On Brabant Rubbish, Economic Competition, Artistic Rivalry, and the Growth of the Market for Paintings in the First Decades of the Seventeenth Century

Introduction

Writing in 1678, Samuel van Hoogstraten noted that “In the beginning of this century, Holland’s walls were not as densely hung with paintings as they are now.” He continued, “However, this custom crept in more and more every day, seriously spurring some artists to learn to paint quickly, indeed to make a work, whether large or small, every day.” He ends this passage by saying that “seeking both profit and fame,” a wager was ultimately made as to who could fashion the best painting between sunrise and sunset, following which Van Hoogstraten recounted the famous anecdote about the competition between Porcellis, Van Goyen, and Knibbergen.¹ The above suggests that Van Hoogstraten was aware of the fact that people had been filling their houses with increasing numbers of paintings as of the beginning of the century, a development he links with the emergence of a rapid production technique. He also posits that financial profit was not the sole motive for painting more quickly, but that the desire to attain fame was a factor as well. Finally, in pursuit of fame, artistic rivalry, too, proves to have played an important role. Van Hoogstraten’s remarks encompass all of the elements that interest me here: the fashion of decorating houses with a great many paintings, the spectacular growth in their production and the attendant technical innovations, economic competition, and artistic rivalry.

Various sources make it clear that the rise in the number of painters embarking on their career in Holland’s major cities between roughly 1600 and 1630 was explosive.² That both the quantity as well as the quality of their production reached unprecedented heights is evidenced by the multitude of paintings now hanging in our museums. The whys and wherefores of this astonishing phenomenon will always remain a point of discussion: countless factors, many of which defy description, may have played a role. However, a few concrete reasons will be examined below, preceded by questions concerning contemporary perception of this phenomenon and followed by some thoughts on the underlying causes and the special nature of the related “process and product innovations.” On the basis of generally familiar sources, several hypotheses are launched that warrant further elaboration.

I

Addressing the aforementioned phenomenon, it must be understood that we are not alone in our present-day observation that something quite exceptional was transpiring in Dutch art of the seventeenth century. Contemporaries were also aware of the exceptional nature and quality of painting as well as the astounding growth in the production and collecting of the actual works of art, as indicated by Van Hoogstraten’s above-cited account. In this connection, the frequently quoted observations in the travel diaries of the Englishmen John Evelyn (1641) and Peter Mundy (1640) and the Frenchman Samuel Sorbière (1640) must be mentioned. Their comments regarding the vast amount of paintings they encountered everywhere in Dutch cities, and about which they wrote with sheer astonishment, must have become commonplace at the time. Quite likely a proud awareness of this phenomenon was already imbedded in the self-image of the prosperous Dutch burgher.

When Peter Mundy wrote that all the Dutch were striving to adorn their houses, particularly the rooms facing the street, with paintings, and that even butchers, smiths, and cobblers had a few paintings in their stores or workshops, he wished to assure his readers that “Such is the generall Notion, enclination and delight that these Countrie Natives have to Paintings.” These lines underscore his statement: “As For the art off Painting and the affection of the people to Pictures, I thincke none other goe beeyond them.”³ Sorbière noted an “excessive curiosit é pour les peintures” in the Netherlands.⁴ From the wealthy patrician elite to well-to-do craftsmen, the interest of the Dutch in paintings, however it is described, “inclination,” “delight,” “affection,” or “excessive curiosity,” was clearly perceived as highly exceptional and had become part of the stereotyping of this somewhat curious people as seen through the eyes of foreigners.⁵

The omnipresence of paintings is also evidenced by the heated reactions of individuals who condemned the art of painting on moral and religious grounds as nothing but “deception.” As early as 1624, the ire of Dirck Raphaelsz. Camphuyzen, an extremist in this matter, was roused because the art of painting was so well-liked that one could say nothing against it: “Painting! ha, who can denounce it without [inciting] general rebellion?” One can turn nowhere without seeing pictures: “The whole world depends on engraving, drawing, painting,” he cries out in despair. “Painting is the common bait for the uneasy heart overwhelmed by choice, / That despite having to meet essential needs charms the money out of one’s purse, / Painting seems to be the sauce for all that sprouts from the human mind.”⁶ His comments make all the more clear the extent to which this art served as an important source of amusement for his Dutch contemporaries. That they purchased paintings in large quantities and took pride in the renown of their painting fellow townsmen enraged Camphuyzen beyond reason.

