portraiture, particularly for portraits drawn in pastel. Indeed, it is because Savart chose to depict these four Creole women in portrait form that he sets himself apart from his contemporaries like Augustin Brunias, who painted lively scenes with a focus on the landscape, resorting to all the clichés of exoticism.

Il est significatif également que sur les cinq œuvres identifiées à ce jour, Savart ait toujours signé et apposé après sa signature la mention « inv » pour invenit. Cette locution latine, souvent suivie de « et pinxit », met en avant l’activité créatrice de l’artiste, sa dimension intellectuelle. En s’attribuant l’invention de ces dessins, Joseph Savart montre ainsi l’importance qu’il accorde à son travail d’artiste et au caractère original de ses compositions. D’autre part, la qualité des traits des visages de ses créoles et sa maîtrise technique laissent penser qu›il s’est spécialisé dans l’art du portrait. Cette activité plus rémunératrice, qui permet de côtoyer les élites, connaît son âge d’or au XVIIIe siècle et s’exprime particulièrement dans la technique du pastel. Or, c’est précisément cette manière de représenter son sujet, ces quatre femmes créoles sous forme de portrait, qui fait toute l’originalité de Savart par comparaison avec ses contemporains qui, à l’instar d’Agostino Brunias, peignent des scènes animées laissant une large place au paysage et déroulant tous les poncifs de l’exotisme.

Women’s wear: a symbol of vanity and a social marker Each of the four women is portrayed en buste, with a close framing, their smiling gaze turned towards the viewer. Their headdresses and light-coloured clothing stand out sharply against a dark blue-black background. They bear an obvious resemblance to the four young women in the pastel from the Schoelcher Museum (Fig. 1), who are depicted standing in a trompe-l’oeil window frame, huddled together in a similarly friendly and engaging attitude. They dazzle the viewer with their beauty and the discreet coquetry of their light cotton and lace costumes and with their elaborate headdresses and jewellery. Each of them stands out due to the detail of her attire and her skin colour, in a notable variation from light to dark. Joseph Savart’s mastery of the pastel technique manifests in a very soft, almost

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Le costume, une coquetterie féminine et un marqueur social Chacune des quatre femmes est représentée en buste, dans un cadrage resserré, le regard souriant tourné vers le spectateur. Leurs coiffes et leurs vêtements clairs se détachent nettement sur un fond noir bleuté. Elles entretiennent une parenté évidente avec les quatre jeunes femmes du pastel du musée Schoelcher (Fig. 1), représentées debout dans un encadrement de fenêtre feint, serrées les unes contre les autres, dans une même attitude aimable et accrocheuse. Toutes nous éblouissent par leur beauté et par la coquetterie discrète de leurs costumes en cotonnades légères ou en dentelles, leur coiffes élaborées et leurs parures de bijoux. Chacune se singularise par le détail de

vaporous sketch. He brilliantly captured the materials and textures of fabrics and ornaments, placing as much emphasis on these details as on the figures’ faces. However, the pastel from the Schoelcher Museum is complex and more narrating. Three young women each bear an accessory, an attribute of their professions: the servant holds a meat dish, the seamstress or haberdasher poses with her fabric swatches and ruler in the foreground, and behind her, a street vendor carries a tray of small pies on her head. Without a landscape in the background, the illusion of depth stems from the architectural trompel’oeil set against a very bright blue background and the arrangement of the figures. The pastel from the Schoelcher museum bears the inscription “1770. Joseph Savart invenit et pinxit in Guadeloupa 17 November”. The four pastels acquired by Zebregs&Röell, which were drawn twenty months earlier, seem to be a preparatory version ahead of the larger composition. The two works share the importance given to the representation of clothing and the nuances in skin tone reflective of Creole society. Finally, they bear an inscription by the same hand that asserts they were made in Guadeloupe and when. Each of the four pastels bears the same formula: ‘In Guadeloupe Savart invt 3 March 1769’, with a different adjective each time, sic: ‘la Cabresse’, ‘la Mulatresse’, ‘la Mestisse’ and ‘la Négresse’. This highly codified terminology illustrates how colonial society was structured around the prejudice of colour.7 In the pastel from the Schoelcher Museum, the composition, which seems to waver between a portrait and a genre scene, is quite atypical. The artist appears to deviate from the usual codes of exoticism in art and places great importance on the depiction of costumes. As it so happens, this particular interest in costumes provides precious information in order to understand the deeper meaning of this work. Clothing was indeed a very important social marker in colonial society, as can be seen in the accounts of travellers who visited the Caribbean in the 18th century. The garments worn by Joseph Savart’s young women perfectly match the descriptions given by the chroniclers and artists of the time. The headwear, which occupies significant space in the composition of the Zebregs&Röell close-up bust portraits, is one of the female accessories that struck travellers the most. Here, all the women wear the bamboche, adorned with pins and flowers. This type of headwear is a powerful marker: its height and the quality of its fabrics defined the wearer’s social status. Besides, the young women have enhanced their outfits with necklaces and earrings bearing typical Creole motifs. Jewellery made in the Caribbean in the 18th century was an essential component of one’s appearance and wealth. Made of gold, they constituted savings, patiently accumulated, bead by bead, to form these grain-d’or necklaces, which, worn in multiple rows, testified to a woman’s enrichment or sentimental ties. In the colonial context of the 1760s-1780s, however, clothing was not just a matter of fashion. It was also a tool, or even a weapon, of social domination. The clothes and accessories worn by the four young women are very significant from this point of view. The taste for luxury attributed to ‘mulattoes’ is a constant theme in accounts

sa tenue et par la couleur de sa peau, dans une variation sensible allant du plus clair au plus foncé. Grâce à une technique du pastel très maîtrisée, un crayonné très doux, presque vaporeux, Joseph Savart restitue avec brio les matières et les rendus des étoffes et des parures, auxquelles il accorde au moins autant d’importance qu’aux visages. La composition du pastel du musée Schoelcher est toutefois plus complexe et plus narrative. Trois jeunes femmes sont accompagnées d’un accessoire, attributs de leurs métiers : une domestique tendant un plat de viande, une couturière ou une mercière posant avec ses coupons de tissus et sa règle au premier plan, et derrière elle la commerçante ambulante coiffée d’un plateau de petits pâtés. En l’absence de paysage d’arrière-plan, l’effet de profondeur est donné par l’architecture feinte qui se détache sur un fond bleu très lumineux et par l’échelonnement des figures. Le pastel du musée Schoelcher porte l’inscription suivante « 1770. Joseph Savart invenit et pinxit in Guadeloupa 17 novembre ». Les quatre pastel acquis par Zebregs&Röell, dessinés vingt mois plus tôt, semblent constituer une étape préparatoire à la grande composition. Les deux œuvres ont en commun l’importance accordée à la représentation du vêtement et aux nuances des couleurs de peau de la société créole. Enfin, ils portent une inscription de la même main qui permet de situer leur création en Guadeloupe. La série des quatre pastels commence à chaque fois par la même formule : « A la Guadeloupe Savart invt 3 mars 1769 » et se termine par un adjectif différent : « la cabresse (sic) [capresse] », « la mulatresse », « la mestisse (sic) [métis] » et « la négresse ». Cette terminologie très codifiée structure la société coloniale autour du préjugé de couleur. Dans le pastel du musée Schoelcher, la composition, qui semble hésiter entre le portrait et la scène de genre, est tout à fait atypique. L’artiste semble se soustraire aux codes iconographiques habituels de l’exotisme et accorde une grande importance à la description des costumes. Or, cet intérêt particulier pour les costumes est porteur d’informations essentielles pour comprendre le sens profond de l’œuvre. L’habillement constitue en effet un marqueur social très présent dans la société coloniale, souligné dans les récits des voyageurs qui ont parcouru les Antilles au XVIIIe siècle. Les vêtements portés par les jeunes créoles de Joseph Savart correspondent parfaitement aux descriptions laissées par les chroniqueurs et les artistes de l’époque. La coiffe, qui dans le cadrage resserré en buste des pastels Zebregs&Röell occupe une large place dans la composition, est l’un des accessoires féminins qui frappe le plus les voyageurs. Ici, toutes portent la bamboche, ornée d’épingles et de fleurs. Ce type de coiffe est un marqueur très fort : la hauteur et la qualité des tissus qui la composent définissent le statut social de celle qui la porte. Enfin, les jeunes femmes ont rehaussé leurs toilettes de colliers et de boucles d’oreilles, dont on devine les motifs typiquement créoles. Les bijoux réalisés aux Antilles au XVIIIe siècle sont les éléments essentiels du paraître et de la fortune. En or, ils constituent une épargne, patiemment thésaurisée, perle après perle, pour former ces colliers grain-d’or qui, portés sur plusieurs rangs, témoignent de l’enrichissement ou de l’attachement sentimental dont jouit une femme.

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of the time, particularly those written by Médéric Louis Elie Moreau de Saint-Méry (1750-1819). Hailing from a notable Creole family of Martinique, he represented the colonial elite in action on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1796, he published a ‘Topographical, Physical, Civil, Political, and Historical Description of the French part of Saint-Domingue’ (Description topographique, physique, civile, politique et historique de la partie française de SaintDomingue), in which he dwells at length on the lifestyle of the free people of colour and in particular on the luxury favoured by the “mulattoes” and the fashion trends they inspire:8 “The luxury of the mulattoes is taken to the extreme, and since 1770, it has made progress that seems incredible to those who have been able to compare the two periods. It is always in the cities that one must observe it to form an exact idea. This luxury consists almost entirely of one object, clothing. […] Everything that India produces of the most beautiful, the most precious in muslins, handkerchiefs, fabrics, and linens, takes on the forms of fashion to embellish this coloured sex. Rich laces, jewellery the multiplicity of which, rather than the genre, increases the value, are used profusely […]”9

Cependant dans le contexte colonial des années 1760-1780, l’habillement n’est pas qu’une affaire de mode. Il constitue un outil, voire même une arme, de domination sociale. Les vêtements et les accessoires portés par les quatre jeunes femmes sont de ce point de vue très signifiants. Le goût du luxe prêté aux « mulâtresses » [ed. Aujourd’hui de préférence appelées personnes de descendance mixte] revient constamment dans les commentaires de l’époque, en particulier ceux de Médéric Louis Elie Moreau de Saint-Méry (1750-1819). Issu d’une famille notable créole martiniquaise, représentant de l’élite coloniale agissante de part et d’autre de l’Atlantique, il publie en 1796 une Description topographique, physique, civile, politique et historique de la partie française de SaintDomingue dans laquelle il s’attarde longuement sur le mode de vie des « libres de couleur et en particulier sur le luxe qu’affectionnent les « mulâtresses » et les modes vestimentaires qu’elles font naître:7 « Le luxe des mulâtresses est poussé au dernier terme et depuis 1770 il a fait des progrès qui paraissent incroyables à ceux qui ont pu comparer les deux époques. C›est toujours dans les villes qu›on doit l›observer pour en avoir une idée exacte. Ce luxe consiste, presque entièrement, dans un seul objet, l’habillement. […] Tout ce que l’Inde produit de plus beau, de plus précieux en mousselines, en mouchoirs, en étoffes et en toiles, vient prendre les formes de la mode pour embellir ce sexe coloré. De riches dentelles, des bijoux dont la multiplicité, plus que le genre, augmente la valeur, sont employés avec profusion […] ».8

Fig. 2. Marius-Pierre Le Masurier (1735-1801) ‘Famille de mulâtres’ (1775) Collection Musée du quai Branly (inv.no. 75.1557 IA)

Fig. 3. Marius-Pierre Le Masurier (1735-1801) - Portrait de la famille Maximilien Claude Joseph de Choiseul Meuse (1736-1816), à la Martinique, accompagné d’une nourrice tenant un enfant dans ses bras (1775) Musée d’Aquitaine, Bordeaux

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A reaction against colour prejudice

Une réaction au préjugé de couleur

This taste for clothing, which seems to be characteristic of people of mixed descent in the colony, is not just vanity. It reveals the violence inherent in a society where slavery was very much present, with the appearance and spread of colour prejudice in the French colonies of America in the 18th century. “Noirs”, “blancs”, “métisses” and “hommes libres de couleur” (free people of colour): in the French Caribbean, on the eve of the Revolution, men and women were designated by their skin colour, which defined their legal status. The white population, statistically in the minority, was now rivalled by the larger group of free people of colour. Therefore, the white elites sought to confine the people of colour to an inferior place by extending racial segregation. Colour prejudice, which should not be confused with the later notion of ‘biological racism’, is the use of skin colour differences as a legitimisation of a social order and hierarchy.

Mais ce goût du vêtement qui semble le trait caractéristique des personnes de descendance mixte de la colonie, n’est pas que vanité. Il est révélateur de la violence que porte en elle la société esclavagiste, avec la naissance et la diffusion du préjugé de couleur, apparu dans les colonies françaises d’Amérique au XVIIIe siècle. « blancs », «noirs », « métisses », « hommes libres de couleur » : dans les Antilles françaises, à la veille de la Révolution, les hommes et les femmes sont désignés en fonction de leur couleur de peau, qui détermine leur statut juridique. La population blanche, statistiquement très minoritaire, est désormais concurrencée par les gens de couleur libres. Elle cherche à les cantonner dans une place inférieure en étendant à leur groupe la ségrégation raciale. Le préjugé de couleur, qu’il ne faut pas confondre avec le « racisme biologique » qui lui est postérieur, est l’utilisation de la différence de couleur de peau comme légitimation de l’ordre social et fondement hiérarchique.

It was in this light that Moreau de Saint-Méry, the spokesperson for the white colonial slavers, who perceived themselves as belonging to an ‘aristocracy of the epidermis’, theorised colour prejudice. To calculate the proportion of ‘black’ blood in an individual, he created one-hundredand-twenty-eight possible combinations of black-white ‘miscegenation’, hierarchised into nine categories: sacatra, griffe, marabout, mulatto, quarteron, mestizo, mamelouk, quarteronné, and sang-melé. For the mixed-descent population, this classification was very important. On the one hand, it was recorded in civil registers and notarial deeds; on the other hand, it established a hierarchy within which it was possible, from generation to generation, to rise, but without ever being able to cross the ‘colour line’. Indeed, “opinion [...] demands [...] that a line extended all the way to infinity must always separate the white descent from the other [...]”. It is in this context that we must place the inscriptions on the back of the four pastels of Zebregs&Röell’s ‘la Capresse’, ‘la Mulâtresse’, ‘la Métis’ and ‘la Négresse’ (as transcribed in modern French). Since colour was marked with a presumption of servitude, it results, as J.L. Bonniol emphasises, that “the fight against the ‘false free’ compels people of colour to have to prove their freedom constantly”.10 The sartorial excess observed among the freed and, in general, the development of all outward signs of wealth thus may have been the only way to mitigate the perverse effects of one’s status inherited from birth. By showing us richly dressed women adorned with jewellery, the iconography of Savart’s pastels thus tends to represent free individuals. However, the language of clothing is not always so easy to interpret. For example, Marius-Pierre Le Masurier, a French painter active in Martinique around 1775, depicts in the foreground of his ‘Family of Mulattoes’ (Fig. 2) a richly adorned and well-dressed woman, undoubtedly free, who nevertheless receives guests barefoot. In his ‘Portrait of the Duke of Choiseul-Meuse and His Family’ (Fig. 3), Le Masurier depicts an enslaved African woman (a ‘house-slave’) barefoot but very neatly dressed, with a bamboche and adorned with jewellery, which, in another context, could indicate her status as a free woman. Thus, the interpretation of these dress codes is not straightforward. On the subject of ‘house-slaves’, Charles de l’Yver also remarks: “[...] the young, or those who are comfortable, the maids, those who serve inside the house, those in short who know how to make small profits, compete in elegance with the free or kept women, who show them their superiority by wearing shoes.” 11

Moreau de Saint-Méry, porte-voix des colons blancs esclavagistes constituant « l’aristocratie de l’épiderme », le théorise. Pour calculer la proportion de sang « noir » d’un individu il créé cent vingt-huit combinaisons possibles du métissage noir-blanc, hiérarchisées en neuf catégories : le sacatra, le griffe, le marabout, le mulâtre, le quarteron, le métis, le mamelouk, le quarteronné, le sang-melé. Pour les populations métissées, cette classification est très importante. D’une part elle est inscrite sur les registres d’état civil et les actes notariés, d’autre part elle établit une hiérarchie qu’il est possible, de génération en génération, de gravir, sans jamais cependant pouvoir franchir la « ligne de couleur ». En effet, . « l’opinion […] veut […] qu’une ligne prolongée jusqu’à l’infini sépare toujours la descendance blanche de l’autre […] ».9 C’est dans ce contexte qu’il faut replacer les inscriptions qui figurent au dos des quatre pastels de Zebregs et Roëll, « la capresse », « la mulâtresse », « la métis » et « la négresse » [transcription en français actuel]. La couleur étant frappée d’une présomption de servitude, elle a pour conséquence comme le souligne J.-L. Bonniol, que « la lutte contre les « faux libres » impose aux gens de couleur de devoir prouver sans arrêt leur liberté ».10 La surenchère vestimentaire observée chez les affranchis et d’une manière générale le développement de tous les signes extérieurs de richesse, semble donc le seul moyen d’atténuer les effets pervers du statut de la naissance. L’iconographie des pastels tend donc, en nous montrant des femmes richement vêtues et parées de bijoux, à représenter des individus libres. Cependant, le langage du vêtement n’est pas toujours si simple à interpréter. Ainsi, Le Masurier, peintre français actif en Martinique vers 1775, représente au premier plan de sa Famille de mulâtres (Fig. 2) une femme richement parée et bien vêtue, incontestablement libre, qui pourtant reçoit déchaussée. Dans son Portrait du duc de Choiseul-Meuse et de sa famille (Fig. 3), Le Masurier représente l’esclave de maison pieds nus, mais très proprement habillée, coiffée d’une bamboche et parée de bijoux, ce qui, dans un autre contexte, pourrait la faire passer pour libre. Ainsi, l’interprétation de ces codes vestimentaires n’est pas chose aisée... Charles de L’Yver le remarque également en ces termes à propos des esclaves de maison : « […] les jeunes, ou celles qui sont à leur aise, les femmes de chambre, celles qui sont attachées au service de l’intérieur, celles en un mot qui savent se faire de petits profits, rivalisent d’élégance avec les libres ou entretenues qui leur font voir leur supériorité par un pied chaussé.11

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A policital artwork

Une œuvre engagée

The distinctiveness of Savart’s pastels lies in his way of depicting these young women. They appear to us as unique individuals, following the codes of portraiture, whereas Savart’s contemporaries, like Augustin Brunias, favour the more generic setting of the genre scene. In the British islands of the Caribbean, Brunias painted the successes of his patron, the administrator of Dominica, and worked for the white planters, for whom he created small genre scenes depicting colonial society in a flattering light. Brunias was committed to representing different phenotypes, but unlike Savart, he illustrated a social hierarchy. Thus, in the painting from the Thyssen collection (Fig. 4), the woman with the ‘darkest’ skin tone is in service, while the woman with the ‘lightest’ skin tone is the most richly dressed, and the woman of mixed descent occupies an intermediate position. For Brunias, it was important to show the differences, to lift the ambiguities, whereas in the reality of colonial life, dress was used to blur the lines.

La particularité des pastels de Savart se trouve dans le mode de représentation qu’il choisit pour dessiner ces jeunes créoles. Elles se présentent à nous sous la forme d’individus singuliers, en mode portrait, là où ses contemporains, à l’instar d’Agostino Brunias, privilégient le cadre plus générique de la scène de genre. Dans les îles britaniques des Antilles, Brunias peint les succès de son mécène qui est l’administrateur de l’île de la Dominique et travaille pour les planteurs Blancs, pour lesquels il réalise des petites scènes de genre représentant la société coloniale sous un jour flatteur. Brunias s’attache à représenter des phénotypes différents, mais à la différence de Savart, il illustre une hiérarchie sociale. Ainsi, dans le tableau de la collection Thyssen (Fig. 4), la femme la plus noire est celle qui fait le service, la plus blanche est la plus richement vêtue, la mulâtresse occupe une position intermédiaire. Pour Brunias il est donc important de montrer les différences, de lever les ambiguïtés, alors que dans la réalité de la vie coloniale, le costume s’emploie à les brouiller.

However, throughout the 18th century, colonial authorities tried to re-establish this hierarchy of fashion and clothing by regulating their use with sumptuary laws. An initial text from 1720 thus forbade free people of colour from wearing certain fabrics, notably lace, and gold jewellery. As it was difficult to implement, it was then bolstered by three ordinances in 1754, 1765, and 1809. The ordinance of July 30, 1765, almost contemporary with Savart’s pastels, stipulates in its article 3: “That all mulattos, Indians or freed Negroes or others, free by birth, of any sex, may dress in gingham cloth, cotton, calico or other equivalent fabrics of little value, with similar garments on top, without silk, gilding, or lace, hats, shoes and simple hairstyles, under penalty of prison and confiscation of their clothes [...]”.12 The accounts of chroniclers, like Savart’s pastels, demonstrate the inefficiency of these laws. But Savart went even further by having the woman with the darkest skin wear the most precious clothing adorned with rich lace and the finest gold jewellery. Considering the law at the time, this was a real provocation. Another significant feature of Savart’s pastels is that they represent these women for themselves, as who they were. No painterly artifice distracts us: the backgrounds are neutral, and all the focus is on these individuals. In the Schoelcher Museum pastel, the young women are depicted with the attributes of their activities. Although modest, these small traits celebrated the success of a new social class, that of free interpreneurs of colour, and even more so that of women. Whether they were, as in Savart’s work, a haberdasher or street vendor or at the head of a small business producing sugar or coffee, colonial society allowed these free women of colour the possibility to exist and live independently of men.13 Clothing and racial classification thus played a role in ethical and political dynamics, and they fed the arguments exchanged between opponents and supporters of the racist legal order based on slavery. In Savart’s era, these debates stirred colonial society and laid the ideological foundations leading to the revolutionary legislation that abolished slavery and segregation. By drawing these Creole women,

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Les autorités coloniales ont pourtant, tout au long du XVIIIe siècle, tenté de rétablir cette hiérarchie de la mode et du vêtement en encadrant leur usage par des lois somptuaires. Un premier texte de 1720 interdit ainsi aux libres de couleur le port de certains tissus, la dentelle notamment, et les bijoux en or. Peu suivi, il est consolidé par trois ordonnances en 1754, 1765 et 1809. L’ordonnance du 30 juillet 1765, presque contemporaine des pastels de Savart, stipule ainsi dans son article 3: « que tous les mulâtres, Indiens ou nègres affranchis ou autres, libres de naissance, de tout sexe, pourront s’habiller de toile gingas, coton, indienne ou autres étoffes équivalentes de peu de valeur, avec pareils habits dessus, sans soie, dorure, ni dentelle, chapeaux, chaussures et coiffures simples, sous peine de prison et de confiscation de leurs hardes [...] ». Les témoignages des chroniqueurs, comme les pastels de Savart, démontrent l’inefficacité de ces lois. Mais Savart va plus loin encore en faisant porter à la femme la plus noire de peau l’habit le plus précieux, orné de riches dentelles, et les bijoux en or les plus fins. Au regard de la loi, c’est une véritable provocation. Mais l’autre trait significatif des pastels de Savart est de représenter ces femmes pour elles-mêmes, pour ce qu’elles sont. Nul artifice de peintre ne vient nous distraire, les fonds sont neutres, toute l’attention est focalisée sur les personnes. Dans le pastel du musée Schoelcher, les jeunes femmes sont représentées avec les attributs de leurs activités. Bien que modestes, ces petits métiers célèbrent la réussite d’une classe sociale nouvelle, celle des artisans libres de couleur, et plus encore celle des femmes. Qu’elles soient comme chez Savart mercière ou marchande ambulante, ou dans les habitations à la tête de petites unités de production de sucre ou de café, la société coloniale laisse à ces femmes libres de couleur la possibilité d’exister et de vivre indépendamment des hommes.12 L’habillement et la classification raciale participent ainsi aux enjeux éthiques, politiques, et ils nourrissent les arguments échangés entre adversaires et partisans de

Joseph Savart participated in this debate. This commitment was also reflected in his life as a man and as a citizen. In 1792, Savart, now settled in Martinique, exiled himself and his family to Dominica, then French. Like other residents of Saint Pierre (the so-called patriot Pierrotins), he fled the domination of counterrevolutionaries who rebelled against the central power in Martinique and Guadeloupe.14 Along with other exiled Republicans, he took part in the election of the deputies of the Windward Islands to the National Convention. “Savart father, Savart son [and] Savart junior” thus participated in the first male universal suffrage vote in the history of France.15 His son Antoine, who embarked on a military career at the age of sixteen, shared the same ideas. As a lieutenant du Génie, he actively participated in the struggle that opposed the French revolutionary army to the British and the counterrevolutionaries.16 This Republican and abolitionist commitment of Joseph Savart and his sons, quite remarkable in the white Antillean society they belonged to, sheds light on the deeper meaning of these pastels of women of colour. Distinguishing himself from the pleasant genre scenes of his contemporaries such as Brunias and Le Masurier, Savart depicts these women of colour on an equal footing with white women. This was achieved by the depiction of elaborate costumes and the artifices of portraiture. The women are dignified, free, and independent - some fifteen years before the first abolition of slavery. Aware of their differences and simultaneously united as sisters, they embody an ideal, that of the union of free citizens and the promise of equality for all people.

l’ordre juridique esclavagiste. A l’époque de Savart, ces débats agitent la société coloniale et jettent les bases idéologiques qui aboutiront à la législation révolutionnaire abolissant l’esclavage et la ségrégation. En dessinant ces femmes créoles, Joseph Savart prend part à ce débat. Cet engagement se traduit également dans sa vie d’homme et de citoyen. En 1792, Savart, désormais installé en Martinique, s’exile avec les siens à la Dominique, alors française.13 A l’instar d’autres Pierrotins, il fuit la domination des contrerévolutionnaires en rébellion en Martinique comme en Guadeloupe contre le pouvoir central.14 Avec d’autres républicains exilés, il prend part à l’élection des députés des îles du Vent à la Convention nationale. « Savart père de famille ; Savart fils [et] Savart cadet » participent ainsi au premier vote au suffrage universel masculin de l’histoire de France.15 On sait par ailleurs que son fils Antoine, qui embrasse la carrière militaire dès l’âge de seize ans, partage les mêmes convictions et qu’en tant que lieutenant du Génie, il prend une part active à la lutte qui oppose l’armée révolutionnaire française aux Anglais et aux contre-révolutionnaires.16 Cet engagement républicain et abolitionniste de Joseph Savart et de ses fils, assez remarquable dans la société blanche antillaise à laquelle ils appartiennent, éclaire le sens profond de ces pastels de femmes créoles. En se distinguant des plaisantes scènes de genre de ses contemporains tels que Brunias et Le Masurier, Savart représente ces femmes de couleur à l’égal des Blanches, magnifiées par le costume et les artifices de l’art du portrait, dignes, libres et indépendantes une quinzaine d’années avant la première abolition de l’esclavage. Conscientes de leurs différences et en même temps unies comme des sœurs, elles portent en elles l’expression d’un idéal d’union des citoyens libres et la promesse de l’égalité des peuples.