As for positive testimonials by compatriots, those of Constantijn Huygens, a connoisseur par excellence, are undoubtedly the most interesting. In the autobiography of his youth, which he began in 1629 and continued until 1631, he remarked that his fellow countrymen had attained greater heights than anyone else – including the ancients, he adds – “in the art of rendering everything with a fresh, lifelike draughtsmanship: every shape and every pose of humans and animals, as well as trees, rivers, mountains and all such things as one sees in a landscape.”⁷ Further on he comments that landscape painters “in the present Netherlands are so tremendously plentifully represented and of such high quality that it would take an entire book to discuss them all individually.” History painters in the Netherlands, he continues, are no less numerous and no less successful.⁸ In his discourse, Huygens makes no distinction between his fellow countrymen in the Northern or Southern Netherlands, though only a fraction of the painters he mentions – naturally, including his idol Rubens – were active in the south at the time.

Published appreciations of Dutch painting as a source of pride and self-respect already had a tradition in the Netherlands. Praising Netherlandish artists, incidentally, began with an Italian, Ludovico Guicciardini. In the section on Antwerp in his 1567 description of the Netherlands, he touted Antwerp artists as well as other artists from the Lowlands. Around the same time Hadrianus Junius in his Batavia incorporated short biographies of famous artists (alongside those of scholars), deeming them exemplary of the “Hollandica ingenia.”⁹ Subsequently, against the backdrop of rivalry with Italy, Karel Van Mander extolled Netherlandish painters for his contemporaries and for future generations in his 1604 Levens. Their fame had already been propagated pictorially a few decades earlier: first in a series of twenty-three portrait prints, with short laudatory poems composed by Domenicus Lampsonius, published by Hieronymus Cock in Antwerp and later, in 1610, in a considerably extended series of sixty-eight portrait prints published by Hendrik Hondius in The Hague.¹⁰

The idea that the art of painting contributed to their renown became so firmly entrenched in the civic pride of towns such as Antwerp, Amsterdam, Leiden and Haarlem that eulogies of painting and its practitioners became a standard feature in city descriptions. Again, this began in Antwerp with Carolus Scribanius’s chapter on the Ars Pictoria in his Antverpia of 1610.¹¹ A year later Johannes Pontanus incorporated a brief account of painters in his description of Amsterdam, and in 1614 Jan Orlers followed with a much more comprehensive expos é in his book on Leiden. Haarlem artists were extensively discussed by Samuel Ampzing in 1628. Orlers substantially expanded the Leiden canon in 1641 and was succeeded in 1648 by Theodorus Schrevelius, who revisited the merits of Haarlem’s painters.¹² In some of these descriptions the authors even boast that the nation’s best painters issued from the city in question.¹³ Pride in the art of painting and the awareness that something special was happening in this regard must have become firmly rooted in the self-image of the elite, first in Antwerp and subsequently in the most important Dutch towns.

These panegyrics devoted ever more space to painters who specialized in new kinds of subject matter, such as landscapes or peasant scenes. As he did with the history painters, Scribanius compares Joachim Beuckelaer and Pieter Balten with masters from classical antiquity, whom he says they had surpassed. He also commends the landscapists Joachim Patinir and Cornelis Molenaer.¹⁴ Ampzing even claims that landscape painting was invented in Haarlem,¹⁵ and Orlers allots Jan van Goyen and Pieter de Neyn a no less exalted position than that of history painters. The public praise and appreciation that comes to the fore in these prestigious city descriptions no doubt amplified the painters’ self-respect, but it would also – and this applies to both history painters and specialists – have fueled their ambitions and stimulated their ideas regarding artistic emulation.

Constantijn Huygens’s words are evidence that a connoisseur from the most elevated, elite burgher circles was proud to count painters among his friends. After mentioning that he always enjoys the company of illustrious men, Huygens states that he wishes to consider more extensively the most prominent painters of his time, the majority of whom, including the ubiquitous De Gheyn and the young and highly ambitious history painters Rembrandt and Lievens, he claims are good friends.¹⁶ The artists he discusses include not only eminent individuals such as Rubens (it was Huygens’s greatest wish to become personally well-acquainted with him) and the aforementioned masters but also specialists, such as the portraitist Michiel van Mierevelt, the marine painter Jan Porcellis, and the landscapist Esaias van de Velde. Clearly, in 1629, Huygens believed that the quality, quantity, and diversity of painting had already increased substantially in his lifetime: he was a mere thirty-three at the time. In his treatment of celebrated Dutch painters, Huygens definitely thought in terms of rivalry – not only Dutch painting vis- à-vis antiquity and Italy but also the painters vis- à-vis each other – which comes emphatically to the fore when he speaks – repeatedly – about one artist having surpassed another in some area.¹⁷

That the best-known seventeenth-century anecdote regarding competition has to do with marine and landscape painters and that Samuel van Hoogstraten simultaneously links the tremendous increase in production with painting at an accelerated pace, thus, seems entirely appropriate.

II

Still, just how did the art of painting come to occupy such an important place in the consciousness of well-to-do Dutch city dwellers, and why did they, from regents and wealthy merchants to trained craftsmen, fairly suddenly and in increasingly greater numbers begin to buy paintings by living masters to adorn the walls of their houses, paintings depicting a growing variety of subjects in different sizes, techniques, and prices? At times the figures are simply astounding. In the middle of the seventeenth century some interiors had thirty to fifty paintings per room, rooms which, it should be noted, were not all that spacious. In such a case, the number of paintings owned could total 150 to 250.¹⁸ The travelers’ amazement at what they saw in the Netherlands is quite understandable. After all, in other European countries paintings were still largely produced for religious institutions, the aristocracy, and royal courts. Moreover, insofar as painters were employed in countries such as England, Germany, and Scandinavia, they were often recruited from the Netherlands.

Evidently, in the first decades of the seventeenth century the production of paintings for the homes of the citizenry began fairly suddenly to fill a gap in the market, primarily in the form of work by local artists. In Haarlem, the increase in the number of painters far surpassed the concurrent substantial growth of the population. Marion Boers calculated that the number of active painters per one thousand inhabitants more or less octupled between 1605 and 1635: their number almost doubled between 1605 and 1615 (particularly between 1610 and 1615), experienced steady growth between 1615 and 1625, and finally surged between 1625 and 1635.¹⁹ Admittedly, Haarlem was not your average town in terms of the art of painting, however, in terms of the number of painters per thousand inhabitants, the other major Dutch towns probably did not score much lower.²⁰ Boers also calculated that as of 1615 the number of painters in Haarlem increased much faster than the number of silver and gold smiths – skilled craftsmen in another luxury industry – who were twice as numerous in the first decade of the century.

This tremendous rise in the number of painters and their production has been attributed primarily to the substantial rise in the purchasing power of the middle classes.²¹ A growing demand for luxury items, however, did not necessarily have to be satisfied with paintings. The well-to-do burgher could have done without and decorated his walls with tapestries instead, as was – and remained – the custom among the aristocracy.²² The latter fact emerges in Thera Wijsenbeek-Olthuis’s investigation of the inventories of aristocratic residents of The Hague’s Lange Voorhout in the seventeenth century. In addition to tapestries, the aristocracy usually hung portraits on the wall; generally their interiors included very few paintings with other subjects. In contrast, wealthy Hague magistrates and the affluent middle class owned considerably more paintings, though far fewer portraits.²³

In analysing the expansion of the art market, scholars such as John Michael Montias, Jan de Vries, and Marten Jan Bok focused primarily on the economic dynamics. Yet, they all noted the immense importance of the influx of artists who were part of the wave of immigrants from Brabant and Flanders, a wave that peaked in the second half of the 1580s.²⁴ The crucial impact this had on the development of art in the north has been frequently investigated. Jan Briels in particular has placed great emphasis on immigration and twice constructed an impressive history of Northern Netherlandish art on the basis of artists originally from the Southern Netherlands.²⁵ The majority of the Brabant and Flemish immigrants – Briels’s earlier studies, incidentally, constitute a rich source of information on the immigration itself²⁶ – settled in Amsterdam, Leiden, Haarlem, and Delft, cities of which half to two-thirds of the population consisted of inhabitants with Southern Netherlandish roots at the beginning of the century.