Fig. 4. Augustin Brunias (1730-1796) Women and a servant (c. 1770-1780) Museum Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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(Ed.) In this essay, the term Creole is used for people of mixed descent, but always with white European ancestors. 1 Séverine Laborie, “Joseph Savart, maître peintre à Basse-Terre” in: Revue des Musées de France, February 2012-1; Séverine Laborie, “Joseph Savart (1735-1801), maître peintre à Basse-Terre” in: Bulletin de la Société d’histoire de la Guadeloupe, no. 163, September-December 2012, pp. 1-16; Séverine Laborie, “Les quatre femmes créoles de Joseph Savart: la représentation d’une société coloniale complexe” in: Un Monde créole, vivre aux Antilles au XVIIIe siècle, La Crèche, éditions La Geste, 2017, pp. 62-71. 2 One must mention, for the University of the French Antilles and Guiana, the pioneering work conducted by Danielle Bégot, continued today by Christelle Lozère. 3 Danielle Bégot, “L’expression plastique dans les Antilles du XVIIIe siècle aux années 1870”, in: Anthologie de la peinture en Guadeloupe des origines à nos jours, Conseil régional de Guadeloupe / HC Editions, Paris, 2009, p. 40-53. 4 Denis-Charles Buldet’s shop, “Au grand coeur”, disappeared in 1777. (Saulnier Duchartre, Bénézit. - Dictionary of print publishers, occ. 1758) 5 A few genealogical details may be found in several articles of the Bulletin of the Genealogy and History Association of the Caribbean, dedicated more specifically to the life of Joseph Savart’s son, Antoine (see: Généalogie et Histoire de la Caraïbe, no. 40, pp. 620-621, 9168, p. 349, 91-97, p. 377, 92-2 p. 494). 6 The godfather, “Sir Antoine Pelletier de Lyancourt, knight, reformed captain of the bombardiers”, is the Lord of the viscounty of VillersHélon, an artillery officer and Knight of Saint-Louis. The godmother is “Lady Marie Jeanne Debury, wife of Sir Esquire Dutocq de Quesnel”. 7 (Ed.) These terms that aren’t in use anymore, but explained here, respectively: ‘capresse’ or ‘squadroon’ is someone who is of mixed (of which a quarter of black African) descent; ‘mulatto’ is someone of mixed European and black African descent; and ‘mestizo’ is someone of mixed indigenous and white European descent. 8 clear sign of the assertion of the Creole costume, its flexible and comfortable forms were adopted by white Creoles who wore a tied madras headscarf and even made their way to the mainland around 1778-1779, with the chemise dresses that Marie-Antoinette herself would promote at the Court of Versailles. 9 Louis-Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry (1750-1819), Description topographique, physique, civile, politique et historique de la partie française de l’isle Saint-Domingue…, ed. 2, vol. 1, Paris, T. Morgand, 1875. (Gallica http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/ cb36491843g) 10 Jean-Luc Bonniol, La couleur comme maléfice: une illustration créole de la généalogie des Blancs et des Noirs, Paris, 1992, p. 56 11 Lettres de Charles de l’Yver, op. cit. 12 Letters of Charles de l’Yver, op. cit. 13 Marie Hardy, “La Martinique des mornes” étdude sociale des caféiers au XVIIIe siècle” in: Un Monde Créole, vivre aux Antilles au XVIIIe siècle, La Crèche, La Geste, 2017, pp. 81-88 14 The reason why Joseph Savart and his family left Guadeloupe between 1771 and 1779 to live in Saint-Pierre in Martinique is unknown. 15 285 “true Republicans” met in Roseau (Dominica) on October 28, 1792, “the fourth year of the French regeneration.” All declared having been “forced to leave their property and families because they refused to take up arms to repel the French station and to display the sign of revolt.” Believing themselves to be “the only ones faithful to the metropole,” they were, therefore, the only ones with the right to elect deputies to the Convention. These deliberations and votes were recorded at the Convention on September 15, 1793. (Source: Paris, National Archives no. AN C//181/86). See the remarkable article by Bernadette & Philippe Rossignol: “La Dominique refuge des pierrotins patriotes” in: Généalogie et Histoire de la Caraïbe, no. 226, June 2006, pp. 2829, as well as that of Pierre Bardin, “À la Dominique, 1792: Les électeurs des députés a la Convention” in: Généalogie et Histoire de la Caraïbe, no. 226, June 2006, Paris, pp. 31-37. 16 He participated as a lieutenant of the Engineers (lieutenant du Génie) in the two sieges of Martinique against the British, in 1793 and 1794. After a period of captivity, he continued his action in Guadeloupe alongside Victor Hugues, sent by the Convention to drive out the British and abolish slavery (Campagne de Brumaire, An III, October/November 1794).

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1 Séverine Laborie, « Joseph Savart, maître peintre à Basse-Terre », Revue des Musées de France, février 2012-1 ; Séverine Laborie, « Joseph Savart (1735-1801), maître peintre à Basse-Terre », Bulletin de la Société d’histoire de la Guadeloupe, no. 163, sept-dec. 2012, pp. 1-16 ; Séverine Laborie, « Les quatre femmes créoles de Joseph Savart : la représentation d’une société coloniale complexe », Un Monde créole, vivre aux Antilles au XVIIIe siècle, La Crèche, éditions La Geste, 2017, pp. 62-71. 2 Il faut citer pour l’université des Antilles-Guyane, les travaux pionniers conduits par Danielle Bégot poursuivis aujourd’hui par Christelle Lozère. 3 Danielle Bégot, « L’expression plastique dans les Antilles du XVIIIe siècle aux années 1870 », Anthologie de la peinture en Guadeloupe des origines à nos jours, Conseil régional de Guadeloupe / HC Editions, Paris, 2009, p. 40-53. 4 L’enseigne ‘Au grand cœur’ de Denis-Charles Buldet disparaît en 1777. Saulnier Duchartre, Bénézit - Dict. des éd. D’Estampes, Occurrence 1758 5 Des éléments généalogiques le concernant ont été publiés dans quelques articles du Bulletin de l’Association de Généalogie et d’Histoire de la Caraïbe consacrés plus spécifiquement à la vie du fils de Joseph Savart, Antoine (Bulletin de l’Association de Généalogie et d’Histoire de la Caraïbe, n°40 pp. 620-621 ; questions 91-68 p. 349, 91-97 p. 377, 92-2 p. 494). 6 Le parrain, « Messire Antoine Pelletier de Lyancourt, chevalier, capitaine réformé des canonniers bombardiers », est Seigneur de la vicomté de Villers-Hélon, officier d’artillerie et chevalier de SaintLouis. La marraine est « Dame Marie Jeanne Debury, épouse du sieur écuyer Dutocq de Quesnel ». 7 Signe manifeste de l’affirmation du costume créole, ses formes souples et confortables sont adoptées par les créoles blanches coiffées d’un madras noué, et s’importent même en métropole vers 1778-1779, avec les robes en chemise que Marie-Antoinette mettra elle-même à la mode de la cour de Versailles. 8 Louis-Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry (1750-1819), Description topographique, physique, civile, politique et historique de la partie française de l’isle Saint-Domingue…, edition 2, tome 1, Paris, Ed. T. Morgand, 1875. (en ligne sur Gallica http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ ark:/12148/cb36491843g) 9 Moreau de Saint-Méry, op.cit. 10 Jean-Luc Bonniol, La couleur comme maléfice : une illustration créole de la généalogie des Blancs et des Noirs, Paris, 1992, p. 56 11 Lettres de Charles de l’Yver, op. cit. 12 Voir Marie Hardy, « La Martinique des mornes : étude sociale des caféiers au XVIIIe siècle, in Un Monde créole, vivre aux Antilles au XVIIIe siècle, La Crèche, éditions La Geste, 2017, pp 81-88. 13 Sans que l’on sache pour quel motif, Joseph Savart et sa famille quittent la Guadeloupe entre 1771 et 1779 pour habiter SaintPierre en Martinique. 14 Habitants de la ville de Saint-Pierre à la Martinique. 15 Ils furent 285 « vrais Républicains » qui se retrouvèrent à Roseau (Dominique) le 28 octobre 1792, « l’an quatrième de la régénération française ». Tous déclarèrent avoir « été obligés de quitter leurs biens et leurs familles parce qu’ils ont refusé de prendre les armes pour repousser la station française et d’arborer le signal de la révolte ». Estimant être « les seuls fidèles à la métropole », ils sont donc les seuls en droit d’élire des députés à la Convention. Ces délibérations et votes seront enregistrés à la Convention le 15 septembre 1793. Source : Paris, Archives nationales AN C//181/86. Voir le remarquable article de Bernadette et Philippe Rossignol : « La Dominique refuge des pierrotins patriotes », Généalogie et Histoire de la Caraïbe, n° 226, juin 2006, p. 28-29, ainsi que celui de Pierre Bardin, « À la Dominique, 1792 : Les électeurs des députés à la Convention », ibid., p. 31-37. 16 Il participe en tant que lieutenant du Génie aux deux sièges de la Martinique contre les Anglais, en 1793 et 1794. Après une période de captivité, il poursuit son action en Guadeloupe aux côtés de Victor Hugues, envoyé par la Convention pour chasser les Anglais et abolir l’esclavage (campagne de Brumaire An III, octobre/ novembre 1794).

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39. Louis-René Boquet (1717-1814) Costume Design for an African Ballet Character Pen and ink and watercolour on paper, H. 25.2 x W. 18.7 cm Provenance: Private collection, Paris Louis-René received his training in his father’s workshop, the fan painter Guillaume Boquet, located on Rue St-Denis. The youngest son of the family, Blaise, would continue the family workshop. His older brother, Jean-Baptiste Guillaume, became active as a lathe operator and painter. Probably still as a fan painter, Louis-René became involved with the Menus-Plaisirs du Roi. This department of the Maison du Roi (the royal household staff) was charged with responsibility for ceremonies, events, and festivities. The Menus-Plaisirs had to supervise the organisation and design of royal ceremonies down to the smallest detail. It provided employment to a large number of specialised craftsmen and designers. Boquet expanded his activities in the field of costume. From 1751 he supplied accessories for costumes in performances at the Château de Fontainebleau, such as for Molière’s ‘The Imaginary Invalid’. Not long after that, he focused on complete costumes and was mentioned as a costume designer for opera performances at the King’s residence. Eight years later, he succeeded Jean-Baptiste Martin as costume designer at the Paris Opera.

located in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (Rothschild collection, box XX). The latter drawing adorns the cover of François Lesure’s ‘L’Opéra classique français; XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles’ (pl. 79, p. 99 in the book). These rare depictions of black dancers may have served as designs for African characters in the operas of Rameau or as attire for actual Africans who participated as servants in festivities at the court of Versailles. by the sixteenth century, racial thinking was already emerging as an adjunct of empire, with influence on colonial music institutions, music education, and musical composition, performance, and reception. Race was also sometimes a factor in metropolitan musical life, especially musical theater. Racial impersonation was customary in European morris dancing and in vocal moresche (as in Lassus’s collection of 1581). Spanish villancicos routinely caricatured black Africans and Afro-Europeans. Operas, masques, civic and court pageants, and comic theater often featured blackface performance. And many court productions had performing or support roles for darkerskinned, racialized domestics, including some who were enslaved. Source: Olivia Bloechl, “Race, empire, and early music”, in: Rethinking Difference in Music Scholarship, Cambridge University Press, pp. 77-107

His costumes were strongly oriented towards the French tradition and harked back to motifs introduced by Jean Bérain (1640-1711) a designer responsible for the appearance of theatre costumes under Louis XIV. In this, Boquet was directly opposed to a direction in the theatre world that wanted to follow the latest modes within Italian opera. In 1761, he collaborated with the painter François Boucher and the Venetian decorator Pietro Algieri on a revival of Lully’s ‘Armide’. Shortly afterwards, he produced a series of etchings with costume designs. The French crown created for Boquet the new office of ‘dessinateur en chef des habits des fêtes et cérémonies’. From this position, the designer provided decorations for parties at the court of Versailles and for the inauguration of Louis XVI in the cathedral of Reims, which took place in 1775. Foreign royal houses also approached Boquet for decorations at funerals and weddings. In 1781, he was eventually promoted to ‘inspecteur général’ of the Menus-Plaisirs, a position he would hold until it ceased to exist in 1792. The most comprehensive collection of costume designs by Louis-René Bouquet and his workshop is located in the Bibliothèque d’Opéra National in Paris. There, a drawing (possibly a study or preperatory drawing) of the present drawing is preserved. Another drawing, from the same collection depicts an ‘Africain’ and an ‘Africaine’ in costumes comparable to the present drawing. This sheet are included in ‘La France Noire; Trois siècles de présences’ by Pascal Blanchard. Another drawing of an African dancer, in design and style very similar to the present drawing, is

Louis-René Boquet (1717-1814), Maquette de costume d’un Africain, graphite on paper, 222 x 112 mm Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Bibliothèque-musée de l’opéra (inv.no. D216 II-79)

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40. Étienne Parrocel, called ‘Le Romain’ (1696-1775) ‘An African Uhlan Warrior of the French Volontaires des Saxe regiment’ Signed in brown ink *Parrocel* verso Pen in brown and watercolour on paper, with fleur-de-Lys (1720s), H. 31.9 x W. 22.7 cm Maurice de Saxe, famous French marshal in the War of the Austrian Succession, had a regiment of which he was particularly proud, called the Volontaires de Saxe, composed of Africans, Turkish, Tartars, and Romanians. One brigade consisted of men of colour from Guinea, Senegal, Congo, Santo Domingo, Arabia, and Pondicherry. They were mounted on white horses and under the immediate charge of one Jean Hitton, a sous-brigadier who claimed to be the son of an African king. This brigade fought in all the war campaigns directed by Maurice and, afterwards, from 1748 until his death in 1750, was stationed with him at Chambord. The men of colour were allowed to freely marry white French women - or their own women who, by this time, had rejoined the men. Despite the Marshal’s request in his will that the brigade be kept intact and pass under the control of his nephew, the government broke it up, distributing the people of colour as kettle-drummers among the various cavalry regiments. Les Volontaires du Maréchal de Saxe were a renowned military unit consisting of dragoons and uhlans (lancers). The troops were organised and dressed according to the white gaze and ideas of the field marshal. In the present drawing, the result can be seen; an orientalising costume. Troops of lancers from the unit, composed of black men, guarded the Château de Chambord, which was the Marchal’s residence. The corps fought in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748) and in the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763). Source: Shelby T. McCloy, ‘Negroes and Mulattoes in Eighteenth-Century France’, in: The Journal of Negro History, Vol. XXX no. 3 (July 1945), pp. 283-84

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41. Gustave Vanaise (1854-1902) Portrait of a man in green gown (circa 1886) Signed lower right Oil on canvas, H. 46 x W. 38 cm Vanaise started taking lessons at the Ghent Art Academy from a young age. Initially, his father only allowed him to spend part of his time on drawing lessons so that he could learn the baking trade for the rest of the time. Vanaise Sr. envisioned a future for him as a pastry chef. Later, he was allowed to focus entirely on his education at the Academy, where he took lessons from, among others, Théodore-Joseph Canneel. In 1887, he undertook a study trip to Spain in the company of artist Jules Lambeaux. Vanaise mainly painted historical scenes and portraits of the bourgeoisie of Ghent and Brussels. He regularly portrayed his wife, Marie De Coster, in his works until she died in 1891. The present portrait can be compared to a painting by the hand of the artist in Museum M in Louvain, Belgium. It is likely the depicted man was one of the models travelling around Europe, making a living out of being portrayed to cater to the demand for ‘Oriental’ portraits. However, Vanaise was able to depict the portrayed without any ‘oriental’ attributes, which makes it a simple but strong portrait.

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Charles Henry Joseph Cordier (1827-1905) ‘African Venus’ (1851?) Bronze, H. 12.2 cm Charles Cordier’s career as a sculptor took off in 1848 after completing a portrait bust of Seïd Enkess, a freed enslaved African who had become a professional model in Paris. Cordier exhibited the bust at the Salon under the title ’Saïd Abdallah of the Mayac Tribe, Kingdom of Darfur’. This marked the beginning of his nonEuropean portraiture.

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In 1851 Cordier exhibited at the London Crystal Palace Great Exhibition where Queen Victoria acquired a bust of Saïd, as well as the female head ‘African Venus’, as gifts for Prince Albert. In the same year, Cordier received a commission from the French state to make bronze busts of Saïd Abdallah and African Venus for the anthropology room at the Jardin des Plantes.

’Saïd Abdallah of the Mayac Tribe, Kingdom of Darfur’ (1848) Bronze, H. 12 cm In 1856 a grant enabled Cordier to leave on a mission to Algeria to “study the various types of indigenous peoples from the standpoint of art’” This body of work is presented as his ‘Ethnographical and Anthropological Gallery, comprising 50 sculptures at the Palais de l’Industrie, Paris in 1860. In the same year, Cordier was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour by Napoleon III.

The present sculptures were exhibited at Facing the Other: Charles Cordier (1827-1905), Ethnographic Sculptor, Musée d’Orsay, Paris; Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec; and Dahesh Museum of Art, New York, 2004. Literature: Laure de Margerie, Maria Vigil, Edouard Papet & Christine Barthe, Facing the Other: Charles Cordier (1827-1905), Ethnographic Sculptor, 2004, p. 75, no. 92 & 93 (ill., this pair) Provenance: William and Marijke Bevan, Uckfield, England

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43. Jakob Björk (1726-1793) Fredrik Adolf Ludvig Gustav Albrecht ‘Badin’ Couschi Dated 1776 Januar[i?] on the reverse Oil on canvas, H. 77 x W. 57.5 cm Provenance: - Collection of Queen Louisa Ulrika of Prussia, Queen of Sweden, Drottningholm Palace (since 1776); thence by descent - Collection of Princess Sophia Albertina, inherited in 1782, and on display in Arvfurstens Palast, Stockholm (after 1793) Recorded in Princess Sophia’s 1829 post-mortem inventory, fol. 110, no. 79 (in French): ‘Portrait de Mr Badin, appraised for 20 Swedish riksdaler’. - Noble collection, South Germany (before 1981 to the mid-1980s) - Private collection, South Germany (utill 2023) Exhibitions: Berlin-Museum, Le Musée Sentimentale De Prusse: Aus grosser Zeit!, Berlin, 16 August - 15 November 1981 Literature: Marie-Louise Plessen & Daniel Spoerri ed., Le Musée Sentimentale De Prusse: Aus grosser Zeit!, exhibition catalogue, Verl. Frölich u. Kaufmann, Berlin, 1981, pp. 158-159 (ill.) (as attributed to the French painter Antoine Pesne (16831757), active at the Prussian court in Berlin, the sitter identified as a ‘Moorish’ boy)

This painting is an unsigned portrait replica of a lost pastel portrait by Gustav Lundberg (16951786), dating from 1776. Björk is known to have worked solely as a copyist in Lundberg’s studio. Many of his portraits are known and highly recognisable in style and colouring, of which some still retain their original version in pastel by Lundberg. This original mid-eighteenth-century gilded limewood frame was hand-carved in Stockholm in a Rococo style favoured by the court of Queen Louisa Ulrika of Prussia and her son Gustav III (r. 1771-1792). Influenced by Louis XV boiserie carving, popular in France, the Rococo favoured elaborate curves, delicate flowers, flyaway scrolls, and extravagant asymmetry. This was the age of the virtuoso master carver, who created luxurious, richly carved, ornamental frames, respected today as sculptures in their own right. Carvers in France and Sweden collaborated with the répareur, who carved details into the gesso and coated the mouldings before gilding. Afterwards, the doreur or gilder added punchwork or engraved decorative features, deploying varying shades of gold with either matt or burnished finishes.1 This frame comprises curved, scrolling lines embellished with delicate, almost three-dimensional flowers. The four projecting outer edges are typical of the period, with ornate cartouches shaped like S-curves reminiscent of seashells interspersed with scrolls in the centre (above and below) and on both sides. The straight rectilinear lines are punched with delicate diamond patterns. Gustav Lundberg closely collaborated with leading wood carvers and gilders in Stockholm, including the master carver Gustaf Johan Fast (1794-?). It is an exquisite, high-quality frame closely following French prototypes, commissioned from a master carver, perhaps even from Gustav Fast, soon after the portrait’s completion.

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The Discovery of a Lost Masterpiece: An African Boy at the Swedish Court in the Eighteenth Century By Dr Annemarie Jordan Gschwend

‘Only few tell their story of their life truthfully. This is because of pride, selfishness, fear, sometime shyness, the protection of friends. These five reasons often hinder truth that should be told. But the one who writes these lines, shall not falter, on the road to truth, and [nor shall I make] the reader a fool. The colour of the one who writes is not the same as on what he writes on, but nevertheless, the same as the colour of the lines’. - Badin (née Couschi), Personal diary, c. 1802-18072 This recently discovered and hitherto unknown portrait of a young black African man wearing the blue and yellow attire of the Swedish court has been identified as the enslaved boy brought to Denmark and Sweden from the Danish colony and island of St. Croix in the Caribbean (Fig. 1).3 According to Lars Wickström’s in-depth study, Badin was born in 1750 into slavery with the surname of Couschi, after his maternal grandmother’s brother.4 His father was named Andris, his mother Narzi, his brother Coffi, and the entire family belonged to the Danish Governor of St. Croix, Christian Lebrecht von Pröck (1718-1780), who returned to Europe in 1758 with the eight-year-old Couschi. Pröck subsequently passed the child to a Dane, Gustaf de Brunck, who, in turn, presented him to the Swedish Royal Court in 1760. Couschi is considered the most famous black African or Afro-Caribbean in Swedish history.5 As the boy transitioned into his new home, he was given the French nickname ‘Badin’6 by Queen Louisa Ulrika of Prussia (1720-1782), the spouse of King Adolf Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp (r. 1751-1771), to whom he was gifted.7 The queen bestowed this sobriquet because of Badin’s playful character and childish mischievousness. It would ultimately become his official surname. In the spirit of the Age of Enlightenment (in Sweden known as the Age of Liberty), Queen Louisa manumitted and adopted Badin, raising her foster child alongside her royal children who were the same age, albeit Badin was allowed more space and freedom than the royal children. In 1768, he was baptised at age eighteen in the chapel of Queen Louisa’s impressive Baroque residence, Drottningholm, outside Stockholm.8 The extended royal family assisted at this celebration. His foster parents and siblings acted as his godparents, while his given name, Fredrik Adolf Ludvig Gustav Albrecht (c. 1750-1822), reflects the regal names of past and present Swedish kings and princes. Badin’s positive identification here is based upon two portrayals, one a portrait executed the previous year in 1775 by Queen Louisa’s court painter (hovkonterfejare), the renowned Rococo pastelist Gustav Lundberg (1695-1786). This earlier work is discussed at length below. Drawings and caricatures made of the young Badin while growing up at court sketched by artists who frequented the Stockholm

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Royal Castle and Drottningholm Palace have survived, two of which are also discussed below. It is, however, a later realistic drawing by the Swedish engraver and miniaturist Anton Ulrik Berndes (1757-1844), Gustav Lundberg’s former pupil, that helped secure the identification (Fig. 2).9 Berndes signed his sketch with his initials and dated it 15 July 1793, the day Badin sat for him. In this intimate portrayal, we are confronted with a mature, older, welldressed Badin, now a celebrated citizen of Stockholm, who became a member of the Freemasons and was respected as an accomplished intellectual.10 The present portrait, is an extended bust-length portrait of Badin, which portrays him at age twenty-six, discreetly coiffed and dressed in attire. His kid leather cap with silver embroidery and silver tassel is placed on a ledge to

Fig. 2 Anton Ulrik Berndes, Portrait Drawing of Badin as a Freemason, detail with Badin’s head, Stockholm, 15 July 1793. Credit: Alamy Ltd, UK

Fig. 3 Carl Gustav Roos, Recueil des Uniformes de l’Armée Swedoise (probably Stockholm, 1783), 1783-1789, fol. 53. Credit: Public Domain

his right, upon which he casually rests his right hand. The left arm, cut at the wrist cuff, is placed upon his hip. The elegant yellow and blue costume with large silver buttons, white collar, and white lace chemise echo contemporary uniforms worn by the Swedish militia. A rare work written by the officer Carl Gustav Roos, Recueil des Uniformes de l’Armée Swedoise (probably Stockholm, 1783), illustrates the military attire of generals, infantry, and officers during Gustav III’s reign. This hand-coloured folio in Roos’ book of an aide-de-camp compares with Badin’s attire; instead of the dominant blue and yellow, the preferred martial colours, the black African wears a yellow silk or velvet jacket with black trim over a blue vest edged with silver (Fig. 3). Badin’s attire heightens his elevated status and position at the Swedish court, see also for instance the formal costumes preserved at the Swedish Royal Livruskammaren, object no. 31869, 19227 & 31870. (Fig. 17 & 18) He is not portrayed as just a ‘Moorish’ chamber servant or ‘black page’ (kammermohr).11 We are confronted with a singular portrayal in which the sitter is shown with confidence and self-assurance. Badin gazes at the viewer with pride, a black African who had attained upward mobility in his social context and milieu. Queen Louisa commissioned Badin’s portrait to mark a specific event and a significant turning point in his life when she appointed her foster son her secretary in 1776; this year, inscribed on the lower right reverse of the canvas (Fig. 4).12 After this promotion, Badin became the queen’s closest confidante and companion, upon whom she would implicitly rely and trust more than her children. Portraits, particularly this one of her favourite Badin, mattered to Louisa. The queen’s appreciation of portraiture

Fig. 4 Reverse of Badin’s portrait, Credit: Art & Research Photography, Amsterdam

is well documented, developed since her youth at the Prussian court in Berlin, where the Frenchman Antoine Pesne (1683-1757) served as the leading court portraitist to her father, the King of Prussia, Frederick Wilhelm I (16881740) and her elder brother Frederick II (1712-1786; better known as Frederick the Great).13 Louisa Ulrika was born in Berlin in 1720, the tenth child of Friedrich Wilhelm I and his wife, Sophia Dorothea of Hannover. Raised at the Prussian court, the young princess received a solid education from French Huguenot expatriates. She was fluent in French and knowledgeable in music, theatre, literature, and the sciences, educated as an enlightened princess, having mixed at the Berlin court with leading international artists, Italian opera singers, and celebrated French philosophers, such as Voltaire, a protégé of her brother Frederick II, and with whom she corresponded.14 As queen, Louisa imaged herself at the Swedish court and amongst Stockholm’s aristocratic and intellectual society as an enlightened ruler and dynamic patron of the arts, science, and letters. She established the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters (Kongl. Swenska Witterhets Academien) in 1753, informally known as the ‘Queen’s Academy’.15 She promoted Swedish painters and encouraged the development of theatre by reconstructing a theatre at Drottningholm Palace, where plays were performed in French. Above all, she was also a passionate, erudite art collector. Louisa Ulrika avidly collected portraits of rulers and learned scientists and commissioned images of her court ladies for a “Gallery of Beauties”, curating the hanging of these diverse portrayals in specific rooms and galleries at Drottningholm. In one new room, the Green Room, added during her reign, she displayed her Prussian royal family and siblings to remind visitors of her illustrious