Examining more closely the painters active in Dutch cities around the turn of the century shows that the number of those actually originating from the Southern Netherlands is, however, fairly disappointing, certainly with respect to artists whose works are known either from archival records or in actuality and who were thus undoubtedly active as painters. But for a few exceptions, at that point in time the southerners did not yet figure prominently in the fine arts, and one has the impression that the demand was largely satisfied by indigenous painters.²⁷ However, when the number of painters did truly grow explosively from 1610 on, especially in Haarlem and Amsterdam,²⁸ among this group were many children of immigrants with Southern Netherlandish roots who had opted to become painters and were indeed manifestly successful.²⁹ Although some of these painters were born in the south, they were trained in Holland. Interestingly, within this generation the more traditional genres of the profession, the painting of histories and of portraits, remained largely in the hands of native painters, while the new specialities, particularly landscape and still-life painting were primarily cultivated by the young southerners.

III

To better understand what happened, we must first concentrate on the public: the buyers of paintings. Amsterdam, Haarlem, and Leiden in particular had drawn a large number of immigrant merchants and highly trained artisans (many from Antwerp, especially in Amsterdam), whose purchasing power must have increased substantially in the two previous decades. They came from a culture in which it had become common for affluent burghers to buy paintings to embellish their homes as early as the second half of the sixteenth century.³⁰ Moreover, they were accustomed to these decorations portraying profane subjects as well as being available in various price ranges, from exorbitantly expensive to extremely cheap. After all, vast quantities of landscapes, peasant scenes, and kitchen still lifes varying greatly in quality were already being produced in Antwerp and Malines in the second half of the sixteenth century.

For these immigrants there was probably not that much to buy just yet in the cities of their new homeland. In the late sixteenth century most of the painters in Holland seem to have primarily made fairly expensive history paintings destined for a select group of connoisseurs. Moreover, initially the immigrants will have had matters other than purchasing paintings on their minds. Presumably, as long as these refugees believed that their sojourn in Holland was temporary and their return to their former abodes imminent (a situation which must have lasted quite a long time), they elected not to spend their money on luxury articles to decorate their homes but rather on easily transportable valuables. Only when the hope or wish to return had vanished, and they had definitely resigned themselves to staying (which must have been around the time of the Twelve Years’ Truce),³¹ will their desire to adorn their interiors have grown. And, as is revealed below, the immigrants were given the opportunity of doing so at just that moment.

As of 1608, and thus still shortly before the signing of the Twelve Years’ Truce, a large number of paintings appears to have suddenly begun flowing from Antwerp to the Republic, flooding the market in the Dutch cities. These were inexpensive works that – at least in the eyes of Dutch burghers – were sold in an unusual way. ³² The established painters seem to have been startled, to say the least, and responded vehemently. In Amsterdam and Leiden they demanded that the city councils immediately implement measures to contain this influx from Antwerp. They requested prohibitive orders for the sale of paintings by foreigners and wanted this laid down in new or revised guild regulations. In this period, the guilds, including that of the painters, were often dormant or no longer existed at all, as was the case in Leiden. All at once, however, steps to protect the local market were taken everywhere.

In November 1608, the Amsterdam guild members complained to the city council that countless paintings from Antwerp and other enemy territories were being sold by foreigners at public auctions and that these paintings were being peddled for much more than their value through “cunning and ungodly importunity,” because the “majority [are] poor copies.” Stimulated by profit, they contended, these interlopers obtained as many paintings as possible in Antwerp and the surrounding area, “such that a multitude of paintings is presently at [their] disposal, in order to be sold here in the above-mentioned manner.” The Amsterdammers were convinced that by permitting these “malicious public auctions practiced by strangers, they [their numbers] would increase from day to day and in a short time this city, yea the entire country would be filled with rubbish and inferior apprentices’ work.” They also feared that the local painters, already so hard hit by the war, would be seriously hindered in earning a living. They added that “the good burgers here, who by and large have little knowledge of painting, [are being] deceived.”³³