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Fig. 5 Gustav Lundberg, Portrait of Count Claes Julius Ekeblad, Major General, Governor, and Lord Chamberlain, after 1775, pastel on paper. Nordic Museum, Stockholm (inv. no. NM.0239302)

origins and pedigree.16 Louisa encouraged painters to come and study her Drottningholm artworks and paintings. Therefore, her input in this explicitly commissioned portrait of Badin as her new royal secretary cannot be underestimated. Queen Louisa likely ordered a preliminary pastel study of Badin by her favourite painter, Gustav Lundberg, which must be considered lost. Because of the delicate nature and surfaces of pastels, sensitive to light, moisture, and touch, and which had to be protected by glass, copies in oil were invariably made from the onset. She immediately had this lost pastel replicated in oil, attributed here to Jakob Björk, a Swedish portrait painter and copyist active for twenty-four years in Lundberg’s workshop from 1750 to 1774. Björk worked primarily executing oil copies of Lundberg’s pastels for numerous royal and aristocratic clients, among them Queen Louisa and her favourite minister, Count Carl Gustav Tessin (1695-1770), and he continued to do so after leaving Lundberg’s atelier.17 As Laine and Brown stressed, replicas of Lundberg’s portraits, both in oil and pastel, circulated in large numbers outside his studio.18 As a copyist, Björk’s style relied upon Lundberg’s originals, in which sitters are positioned, bust-length, close to the foreground plane, with neutral brownish-green backgrounds. The high rank and status of the sitters are highlighted by their poses, elegant costumes, accessories,

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Fig. 5b Jakob Björk (after Gustav Lundberg), Portrait of Count and Lieutenant-General Anders Rudolf du Rietz, c. 1775-1777, oil on canvas, 67 x 52 cm. Present whereabouts unknown. Credit: Public Domain

and jewels. In his oil copies, Björk faithfully reproduced Lundberg’s compositions, as evidenced in the painting of Count Anders Rudolf du Rietz (1720-1792), recently seen on the art market (Fig. 5b).19 Dressed in a blue and yellow Swedish uniform, underneath which his half-armour is visible, Du Rietz prominently wears the Swedish Grand Cross of the Order of the Sword on his left breast; his portrayal reflects the pride of a career officer. When it is compared with the pastel of the Count Claes Julius Ekeblad (1742-1808) by Lundberg (Fig. 5), it becomes clear that Björk is the painter of the oil painting depicting Badin. Badin’s portrayal imparts a similar psychological characterisation, dignity, and self-esteem. Queen Louisa decided which clothes Badin should wear here, as she did in Lundberg’s 1775 pastel of Badin (see below), probably responsible for the cut and design of both costumes, ever conscious as queen of the visual impact of clothes and dress accessories.20 She equally chose the background setting with Lundberg, which Björk has repeated: a garden with billowy trees that frames Badin, representing her park at Drottningholm palace, where her foster son grew up and lived with the royal family. Diplomats and eyewitnesses at the Swedish court recount in their diaries and travelogues that Badin was short and somewhat stout.21 Badin is fashioned here as the elegant and handsome courtier he had become while growing up in Queen Louisa’s intimate surroundings.22

White Knight, Black Bishop, Checkmate: Badin, Master of Chess One year prior, the Swedish queen commissioned Badin’s most memorable portrait, which hangs almost 250 years later, in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm (Fig. 6).23 Louisa arranged for Gustav Lundberg to paint it in a single day on 4 July 1775, an artistic contest, which the pastelist met with aplomb, expertise, and refined technique. The precise details of the queen’s challenge and why her court painter had to execute this pastel quickly are unknown. Badin is dressed in a fantastic costume with pigeon blue ribbon trimmings, also draped around his neck, thickly encrusted with rock crystal stones, as is the edge of his hat. Opulent white ostrich feathers enhance his attire and adorn his hat; some dyed red and blue. A gold leather case (quiver) filled with arrows is visible above his left shoulder. Queen Louisa deliberately chose Badin’s clothes. This scene mimics a theatrical production packed with multilayered significance, underscored by Badin’s tongue-in-cheek look, pose, and the red and white chess board on a table before Fig. 6 him.24 As with the slightly Gustav Lundberg, Portrait of Badin playing chess, 1775, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, pastel on paper, 74 x 57 cm, inv. no. NMGrh 1455. later 1776 portrait under Credit: Public Domain scrutiny here, Lundberg has positioned Badin very close a neutral greyish-green background. Louisa earmarked to the foreground. The brownish-green background, typical Roslin’s portrait for her collection at Drottningholm. of Lundberg’s style, is heightened with light blue in the middle, spotlighting Badin. Badin’s portrait, with its ornate neo-classical Gustavian this challenging game, a metaphor for the well-educated, frame, received a place of honour in the queen’s apartment courtly gentleman Badin had become by 1775. elsewhere at Fredrikshov,28 her winter palace in Stockholm, That same year, the renowned Swedish painter Alexandre Roslin (1718-1793), who had lived abroad in Bayreuth, displayed in her blue study or cabinet d’étude, located Parma, and Paris for his entire life, visited Stockholm after in a wing she added there in 1772-1774 now destroyed, being elected a member of the Swedish Academy of the designed by her architect, Carl Frederik Adelcrantz.29 Arts. During his sojourn in 1774-1775, he took many She carefully selected the furnishings in this small room, portraits of the Swedish royal family, including this portrayal contrasting Asian and European objets d’art. The curtains of Queen Louisa as the elderly Dowager Queen, which she and the upholstery of the gilded seats were blue taffeta must have ordered simultaneously with Lundberg’s pastel with gold braiding. The Swedish Rococo-style desk with of Badin, her portrayal almost identical in size (Fig. 7).27 In a bookshelf or etagère by the master cabinetmaker Nils Dahlin (active in Stockholm, 1761-1787), after French keeping with Gustav Lundberg’s style of portraiture, Roslin models, were inlaid with imported Chinoiserie black and depicts Louisa in lavish attire, richly adorned with pearls gold lacquer panels, outfitted with burnished gilt Ormulu and diamonds. As in Lundberg’s pastels, she is seen against

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Fig. 7 Alexandre Roslin, Portrait of the Dowager Queen Louisa Ulrika, 1775, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, oil on canvas, 74 x 58 cm, inv. no. NMDrh 35. Signed and dated: 1775. Credit: Public Domain

fittings. Stamped with the queen’s initials and dated 1771, this site-specific furniture has survived.30 A bronze French clock with the Allegory of Learning (a woman reading a book) crowned Dahlin’s bookshelf. Other items included export wares: a Japanese lacquer cabinet, four grey and gold potpourri jars, and a fire screen made with painted Indian paper. On the walls, Queen Louisa elected to juxtapose her ‘exotic’ black son - dressed in the matching blue of her study - with a white porcelain bust of the Russian Empress, Catherine the Great (1729-1796), a female ruler she admired. It was an intentional play with black and white. As the queen’s appointed secretary after 1776, Badin was quite familiar with this room and its contents, having unique access to this space and the key to her private files. To better visualise Queen Louisa’s blue étude, illustrated here is a small watercolour depicting Countess Louisa Ulrika (Ulla) Sparre in a similar cabinet at her country estate in Åkerö (Fig. 8).31 The wife of Count Carl Gustav Tessin, Queen Louisa’s minster and a passionate art collector,32 Countess Sparre, in her collecting craze, densely furnished her study, much like the blue étude at Fredrikshov. This tiny space, with the countess portrayed at her desk, is crammed with collectables where Asia and Europe intersect. This study was her Kunstkammer (an art chamber) in which naturalia, such as coral, were displayed alongside exotica, such as Asian export wares. Books, paintings, small-scale bronze sculptures, a gilt bronze Rococo clock, a Chinese Imari baluster jar with a cover (Kangxi period, 1622-1722), and a Chinese red and gold lacquer cabinet compete for attention. Above Countess Louisa’s desk is a portrait of an unidentified female painter holding a painter’s palette, possibly by the Venetian Rococo pastelist Rosalba Carriera

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Fig. 8 Olaf Fridsberg, Portraits of Illustrious Men, with Short Biographies of Their Lives, written by Mme la Comtesse de Tessin, 1760s, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, watercolour on paper, 23 x 19 x 5.5 cm, inv. no. NMH 145/1960. Credit: Public Domain

(1673-1757).33 On the upper wall in the background is Gustav Lundberg’s pastel portrait of her husband, Count Tessin, which can be seen in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm today.34

African Precedents In their exhaustive monograph on Gustav Lundberg’s career as painter and pastelist, Laine and Brown looked closely at Queen Louisa’s commissioned pastel of Badin, detailing the artistic sources, established iconographies and stereotypes Lundberg incorporated here.35 The ostrich feathers and gold quiver with arrows echo earlier depictions of socalled ‘moors’, or better, Africans, prevalent in manuscript illuminations, artworks, prints and the decorative arts since the late Middle Ages. This Allegory of Africa, one of the world’s four continents, executed in 1709 by Francesco Trevisani (1656-1746) or his workshop in Rome, encapsulates these wide-spread pictorial models (Fig. 9).36 The African continent is symbolised by an elephant mounted by a half-clad, bejewelled black lady with a parasol, personifying Africa. In keeping with his eccentric dress and theatrical presentation, Badin’s hair is unruly and uncoiffed, his face unshaven, his black coat reflecting the colour of his black skin underneath. The deliberate reference to ‘African’ elements underscores Badin is not dressed in conventional court attire but wears a stage costume, perhaps one worn during his brief period as an actor and ballet dancer in plays and masquerades held at the French Theatre in Bollhuset in Stockholm between 1769-1771.37 Badin also performed in the Royal Palace, playing the lead as an African ‘savage’ in Pierre de Marivaux’s Arlequin Sauvage. A rare watercolour of an African ballet dancer by Louis-

Fig. 9 Francesco Trevisani and studio, Allegory of Africa, 1709, Amsterdam, Zebregs and Röell Fine Arts & Antiques, oil on canvas, 74.5 x 61 cm.

Fig. 10 Louis-René Boquet, Costume Design for an African Ballet Character, Amsterdam, Zebregs&Röell Fine Arts & Antiques, pen, ink and watercolour on paper, 25.2 x 18.7 cm.

René Boquet (1717-1814), a costume designer for the Paris Opera, may well reflect the costume worn by Badin in 1770 (Fig. 10).38 During this theatrical phase of his life, Badin collaborated with the Swedish court poet, entertainer and songwriter Carl Michael Bellman (1740-1795), with whom Badin composed songs and poems, even appearing in Bellman’s divertissement, Carneval de Venise, staged for the Dowager Queen Louisa, by order of her son King Gustav III in 1776. The production, which recreated Venice with St. Mark’s Square, and the Rialto bridge, took place in the king’s cabinet (Cabinet du Roi) with Badin acting as the masked ‘blackamoor’ in Venetian carnival costume.39

philosophers who devoted themselves to studying Africans, such as Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759), who once resided at Frederick II’s court in Berlin.

Since her childhood at the Prussian court, Queen Louisa was interested in the Africans she had encountered there and, subsequently, at her brother Frederick the Great’s court, where black men were engaged as musicians and soldiers. The life of one man, especially, fascinated her. Anton Wilhelm Amo (c. 1703-c. 1759) from Ghana, protected by Louisa’s elder sister, Philippine Charlotte of Prussia (1716-1801), Duchess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, was encouraged to study, receiving his doctorate in Wittenberg in 1734. Amo lectured at the Halle and Wittenberg universities and wrote a now-lost treatise on the rights of black Africans in Europe. Much like Badin’s story, another eighteenth-century narrative which fascinated European courts was the remarkable career of the African courtier and royal tutor Angelo Soliman (Mmadi Make, c. 1722-1796) at the Habsburg imperial court in Vienna. Brought as a slave child to Europe, he achieved prominence in Viennese elite society, highly respected as a cultured man in intellectual circles, joining the Freemason Lodge, ‘True Concord’ (Zur Wahren Eintracht) in 1783, as Badin had in Stockholm in 1773.40 During her reign, Queen Louisa cultivated relations with men of letters, scientists and

The arrival of Mapondé, an enslaved five-year-old African boy with albinism from Angola in Paris in January 1743, created a sensation because of his genetic condition and rare skin colour. Maupertuis, who closely studied Mapondé, was so fascinated by the enigma that a ‘white’ child could be born of black parents he was inspired to write and publish a treatise, La Dissertation Physique à l’occasion du Nègre Blanc (Leiden, 1744).41 News reached the Swedish queen’s minister, Count Carl Gustaf Tessin, the former ambassador to France, who managed to obtain this outstanding, insightful portrait by Jean-Baptiste Perronneau (c. 1715-1783), taken the year Mapondé arrived, which today is in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm (Fig. 11)42 Tessin gifted this pastel to Queen Louisa, who gave it a place of prominence at her palace in Drottningholm. Perroneau showcases the young Mapondé as a dignified, almost majestic sitter, three-quarters in length, facing to the left. The viewer is nevertheless confronted with a strange ‘curiosity’ - a white-skinned black African boy with expressive blue eyes and white hair dressed in an exotic red silk gown. His ceremonial costume is complimented by his long grey cape and red cap in his right hand, both lined with grey fur, recalling Turkish caftans. Mapondé is explicitly dressed as an oriental Ottoman to reference his ‘otherness’. When commissioning Gustav Lundberg’s pastel of Badin, her ‘wild African boy tamed by court society and its mores’, Queen Louisa looked for inspiration to Perroneau’s earlier, realistic portrayal of Mapondé, which had been in her collection for decades. Mapondé’s portrait and story are images and narratives Badin would have seen and heard at Drottningholm Palace.