In Leiden, too, the painters called for action. From a petition of March 1610 it appears that they had already submitted a complaint in October 1609 regarding the sellers from “Brabant and surrounding places” who were depriving them of their livelihood. The fact that an immediate ban on sales outside of the annual markets was instituted does not seem to have helped. In 1610 the Leiden painters complained that those same interlopers (who came from Amsterdam to Leiden) simply went about their business, even though they were aware of the ban. They sell paintings “door uytroepen” (by publicly auctioning them), and whatever is left “in open shops […] as though they lived here.” To these indignant words they added that this practice was prohibited in other cities and that the Leiden painters “were grievously injured” by it. Given “these difficult expensive times,” they begged the city council for permission to establish a guild, for otherwise they would be unable to provide adequately for their families.³⁴

Both in Amsterdam and in Leiden a regulation was established barring people from outside the city from either selling paintings themselves or having others sell them on their behalf without the permission of the burgomasters. Evidently, this regulation had little effect because in a new request of 1613, Amsterdam painters complained that those same foreigners still managed to have their paintings auctioned, either by giving them to Amsterdammers as collateral, under the pretext that they could not pay off their debts, or by offering them for sale under the name of a citizen (poorter).³⁵ On this occasion it is also stated that burghers are usually deceived by the manner of auctioning, “often buying copies instead of originals.”³⁶ Moreover, the sellers were said to withdraw the good works when the bids were too low, “such that the country was being filled mostly with copies and other worthless rubbish, occasioning the ridicule of all distinguished art lovers and the noticeable disrepute of art.” Poorters were now also required to ask permission before they could auction paintings. A new stipulation followed in 1617: paintings not made within the Seven Provinces could not be sold outside of the annual markets.³⁷ Evidently, the undesirable practices involving “Brabant” paintings were still a thorn in the guild members’ side.

The importation from the south seems to have made an impact elsewhere as well, for between 1609 and 1611 existing guild privileges were tightened up, new ones were instituted, and requests to establish new guilds were submitted in virtually all Dutch towns of any stature, including Gouda (1609), Rotterdam (1609), Delft (1611), and Utrecht (1611).³⁸

Clearly, the inundation of the market with cheap paintings caused local artists to fear that their income would be eroded. But what actually happened? Precisely the opposite of what everyone had expected. With the swift growth in the number of painters as well as the number of works a painter produced, the market also embarked on what would be an extraordinary expansion. From the reactions of the Amsterdammers, who, after all, alleged that these sellers – encouraged by the profit they made – did everything in their power to amass whatever paintings they could in Antwerp and surroundings,³⁹ it can be seen that the intruders were evidently successful and there was no shortage of buyers for the Antwerp imports. Although the guild members cited the inferior quality of the works as the main reason for their concern and capitalized on the customers’ fear of buying a copy instead of an original (principaal), in my opinion their real objection (and panic) was that these paintings sold so readily for prices they felt were too high. In other words, they were in great demand – despite the disparaging judgment of the dean and headmen – by a public willing to pay more than they were worth, according to local painters. Most likely the buyers were primarily the Southern Netherlandish immigrants, who were now in a position and ready to purchase these, to them, familiar items.

The question is whether the quality of the imported paintings was, indeed, as inferior as their critics would have us think. They were very inexpensive compared to the paintings that the established painters tended to make, and undoubtedly that was threatening enough. The paintings were probably cheaper because they were made according to different production methods, for example by means of a less time-consuming and labor-intensive technique. And this afforded more than ample reason for labeling them as rubbish, apprentices’ work, and copies; this was the most obvious vocabulary for expressing scathing censure.⁴⁰ Moreover, when such works were sold for prices higher than the guild members deemed appropriate on the basis of technical execution and time investment, the traditional way in which they determined prices was entirely overturned. Furthermore, one wonders whether the buyers in fact mostly comprised burghers “who on the whole have little knowledge of paintings” (die door den banck weynich kenisse van schilerye hebben).