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“It’s [Badin’s] disposition is, like that of all Morians [Swedish for ‘moor’ or black African], very quick, which can be so much less strange that in his upbringing, the rule must be followed to let him do, most of the time, what he wants, at least never let him be nagged with any body language.” Sparre found Badin’s manners and speech blunt and gross, disapproving he was allowed to run in and out of rooms, climb on the royal thrones, and hang around during meals between the king’s and queen’s chairs. On many occasions, Badin would race around the table, take food from the plates and cause guests to laugh.43 Once, he popped out of a large baked pie. The queen’s lack of discipline transformed the young Badin into a court jester. A littleknown pen and ink drawing of Badin standing on a podium with a jester’s cap, playing the violin, by the queen’s court architect, Jean-Eric Rehn (1717-1793), gives us a glimpse of his early life at court as a form of entertainment. (Fig. 12)44 Another sketch by Rehn gives an even better insight into life at Drottningholm Palace in the queen’s quarters, capturing a moment in time at Queen Louisa’s court (Fig. 13).45 The French sculptor Pierre Hubert l’Archevêque (1721-1778) shapes her portrait bust in clay to the far right.46 Behind, to the left, by the window, she stands next to her official reader, the Swiss Jean François Beylon (1724-1779), whoreads her a text, without doubt in French while a grinning, mischievous Badin peeks from behind

Fig. 11 Jean-Baptiste Perronneau, Portrait of the Albino Child Mapondé, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, 1743, pastel on paper, 75 x 56 cm, inv. no. NMB 1674. Credit: Public Domain

Before 1775: Educating the Queen’s Son Much ink has been spilt about Badin’s representation in Lundberg’s pastel as the ‘exotic other’, the civilised boy, playing chess in the context of the white Swedish court. Lundberg’s portrayal encapsulates Badin’s biography and life up to 1775, reflecting the close ties and friendship Queen Louisa cultivated with her foster son, whom she liberally educated, following the edicts of the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), who in 1762 published his Émilie (or On Education). Rousseau’s premise was small children should be free of formal education, advocating an upbringing without constraints. Louisa fashioned herself as an enlightened monarch, and when granting Badin his freedom, she allowed him to be raised as a human scientific experiment in keeping with Rousseau’s precepts. Spirited and ill-behaved, Badin could roam free in all the royal palaces he resided in, never reprimanded nor scolded. He could say what he wished and treat his royal siblings as he liked. He often called his adopted brother, the crown prince and future king, Gustav III, a ‘scoundrel’. Queen Louisa thought him witty and verbal. Contemporaries, visitors, and courtiers alike were appalled at the results of her unconventional parenting methods. The Swedish Chancellor, Count Fredrik Sparre, harshly criticised Badin in handwritten notes dated 1763, having himself suffered from the boy’s rudeness:

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Fig. 12 Jean Eric Rehn, Drawing of the young Badin dressed as a jester playing the violin, c. 1760, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, pen and ink on paper, 19.6 x 15 cm, inv. no. NMH 444/1995. Inscribed on the reverse: “Badin négre de la reine Louise Ulrique de Suede, dessiné 1757”. Credit: Public Domain

A Black Swedish Courtier in Prussia Three years after his baptism, Badin travelled to Prussia, experiencing the country where his patroness grew up. In 1771, after her husband, King Adolf Frederick, died, Queen Louisa was invited by her elder brother, Frederick II, to spend time at his court.53 She arrived on 3 December with an entourage of 82 people, including Badin.54 This trip abroad marked a turning point for him as an educated black courtier. He resided in Berlin for almost a year, becoming the ‘darling’ (joujou) of Prussian royal society because of his eloquence and wit; his presence was coveted everywhere, not just because of his colour. He was invited daily to visit Frederick’s queen, Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel-Bevern (1715-1797) and the homes of other princesses and court ladies, as Queen Louisa duly reported to her son, Gustav III, in Stockholm.

“As in Stockholm, Badin is everyone’s plaything [joujou] here. The Queen and the Princesses order him to visit them, and he is invited every day, evening, and dinner in town.”55

Fig. 13 Jean Eric Rehn, Drawing of the young Badin, Queen Louisa Ulrika, Pierre Hubert l’Archevêque and François Beylon at Drottningholm Palace, c. 1760, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, pen and ink on paper, 36.8 x 26.5 cm, inv. no. NMH 543/1995. Credit: Public Domain

the sculptor’s legs. Rehn has chosen to caricature Badin as short, rotund with pronounced, exaggerated African features.47

The Rousseau experiment inevitably failed as Badin grew older. Queen Louisa realised her undisciplined young teenager needed education. In preparation for his baptism, she appointed Nathanaël Thenstedt (1731-1808), a Swedish preacher, to instruct him in Christian doctrine, reading and writing, and other subjects.48 Thenstedt tutored Badin from 1763 to 1768; his baptism was celebrated in the chapel of Drottningholm Palace on 11 December 1768. Badin became a gifted polyglot, having mastered Latin, German, French, and Swedish, fluent in the latter two, as his diary confirms. Badin was wellread and appreciated books and, as an adult, amassed a library which counted eight hundred volumes, sold at auction after he died in 1822.49 His high status at Queen Louisa’s court granted him multiple social advantages, as in the 1760s when he met at royal soirées and dinners the Swedish philosopher and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), a harsh critic of slavery and the first Swede to condemn slavery.50 As his diary reveals, Badin’s discourses with Swedenborg transformed his views regarding faith and spirituality.51 After his baptism, Badin refashioned himself from a court jester to a pious, devoted Christian, becoming Queen Louisa’s most trusted secretary, with her 1776 portrait by Jakob Björk marking this momentous transition in Badin’s life.52

Badin and Queen Louisa partook in a full social agenda of concerts, entertainments, operas, dinners, and sightseeing, including a special tour of Frederick II’s Rococo palace of San Souci in Potsdam, where they visited the terraced gardens, park, and the superb art collections of French paintings, among them, works by Jean-Baptiste Pater and Antoine Watteau.56 Badin’s exposure to the arts, culture, music, theatre, and intellectual circles cultivated by Frederick and the Prussian royal family left an indelible mark on him, with Badin wishing to remain in Berlin to study astronomy.57 However, his complex relationship with Queen Louisa influenced his return to Stockholm a year later. After 1771, Badin proved indispensable to the queen because of his loyalty, discretion, and knowledge of the inner workings of the Swedish court, becoming the ears and eyes of the queen and her son, King Gustav III.58 His devotion and loyalty were unconditional, to the extent that he aided in burning Queen Louisa’s papers - upon her directives - after she died.59

More Transitions Badin’s career at the Swedish court continued to thrive after the loss of his adopted mother. King Gustav III respected his adopted brother’s talents and capabilities, appointing him the assessor of two royal estates in Svartsjö.60 A receipt for the rental of a country house and garden in October 1782 signed by Badin has survived, marking his new career as a royal estate manager and officer with judiciary powers (Fig. 14).61 He remained in Gustav’s service until the king’s assassination in 1792. Badin took the initiative and oversaw the commission in 1794 of a commemorative silver medal to honour his dead brother executed by Carl Gustav Fehrman (17461798),62 which depicts the bust of the late king on a plinth with a naked, winged old man with an hour clock; the personification of Time, extending his hand towards the dead monarch (Fig. 15).63 Scattered on the ground and on the plinth - the letter G for Gustav inserted in a six-sided star - are masonic symbols, including a compass and a square, referencing the late king’s membership. Afterwards, Badin retired from court life, purchasing two farms in Uppland, where he kept his extensive library, to live the life of a country gentleman.

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Badin also remained connected to the household of Queen Louisa’s unmarried daughter, Princess Sophia Albertina (17531829), a foster sister he had been particularly close to since his arrival at the Swedish royal court in 1758. This princess watched over Badin’s welfare, and after his first marriage to a white Swedish merchant’s daughter, Elisabeth Svart, in late 1782,64 she granted him a lifetime annuity. A surviving letter confirms her friendship, support and a gift of money (Fig. 16). ‘Here, my good friend Badien [sic; Badin], a gift for your little pleasure; I hope your health is better than last year. You see that I do not forget my absent friends. Sophie Albertine’.65 This princess inherited outstanding artworks and portraits from her mother’s diverse collections after 1782; one was Jakob Björk’s masterful portrayal of Badin as the queen’s royal secretary. Owning this portrait was a personal choice. Sophia’s private residence, Arvfursten Palats in Stockholm, was remodelled by Erik Palmstedt between 1793 and 1794; Louis Masreliez (1748–1810) designed the interior salons in a neoclassical Gustavian style. In the Sällskapsrummet, or the drawing room, Princess Sophia and her courtiers spent hours conversing and embroidering. Most likely, Badin’s 1776 portrait once hung in this representative room. In 1829, the same portrait was recorded in her post-mortem inventory on fol. 110, entry 79 as ‘Portrait de Mr Badin’, appraised for 20 Swedish riksdaler.66 Princess Sophia’s residence is the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs today. Her former Arbetsrummet (study), which initially served as her bedroom and later as her waiting room, contains furnishings dating to her residency still in situ.

Badin’s Legacy In November 2023, Crown Princess Victoria attended the unveiling of a headstone for Gustav Badin at the Katarina Cemetery on Södermalm in Stockholm, where fellow Freemasons had buried him on March 18, 1822. All traces of Badin’s original grave have since been lost. The National Organisation of Afro-Swedes took the initiative to honour Badin, and they erected this fitting memorial for a former enslaved African who carved out a brilliant career at the Swedish court, refashioning himself as a jester, butler, ballet dancer, actor, erstwhile poet, secretary, and official royal inspector. Badin loved culture, the arts, music and his books. As a Freemason and a person of African descent deeply concerned with his black identity, impacted by the Age of Enlightenment philosophers and intellectuals whose paths he crossed in Sweden and Prussia, Badin believed in social reform, and like others in his court circles and secret societies advocated against racial discrimination in eighteenth-century Sweden. Jakob Björk’s portrait of Fredrik Adolf Ludvig Gustav Albrecht Badin, née Couschi, is a unique testimony of his life and career at Queen Louisa Ulrika’s court, reflecting his amazing transition from a court entertainer and jester to a trustworthy royal secretary and land assessor. It is a remarkable masterpiece and portrayal of a black Afro-Carribean-Swede to have been rediscovered.

Fig. 14 Rental contract signed by Badin, Stockholm, 21 October 1782, Uppsala, Uppsala University Library, Erik Wallers Autografsamling, ink on paper, 320 x 200 mm, shelfmark: Waller Ms se-00156. Signed: Adolph Ludwig Badin.

Fig. 15 Garl Gustav Fehrman, Commemorative Medal of King Gustav III commissioned by Badin, 1794, Uppsala, Gustavianum, Uppsala Univeristy Coin Cabinet (Myntkabinett), 1794, silver, diameter: 50.94 mm. Credit: Public Domain

Fig. 16 Note written by Princess Sophia Albertina to Badin with a gift of money, Stockholm, Riksarkivet, Ericsbergsarkivet, Autografsamlingen, Sverige, Sofia Albertina, vol. 282, unfoliated (no date, no location). Credit: Public Domain

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I am grateful to Merit Laine, who generously shared archival sources and helped guide me through the holdings of the Riksarkivet in Stockholm. Marie-Louise von Plessen and Franz Pichorner were just as helpful and forthcoming with information. Ragnar Hedlund at the Uppsala Univeristy Coin Cabinet helped clarify queries regarding the 1794 commission of a medal of King Gustav III in his collection. I thank Kate Lowe and Hugo Miguel Crespo for reading earlier drafts of this essay. 1 Laine and Moberg, 2015, pp. 209-212; Laine and Brown, 2006, pp. 226-233 and p. 245. Consult as well, Serge Roche, Cadres français et étrangers du XVe siècle au XVIIIe siècle: Allemagne, Angleterre, Espagne, France, Italie, Pays-Bas, Paris, E. Bignou, 1931; Bruno Pons, ‘Les cadres français du XVIII siècle et leurs ornaments’, in: Revue de l’Art, 76, 1987, pp. 41-50 2 Badin’s autograph diary (Dagbook), written in Swedish, is interspersed with commentaries in French. Located in Uppsala, Uppsala University Library, ink on paper, 37 pages, 16 x 10.5 cm, Shelfmark: X 252 a. Acquired in 1916 as a donation given by the French professor Oscar Quensels. Consult online: https://www.alvin-portal.org/alvin/ view.jsf?pid=alvin-record%3A84300&dswid=7423 (accessed 15 December 2023). Cf. Pred, 2004, p. 8, cites a transcribed manuscript of Badin’s life in the archive of the Par Bricole Bacchanalian Society in Stockholm (inv. DIj). More recently, Basir, 2015. Badin wrote entries about spiritual love, poems on the beauty of flowers and friendship. 3 This island was purchased by the Danish West India Company from Louis XV, King of France, for 750,000 livres in 1733. St. Croix (together with St. Thomas) were sold by Denmark to the United States in 1916. Badin is thought to have been born either in West Africa or St. Croix. As an adult, Badin remembered seeing his family’s hut burn but was unable to say precisely where he was born. 4 Wikström, 1971, pp. 272-314; Danielsson, 2021, p. 47 5 Östlund, 2017, pp. 71-91. Badin’s story was recounted in later novels after he died in 1822. For instance, Magnus Jacob Crusenstolpe, Der Mohr oder das Haus Holstein-Gottorp in Schweden. Aus dem Schwedischen, Berlin, Morin, 7 vols., 18421844, whose unreliable accounts of Badin at the Swedish court racially stereotyped him as a wild, untamed African savage. Cf. Lowe, 2005, pp. 17-46, especially p. 18, for the question of black Africans who, if they conformed to norms of dress and behaviour while assimilating European cultural life, were able to neutralise stereotypes of black Africans as “savages”, projecting themselves as accepted, “honorary” Europeans who happened to have black skin. This is precisely the case of Badin, who grew up in the intimate circles of the Swedish royal family to become a respected citizen of Stockholm and accepted in elite circles. 6 This name derives from the French badiner, meaning to joke or banter; badinage means witty remarks. In French badin is a joker, fool or pranskter. 7 In Swedish she was called Lovisa Ulrike. In German, Luise Ulrike. She signed her letters, Ulrike. I have opted for the English spelling of Louisa Ulrika. 8 Drottningholm was built by King Adolf Fredrik’s great aunt, Queen Hedvig Eleonora, designed by the architects Nicodemus Tessin the Elder and his son. In 1744, soon after she arrived in Sweden, ownership was transferred to Princess Louisa Ulrika. It became her favourite and primary residence, where she housed her comprehensive collections of paintings, Old Master drawings, antiquities, coins, medals, books, historical documents, and natural history specimens. Drottningholm remained the focus of Louisa’s intense patronage for thirty years, her energies invested in laying out its gardens, outfitting its interiors and adding buildings, including a Chinese pavilion. See Laine, 1998, pp. 493-503. 9 This drawing is discussed and illustrated in Östlund, 2017, fig. 4.4 without mention of its present location. According to Östlund, Berndes added a poem (on the reverse?) to Badin’s image: “Born among slaves he wandered among them; till the approach of light drove away darkness: and then it was that transported its luster and warmth, Adolf Ludwig Gustaf Fredrik Albert Badin Cou[s]chi, wished to die as one truly free”. 10 Pred, 2004, p. 77. Through his court connections, Badin joined several secret societies in Stockholm, such as Per Bricole, where he became the second-highest ranking fellow and the Freemasons in 1773, which included his royal foster brothers King Gustav III and Princes Karl and Fredrik Adolph. He actively engaged in their philanthropic projects, donating to these fraternities. Cf. Par Bricoles Gustavianska Period. Personalhistoriska Anteckningar till den Äldsta Matrikeln, Stockholm, Hasse W. Tullbergs Förlag, 1903, p. 86, no. 704: “Badin, Adolph Ludwig”. 11 For black pages at Ancien Régime German courts consult Honeck, Klimke, and Kuhlmann, 2013, p. 10, addressing the question of visibility and mobility of black servants in German aristocratic elite circles; some black people, like Badin, even attaining successful court careers in Central Europe. 12 Before this, Badin had been the queen’s footman and butler. 13 A 1744 portrait of Louisa Ulrika as Princess of Prussia painted by Pesne at the time of her marriage in Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, inv. no. 53.1. Consult online: https://recherche.smb.museum/detail/870040/luise-ulrike-prinzessin-von-preußen-1720-1782?language=de&question=Antoine+Pesne&limit=15&sort=relevance&controls=none&collectionKey=GG*&objIdx=7 (accessed 15 December 2023). 14 Louisa Ulrika’s education and upbringing and that of her siblings at the Prussian court are outlined in Oster, 2007. Louisa’s eldest sister, Wilhelmine of Prussia (17091758), Margravine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, became an active patron of the arts, an accomplished musician, composer, painter, poet and playwright. She engaged in significant building projects while transforming her lavish court at Bayreuth into the intellectual centre of Central Europe. See also Rivière, 2003, pp. 41-62. 15 Dermineur and Svante, 2016, pp. 84-96; Dermineur 2015. 16 Dermineur, 2017, p. 71. 17 Levertin, 1902; Laine and Brown, 2006, pp. 199-201. 18 Laine and Brown, 2006, p. 245. 19 Present whereabouts unknown. Oil on canvas (after a pastel), 67 x 52 cm. 20 See Dermineur, 2017, p. 10, for Louisa’s interest in the Prussian army, impacted by her father, Frederick Wilhelm I and the multiple uniforms he wore, who self-fashioned himself as an absolute army officer, shunning court costume and p. 110 for the fabrics, lace and pearls Louisa ordered from Paris and Berlin for her ceremonial clothes made for her coronation in 1751. This splendid silver dress with embroidered gold crowns she designed still survives in Stockholm in the Royal Armoury (National Historical Museums, SHM, Livrustkammaren). Consult online: https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lovisa_Ulrika_av_Sveriges_kröningsklänning_från_1751_-_ Livrustkammaren_-_13124.tif (accessed 15 December 2023). 21 The pentimenti around the top of Badin’s head are visible in the X-rays taken by Art & Research Photography in Amsterdam in January 2024. Also slight changes in the nose and lips are visible, which points towards Björk having difficulty in copying a portrait of a man with non-European features.

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22 In December 1763, the Swedish Royal Chancellor Count Fredrik Sparre pejoratively observed in his diary that Badin was short: “[…] as a little dwarf, although not unpretty”. Cf. Pred, 2004, p. 215, n. 52. 23 Pastel on paper, 74 x 57 cm, inv. no. NMGrh 1455. For payment made by Queen Louisa to Lundberg for Badin’s pastel, see the published dissertation by Laine, 1998, p. 62, who cites the queen’s account books in which this commission appears. 24 An identical red and white chessboard made of gold-plated leather, perhaps the same one depicted in this portrait, with Queen Louisa’s monogram, was recently purchased in 2017 by the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm. Designed by the queen’s bookbinder, Christopher Schneidler (1721-1787), it is dated 1771-1782. See Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, inv. no. NMK 111a/2017. Consult online: https://collection.nationalmuseum.se/eMP/eMuseumPlus?service=direct/1/ ResultListView/result.t1.collection_list.$TspTitleImageLink.&sp=10&sp=Scollection&sp=SfieldValue&sp=0&sp=0&sp=3&sp=SdetailList&sp=300&sp=Sdetail&sp=0&sp=F&sp=T&sp=317 (accessed 15 December 2023). 25 Alfredson, 1987, pp. 85-89. 26 Östlund, 2017, pp. 71-91. 27 Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, oil on canvas, 74 x 58 cm, inv. no. NMDrh 35. Signed and dated: 1775. 28 After Queen Louisa died in 1782, this residence was managed by her daughter Princess Sophia Albertina. In the 19th century, it became a prison and military barracks (from 1802-1888), with many sectors destroyed and the former royal furnishings and contents dispersed. Very little of the original palace stands today. Badin’s pastel portrait remained in Fredrikshov Palace, was then transferred to Gripsholm Castle at an unknown date and the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm in 1866. 29 Badin’s pastel cited in the queen’s 1782 post-mortem inventory located in Stockholm, Riksarkivet, Kungliga archiv, Bouppteckningshandlingar, Lovisa Ulrika, vol. 270, 16 September 1782, unfoliated: “Bilder. Badens porträt en pastel af Lundberg - 50 [riksdaler]”. Cf. Laine, 1998, pp. 243-244. After Queen Louisa’s death, Badin’s pastel was relocated to Gripsholm and in 1866 entered the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm. 30 These two pieces are located today in Tullgarn Palace, Nyköping; catalogued as étagère (inv. no. HGK401) and writing desk (inv. no. HGK1249), respectively. Cf. Laine, 1998, p. 243, fig. 70. For the analyses of the Asian lacquer panels (hinoki and Ryukyuan urushi) inserted by Dahlin, see Maria Brunskog and Tetsuo Miyakoshi, “A Colourful Past: A Re-examination of a Swedish Rococo Set of Furniture with a Focus on the Urushi Components”, in: Studies in Conservation (2020): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00393630.2020.1846359 (accessed 15 December 2023). 31 Olaf Fridsberg, Portraits of Illustrious Men, with Short Biographies of Their Lives, written by Mme la Comtesse de Tessin, 1760s, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, watercolour on paper, 23 x 19 x 5.5 cm, inv. no. NMH 145/1960. 32 Consult the exhibition catalogue, Treasures from the Nationalmuseum of Sweden: the collections of Count Tessin, edited by Colin B. Bailey, Carina Fryklund, John Marciari, Magnus Olausson, and Jennifer Tonkovich, New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, 2017. 33 I posit this may be an unknown self-portrait of Rosalba Carriera, which Count Tessin may have purchased in Paris at the sale of the court banker Pierre Crozat in 1741. Carriera lived in Crozat’s residence between 1720 and 1721. 34 Dated 1761. Pastel on paper, 64 x 52 cm, inv. no. NMB 126. Consult online: https:// collection.nationalmuseum.se/eMP/eMuseumPlus?service=ExternalInterface&module=collection&objectId=24067&viewType=detailView (accessed 15 December 2023). 35 Laine and Brown, 2006, pp. 129-135. 36 Amsterdam, Zebregs&Röell Fine Arts & Antiques, oil on canvas, 74.5 x 61 cm. One of four oil sketches or preparatory studies commissioned by Pope Clement XI Albani (1649-1721) for the mosaic decoration project on the pendentives of the chapel of the Baptistery in St. Peter’s. 37 Forsstrand, 1911, p. 127; Pred, 2004, pp. 92-93. For Badin’s theatrical engagements, see Willmar Sauter and David Wiles, The Theatre of Drottningholm – Then and Now. Performance between the 18th and 21st Centuries, Stockholm, Stockholm University, 2014. 38 Amsterdam, Zebregs&Röell Fine Arts & Antiques, pen, ink and watercolour on paper, 25.2 x 18.7 cm 38 Austin, 1967, pp. 126-127. 39 For more on Angelo, consult the 2011 exhibition catalogue online: https://issuu. com/wienmuseum/docs/wien_museum_ausstellungskatalog_ang/19 (accessed 15 December 2023). 40 See Maupertuis’ preface (unpaginated). “Je m’étois trouvé la veille dans une maison où l’on avoit apporté le Negre blanc qui est actuellement à Paris. On nous assura que cet Enfant était né de parens très-noirs; & chacun raisonna à perte de vuë sur ce prodige” / “I found myself the night before in a house where they have brought the white Black who is presently in Paris. We were assured that this child was born of very black parents, and each & everyone reasoned as far as the eye could see about this prodigy” [author’s translation]. 41 Pastel on paper in an ornate Rococo frame, 75 x 56 cm, inv. no. NMB 1674. Inscribed in French: “Mapondé, né d’un nègre et d’une négresse à Cabende, de nation Moyo, est a esté traitté au dit Cabende, coste d’Angolle, le 15 Janvier 1743. Peint par J.-B. Perroneau en 1745” / “Mapondé, born of a negro and negress at Cabende, of the Moyo nation, and who was treated at the said Cabende, on the coast of Angola, 15 January 1743. Painted by J.-B. Perroneau in 1745” [author’s translation]. Transferred from Drottningholm Palace to the Nationalmusum in 1865. Cf. Léandre Vaillat and Paul Ratouis Limay, J.-B. Perronneau. Sa vie et son ouevre (Paris-Brussels: G. van Oest, 1923), p. 13, pl. 10. 42 Danielsson, 2021, p. 48. 43 Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, c. 1760, pen and ink on paper, 19.6 x 15 cm, inv. no. NMH 444/1995. Inscribed on the reverse: “Badin négre de la reine Louise Ulrique de Suede, dessiné 1757” (“Badin, Queen Louisa Ulrika of Sweden’s black”). 45 Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, c. 1760, pen and ink on paper, 36.8 x 26.5 cm, inv. no. NMH 543/1995. 46 Hubert L’Archevêque was a Swedish sculptor and director of the Swedish Academy of the Arts, from 1768 to 1777. 47 Another Swedish court artist, Johan Tobias Sergel (1740-1814), also sketched Badin’s head, in profile; a caricature which grossly underscored his African appearance, stereotyping Badin as a comic figure. See Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, c. 1775, pencil on paper, 32 x 20.6 cm, inv. no. NMH 1853/1875 verso. Consult online: https:// collection.nationalmuseum.se/eMP/eMuseumPlus?service=direct/1/ResultListView/ result.t1.collection_list.$TspTitleImageLink.link&sp=10&sp=Scollection&sp=SfieldValue&sp=0&sp=0&sp=3&sp=SdetailList&sp=0&sp=Sdetail&sp=0&sp=F&sp=T&sp=6