Examining the accidentally preserved registers of the “voluntary auctions” (willige verkopingen) held under the auspices of the Amsterdam orphanage between 1607 and 1613 (thus in the period of the protests) and which probably incited the fierce response of the dean and headmen of the guild,⁴¹ a substantial number of inexpensive to very cheap works do appear to have suddenly come onto the market through this channel. At some of these auctions the majority of the paintings sold for trifling amounts – from ten stivers to ten guilders – and this applied to biblical scenes and mythological subjects as well as tronies, still lifes (bouquets and fruit arrangements), kitchen pieces, landscapes, ships, fires, banquets, and peasants.⁴² Only the ubiquitous tronies were consistently cheap. The prices commanded by the other categories – and this pertains particularly to history pieces, landscapes, and kitchen interiors – could rise to over fifty guilders, and in a few instances many times more than that amount.⁴³ Accordingly, there were enormous variations in price. This could differ per auction, depending on whether the emphasis was on very cheap or somewhat more expensive work. However, at most of these sales a large to very large number of inexpensive paintings were indeed sold.⁴⁴ Perhaps the biblical and mythological scenes counted many copies, certainly among the innumerable works that went for less than five guilders. However, the multitude of inexpensive landscapes, still lifes, and peasant scenes – specialities developed in Antwerp – could also have been originals (principalen) produced in a fast technique. Insofar as can be determined, many of these paintings did not fall in the lowest price category but fetched between ten and twenty guilders.⁴⁵ An ample number of buyers at these sales appear to have been knowledgeable individuals. The same names are encountered over and over again, especially those of Amsterdammers of Southern Netherlandish – usually Antwerp – origin who were often registered as painters but were presumably primarily active as dealers.⁴⁶ They most likely subsequently sold the works chiefly in their own circle – that is to Southern Netherlandish immigrants.

IV

The influx of cheap paintings from Antwerp seems to have functioned as a booster. The buying patterns of immigrants who began decorating the walls of their homes with these inexpensive paintings (the subject and style of which had hardly changed since they had fled) will have invited imitation on the part of indigenous citizens with the same social standing. After all, a large share of the new elite of affluent merchants and trained craftsmen was composed of immigrants. In several respects they also formed a cultural elite, although their culture was frequently mockingly stereotyped. This stereotyping must have derived primarily from a sense of inferiority and jealousy. As Briels described it, the ridicule almost always revolved around the clich é that the naturally sober Dutch were seduced by the finery, ostentation, and vanity introduced by the Brabanders.⁴⁷ The most famous example of such a southerner embodying every stereotype to a ludicrous degree is Jerolimo in Bredero’s Spaanschen Brabander: entirely predictably he turns out to have incurred a large debt with a painting dealer.⁴⁸

Because a group with equal purchasing power from the indigenous population began to adopt the Southern-Netherlandish custom of surrounding itself with paintings, the demand must have grown further still, while simultaneously – to the extent that this had not already taken place – measures were being instituted in virtually all of the cities to curtail the sale of imported paintings. I suspect that at that moment several established masters began to intensify their production by making less expensive works.⁴⁹ Above all, however, ever more young men, including many children of immigrants, began to fill this hole in the market. Not only did they have to compete with their own masters from the older generation but also and chiefly with the cheap imports from Antwerp, which regardless of the illegal auctions (that were evidently still being held) must also have been available at annual and weekly markets and at kermisses and public sales held outside the city.

The best way of fighting the Brabant competition was to take the conventions familiar to this public and deliver a qualitatively better painting that was not that much more expensive.⁵⁰ The subjects of the paintings produced in greatly growing numbers during the second and third decades of the seventeenth century in the cities of Holland thus remained the same as those found in Antwerp inventories and in the aforementioned Amsterdam sales between 1607 and around 1614.⁵¹ Within this context, the production of landscapes rose the most rapidly.

The question of whether this “process innovation” was set in motion by artistic or economic impulses is irrelevant in my view.⁵² An obvious way of being able to compete in this new market of relatively inexpensive paintings was to supply higher quality – works that were more technically clever, appealing, interesting, and lifelike – while keeping the production costs low. As painters found themselves producing for a relatively broad public, which made its choices at auctions, at the market, or in the shop, artistic and economic rivalry became indelibly linked. As indicated above, to an ambitious young artist in this period, notions of artistic emulation would have been just as self-evident as the need for economic competition. And, given the various gradations of praise that Van Mander, among others, lavished on specialists of all kinds – from Pieter Bruegel and Gillis van Coninxloo, to Jacob Grimmer, Pieter Baltens, Cornelis Molenaer, Hans Bol, and David Vinckboons, with emphasis being placed on how highly they were valued by art lovers – there could no longer be any doubt that landscapes and peasant scenes also afforded territory for artistic emulation and the opportunity of establishing one’s reputation with the art lovers. The latter aspect was also – or perhaps precisely – of importance to painters who did not work on commission because they had to create their own demand. Should one want to be “held in great esteem” (in grooter weerden ghehouden) – which also meant being able to command higher prices – recognition was imperative.⁵³

Accordingly, a well-trained and ambitious young painter simply had to make his name by producing an identifiable, characteristic product of exceptional quality. He could elect to concentrate on one or more of the, for Holland still relatively new, specialities with which a substantial number of Southern Netherlanders had already found acclaim. In addition, he could try to keep the production costs per painting low by working fast and expanding his output to better counter the competition afforded by the inexpensive Southern Netherlandish painters. Should he succeed in acquiring a good reputation with such paintings, then the profit margins became increasingly greater.

As stated in the beginning, Samuel van Hoogstraten pointed out much later in the seventeenth century that those artists who turned to “ras schilderen” (rapid painting) did this for profit as well as fame.⁵⁴ From this comment, too, we see that economic and artistic preoccupations in this context appear to have been inextricably linked. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that this observation is followed by the mention of Porcellis and Van Goyen, two painters who were exceptionally successful in attaining high artistic standing with swiftly painted works. While their paintings were not expensive, they still commanded relatively high prices proportionate to their scant production costs.

V

Let us now turn our attention to one of the most important innovators in the Northern Netherlands, who in the first decades of the seventeenth century established a formidable reputation as a landscape painter: Esaias van de Velde (1587-1630). He was an immigrant child who began his career in the first years of the Twelve Years’ Truce and came from an Amsterdam-Antwerp milieu of painters/dealers. His mother was among those individuals who organized an auction of very inexpensive paintings (she did so shortly after the death of her husband in 1609).⁵⁵ It can be established that even in his earliest works (as of 1614), Esaias already used very thin paint and worked in a swift and straightforward manner (figs. 1–2).⁵⁶ This saved him a lot of time and he could produce a painting incomparably faster than, for example, Gillis van Coninxloo or Roelant Savery, with their detailed, refined, meticulous method involving underpainting and several paint layers. Moreover, Esaias was also capable of painting in a far more elaborate and precise technique, probably when working on a commission, which will have raised the work’s price considerably.⁵⁷

Since Michael Montias forwarded his pioneering theory that Esaias van de Velde and Jan Porcellis set in motion a process and product innovation that lowered costs and made it possible to work for a broader market,⁵⁸ a process that was later further implemented by Van Goyen and many others, no one seems to have addressed the question of whether these changes in Northern Netherlandish art adopted a process and product innovation that might have been developed earlier in Antwerp. In his biography of Cornelis Molenaer, called “Schele Neel” (Cross-eyed Neil), a now unknown landscape painter who joined the Antwerp guild in 1564 and died in 1598, Karel van Mander tells us that he was “wonder veerdig,” which means that he could paint astonishingly quickly. He continues that Molenaer “worked for very little money on a daily wage” and notes: “He could make a beautiful large landscape in a single day were it prepared somewhat in advance.”⁵⁹ Van Mander had already mentioned that his painterly foliage was unsurpassed and that “[other] painters are charmed by everything by him they see.” He ends with the remark that his works are “highly valued by the art lovers.” Unfortunately, we know of no works securely attributed to this master that would allow us to determine his technique and style. However, mentions of landscapes by this Southern Netherlandish artist are frequently found in Dutch inventories.⁶⁰