(accessed 15 December 2023). Cf, Pred, 2004, p. 89. 48 Danielsson, 2021, p. 48. 49 See note 2 above for Badin’s diary. One French play noted by Badin in his diary on page 14, upper right-hand corner, was possibly the comedy in five acts, Les Femmes Savantes, written by Molière in 1672. The second book he noted was that by the prolific, celebrated French author Catherine Durand (1670-1736), who published in 1714, Henry Duc des Vandales, histoire veritable (Paris: Chez Pierre Perrault). The history of the Capetian King Henry I of France (1008-1060), whose reign was marked by struggles against rebellious vassals, which must have fascinated Badin because his patroness, Queen Louisa, experienced similar problems during hers. Badin also had a personal ex-libris, the letters of his name in gold. Cf. Forsstrand, 1911, p. 137 and p. 136 for the printed list of Badin’s books sold at auction in Stockholm on 30 October 1822. 50 Roy-Di Piazza, 2023, p. 6, for Swedenborg’s thesis that sub-Saharan Africans were superior to Europeans and condemned European missionaries for intruding on African lands. 51 Basir, 2015, p. 72 and Roy-Di Piazza, 2023, p. 6 for a quote from Badin’s diary: “Faith probably without hope, is a promise without impact; but when the deed ratiﬁes faith, hope, religion becomes a goodness […] the one who believes in me, the deeds I perform, those he shall also perform; and perform deeds greater than them: for I go to the Father. Can great deeds of kindness fulﬁl one, like enhancing my followers’ earthly and eternal felicity. Those are my thoughts about this gospel, I do not ask the doctor in theology, but my question is submitted alone to the well enlightened in the practicing of Christianity”. 52 As Badin wrote, his life between 1762 and 1771 was considered by him to be one of a “wild man or animal”. Cf. Wikström, 1971, p. 275; Pred, 2004, who quotes from Badin’s diary dated 1807-1810, p. 8: “During his childhood he [Badin] was nursed to imbibe the wild in man and thereby embarked into a world of trials. His life resembled that of the wild animals, until it was corrected. That was me in the years 1762 to 1771”. 53 Queen Louisa’s sojourn in Berlin was financed by her elder brother Frederick, which cost him a small fortune. Her expenses are detailed in his surviving account books, Monatliche Schatullrechnungen, 1772, Ms. 779, fol. 9v: “die Unkosten der Königin von Schweden”. Consult online: https://quellen.perspectivia.net/de/schatullrechnungen/ ms_779_tr (accessed 15 December 2023). 54 Dermineur, 2017, p. 213; Danielsson, 2021, p. 54. 55 Schück, vol. 2, 1919, p. 82: “Badin est ici comme à Stockholm; c’est le joujou de tout le monde. La Reine et les Princesses le font venir chez elles, et il est tous les jours invité, soir et dîner, en ville”. 56 See the recent 2023 exhibition held at Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin: Schlösser Preussen. Kolonial Biografien und Sammlungen im Fokus. See the accompanying brochure: https://www.spsg.de/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf/SPSG_Schloesser-Preussen-Kolonial-Flyer.pdf, and the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSxp4_lf59k&t=17s (accessed 15 December 2023). 57 Wikström, 1971, p. 280. 58 See Pred, 2004, p. 78, for Badin being ordered by his adopted brother, King Gustav III, to spy upon members of their Freemason’s Lodge. 59 The obliteration of his mother’s correspondence and papers infuriated King Gustav III, who seriously reprimanded Badin for his actions, to which Badin responded that he could not contradict his dead mother’s last wishes and had to obey his former protector. Cf. Bonde, 1902, p. 411 and p. 422; Forsstrand, 1911, p. 131. 60 Forsstrand, 1911, p. 132; Wikström, 1971, pp. 285-288; Pred, 2004, p. 94. 61 Uppsala, Uppsala University Library, Erik Wallers Autografsamling, Stockholm, 21 October 1782, ink on paper, 320 x 200 mm, shelfmark: Waller Ms se-00156. Signed: Adolph Ludwig Badin. Badin rented this home from Frederik Munck. 62 Fehrman was a student of the sculptor Pierre Hubert L’Archevêque, who established his career in Stockholm, executing portrait and commemorative medals for clients, which included King Gustav III, who patronised the medallist. Badin knew and met Fehrman at court. 63 Uppsala, Gustavianum, Uppsala Univeristy Coin Cabinet (Myntkabinett), 1794, silver, diameter: 50.94 mm. Inscribed obverse: MDCCXCII.. Reverse inscribed in Swedish: UPRORISKA WAPEN OMRINGADE MÄSTARN WID MIDNATT II GUSTAF LEFDE SÅRAD XIII DYGN DOG BEGRÅTEN WID FULL MIDDAG XXIX MART / “Rebellious arms surrounded the Master at midnight […; 16 March] Gustaf lived wounded XIII days [.] Died mourned […] at noon XXIX March [author’s translation]”. Cf. Forsstrand, 1911, p. 131. 64 Elisabeth died in 1798. Badin remarried a white Swedish lady, Magdalena Eleonora Norell. Both marriages remained childless. 65 Wikström, 1971, p. 293, n. 56: “Voilà mon bon ami Badien un peute pour tes menus plaisier, j’aisper que votr[e] sant[é] est melieur que l’ anne [année] pance. Vous voigesse [voyer] que [je] noublie pas mes amis abssence [absent]”. Wikstöm quotes the autograph letter he consulted in Stockholm, Riksarkivet, Ericsbergsarkivet, Autografsamlingen, Sverige, Sofia Albertina, vol. 282, unfoliated (no date, no location). 66 Stockholm, Riksarkivet, Kungliga arkiv, Bouppteckningshandlingar, Princessan Sofia Albertina, K 387, fol. 110.

Fig. 17 A formal costume of the Swedish court, c. 1770-1790 Collection Royal Livrustkammaren, Stocholm (no. 31869_LRK) Credit: Livrustkammaren, Livrustkammaren/SHM (CC BY 4.0)

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About the author

Primary Sources

Dr. Annemarie Jordan Gschwend is a Senior Research Scholar and Curator associated with the Centro de Humanidades (CHAM) in Zurich, Switzerland and Lisbon, Portugal since 2010. Jordan’s areas of specialisation include Kunstkammers and menageries at the Renaissance courts in Austria, the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal. She is the author of numerous publications: articles, exhibition catalogue essays and books, including, The Story of Süleyman. Celebrity Elephants and other Exotica in Renaissance Portugal (Zurich-Philadelphia, 2010). With Kate Lowe, Jordan co-edited the award-winning book The Global City. On the streets of Renaissance Lisbon (Paul Holberton Publishing, London, 2015).

Stockholm, Riksarkivet, Stafundsarkivet, vol. 29: Relations des évènements en Suède, les années 1771 et 1772, faite par le maréchal de la cour Mr S. A. Piper à la Reine Louise Ulrique de Suède Stockholkm, Riksarkivet, Kungliga archiv, Bouppteckningshandlingar, Lovisa Ulrika, vol. 270 (16 September 1782) Stockholkm, Riksarkivet, Kungliga archiv, Bouppteckningshandlingar, Stockkolm, Riksarkivet, Princessan Sofia Albertina, K 387 Select Literature Hans Alfredson, ‘Svart spelar vit. Gustaf Lundbergs porträtt av Badin’, Porträtt. Studier I. Statens Porträttsamling På Gripsholm, edited by Ulf G. Johnsson, Stockholm, Rabén & Sjögren, 1987, pp. 85-89 Paul Britten Austin, The Life and Songs of Carl Michael Bellman: Genius of the Swedish Rococo, Malmö: Allhem Publishers, 1967 Eric Curtis Muhammad Basir, Badin’s Diary: An English Translation, edited by Sandra Gustafsson. Raleigh, North Carolina, Lulu Publishing, 2015 Carl Carson Bonde, ed., Hedvig Elisabeth Charlottas Dagbok. I. 1775-1782, Stockhom, R. A. Nokstedt, 1902 Susan Danielsson, ‘Gustav Badin: The Afro-Swedish Experience in EighteenthCentury Sweden’, in: The Saber and Scroll Journal, 10, 1, 2021, pp. 45–61 Elise M. Dermineur, ‘Queens Consort in Premodern Europe. A European Research Project in Progress’, in: Frühneuzeit-Info, May 2015: https://fnzinfo.hypotheses. org/406 Elise M. Dermineur, Gender and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Sweden. Queen Louisa Ulrika (1720-1782), London & New York, Routledge, 2017 Elise M. Dermineur and Norrhem Svante, ‘Luise Ulrike of Prussia, Queen of Sweden and the Search for Political Space’, Cultural Encounters as Political Encounters: Queens Consort and European Politics, c.1500-1800, edited by Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly and Adam Morton, London & New York, Routledge, 2016, pp 84-96 Julie Duprat, ‘Gustav Badin, un homme éclairé’, 2018: https://minorhist. hypotheses.org/196 Hubert Daunoy, ‘Le pastelliste Gustave Lundberg’, in: Le Figaro. Supplément Illustré, 1929, pp. 266-267 Artistique Illustré T.F. Earle and K.J.P Lowe, eds., Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005 Karin-Feuerstein-Prasser, ‘Luise Ulrike. Königin von Schweden (1720-1784)’, in: Friedrich der Grosse und seine Schwestern, Munich, Piper Verlag, 2014, pp. 195-229. Carl Forsstrand, Sophie Hagman och hennes samtida; några anteckningar från det gustavianska Stockholm (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1911). Annemarie Jordan Gschwend, ‘Images of Empire: Slaves in the household and court of Catherine of Austria’, Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, eds. Thomas Earle and Kate Lowe (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005), pp. 155-180 My Hellsing, ‘Stockholm aristocratique à la fin du XVIIIe siècle. Hôtels et sociabilité entre cour et ville’, in: Noblesses et villes de cour en Europe (XVIIeXVIIIe). La ville de résidence princière, observatoire des identités nobiliaires XVIIIe) moderne, edited by Anne Motta and Éric Hassler, Rennes: Presse à l’époque moderne universitaires de Rennes, 2022, pp. 1-29 Mischa Honeck, Martin Klimke, and Anne Kuhlmann, eds., Germany and the 1250-1914, New York, Berghahn, 2013 Black Diaspora. Points of Contact, 1250-1914 Olaf Jägerskiöld, Lovisa Ulrika, Stockholm, Wahlström & Widstrand, 1945 Paul H. D. Kaplan, ‘Black Africans in Hohenstaufen Iconography’, in: Gesta, 26, 1, 1987, pp. 29-36 Peter Kasper, Das Reichsstift Quedlinburg (936-1810). Konzept-ZeitbezugSystemwechsel, Göttingen, V & R press, 2014 Systemwechsel Merit Laine, ‘En Minerva för vår Nord’: Lovisa Ulrika som samlare, uppdragsgivare byggherre, Stockholm, M. Laine, 1998 och byggherre Merit Laine, ‘An Eighteenth-Century Minerva: Lovisa Ulrika and Her Collections at Drottningholm Palace 1744-1777’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 31, 4 (Summer 1998), pp. 493-503. Merit Laine and Carolina Brown, Gustaf Lundberg 1695-1786, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, 2006 Merit Laine and Ellinor Lindeberg Moberg, ‘An 18th Century Frame’, in: Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Stockholm, Stockholm 22, 2015, pp. 209-212 Ola Larsmo, ‘Skuggan av Badin: några dagboksanteckningar av Gustav III’s morian’, in: Bonniers litterära magasin, 65, 6, 1996, pp. 4-9 Oscar Levertin, Gustaf Lundberg. En Studie, Stockholm, Aktiebolaget Ljus, 1902 K.J.P. Lowe, ‘Visual representations of an elite: African ambassadors and rulers in Renaissance Europe’, Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe, edited by Joaneath Spicer, Baltimore, Walters Museum of Art, 2012, pp. 98-115 K.J.P. Lowe, ‘The stereotyping of black Africans in Renaissance Europe’, in: Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, Europe edited by T. F. Earle and K. J. P. Lowe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005, pp. 17-46 Edvard Matz, ‘Badin – ett experiment i fri uppfostran’, in: Populär Historia, 15 March 2001: https://popularhistoria.se/sveriges-historia/1700-talet/badin-ettexperiment-i-fri-uppfostran (accessed 15 December 2023) Joachim Östlund, ‘Playing the White Knight. Badin, Chess, and Black Selffashioning in Eighteenth-century Sweden,’ in: Migrating the Black Body: The African Diaspora and Visual Culture, Culture edited by Leigh Raiford and Heike RaphaelHernández, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017, pp. 71-91 Uwe A. Oster, Wilhelmine von Bayreuth. Das Leben der Schwester Friedrichs des Großen, Munich, Piper Verlag, 2007 Marc Serge Rivière, ‘‘Divine Ulrique’: Voltaire and Louisa Ulrica, Princess of Prussia and Queen of Sweden (1751-1771)’, Irish Journal of French Studies, 3, 2003, pp. 41-62 Vincent Roy-Di Piazza, ‘Enslaved by African angels: Swedenborg on African superiority, evangelization, and slavery’, Intellectual History Review, 33, April 2023, pp. 1-31

Fig. 18

Henrik Schück, Gustav III:s och Lovisa Ulrikas brevväxling, Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt & Söner, vol. 2, 1919

A jacket and a vest worn at the Swedish court, c. 1770-1780

Lars Wikström, ‘Fredrik Adolph Ludvig Gustaf Albrecht Badin-Couschi: Ett Sällsamt Levnadsöde’, in: Släkt och Hävd, 1, April 1971, pp. 272-314

Collection Royal Livrustkammaren, Stocholm (no. 19227_LRK & 31870_LRK) Credit: Livrustkammaren/SHM (CC0)

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Published by

Guus Röell and Dickie Zebregs Tefaf 2024 Maastricht 6211 LN, Tongersestraat 2 guus.roell@xs4all.nl tel. +31 653211649 (by appointment only) Amsterdam 1017DP, Keizersgracht 541-543 dickie@zebregsroell.com tel. +31 620743671 (by appointment only) Instagram @zebregsroell More images and further readings can be found at www.zebregsroell.com

Photography Michiel Stokmans Design A10design Printed by Pietermans Drukkerij, Lanaken, Belgium

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