Hence, here Van Mander describes an Antwerp landscape painter with a fast and inexpensive production technique whose paintings were nevertheless highly appreciated. Another example is Jacob Grimmer (ca. 1525-ca. 1590), by whom numerous simple village views and winterscapes are still known, and who, together with his sons, must have produced many inexpensive landscapes: Van Mander writes that he was “very swift in  his work.” He praises the naturalness and verisimilitude of Grimmer’s work, mentioning that Jacob painted many views around Antwerp and that in so me respects his landscapes were unrivaled, namely “in all things [being] very true-to-life, whether houses, distant landscapes or foregrounds” (fig. 3).⁶¹

Van Mander also refers to a “veerdige” (swift) working method in the case of Pieter Balten (ca. 1525-1598?), “a very good landscape painter, closely following the manner of Pieter Brueghel […] [who] had also visited various countries, and done various views from life. He worked in watercolor and in oil paint, in a lovely and swift manner.” In addition to various peasant scenes, only one landscape by Balten is known. Fully signed and dated 1581, it depicts a farmhouse near a body of water, beyond which is a simple flat landscape with a church tower in the distance (fig. 4). This small painting – a perfect example of what we would imagine as an inexpensive roundel cos ting a few guilders and as found in large numbers in sales and in inventories – could almost be taken for a Dutch painting from circa 1620. It has been cited earlier in the art historical literature to demonstrate the insufficiently acknowledged influence of Flemish artists of this period on the work of Van de Velde.⁶² Unfortunately, it was stolen from the Museum Bredius in The Hague, making a closer analysis of it impossible. Nevertheless, in an excellent transparency of this little panel, one can see how thinly and quickly, and probably partly wet-in-wet, the cottage and the surrounding landscape were painted in various shades of light brown.⁶³ Only the figures were applied in stronger colors on the thin paint layer. The type of landscape and the composition also demonstrate how the two print series known as “The Small Landscapes” published by Hieronymus Cock in 1559 and 1561 were followed in such paintings (figs. 5a-c), for this small work fits in seamlessly with the graphic imagery. A technical analysis and a comparison of the painting style of the – usually anonymous – Antwerp landscapes from the late sixteenth century with works by Dutch landscape painters, who renewed the painting process in the second and third decades of the seventeenth century, would probably yield fruitful insights. Incidentally, it is clear that the early imaginary landscapes by Joos de Momper – whose work must have been very popular in Amsterdam – while, indeed, underpainted in the traditional three different colored zones indicating fore, middle, and background, were extremely swiftly and masterfully finished in a very thin painting style.⁶⁴

While the young Esaias van de Velde, who in the Northern Netherlands turned his attention to the depiction of the native Dutch landscape, was undoubtedly a major innovator, neither his technique nor the motifs came out of the blue.⁶⁵ Both he and his countless Antwerp precursors, from Grimmer and Balten to De Momper and Jan Brueghel, variously emulated compositions by – or from the immediate circle of – the then already exceptionally admired Pieter Bruegel. Esaias van de Velde incorporated motifs familiar from the above-mentioned print series of 1559 and 1561 published by Hieronymus Cock in Antwerp (thirty-two and thirty engravings with two title prints, respectively). The first series is recommended on the first title page as “Many very splendid views […] rendered from life, and mostly in the vicinity of Antwerp.”⁶⁶

Claes Janszn Visscher after the Master of the Small Landscapes Title print (from the series Regiuncule, et villae [...), 1612,

Claes Janszn Visscher after the Master of the Small Landscapes Title print (from the series Regiuncule, et villae [...), 1612,

Fig. 6a Claes Janszn Visscher after the Master of the Small Landscapes Title print (from the series Regiuncule, et villae [...), 1612, etching, 10.4 x 15.8 cm. (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]

Claes Janszn Visscher after the Master of the Small Landscapes,  Road by Peasant Cottages (from the series Regi, 1612,

Claes Janszn Visscher after the Master of the Small Landscapes,  Road by Peasant Cottages (from the series Regi, 1612,

Fig. 6b Claes Janszn Visscher after the Master of the Small Landscapes, Road by Peasant Cottages (from the series Regiuncule, et villae [...]), 1612, etching, 10.3 x 15.8 cm. (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]

Claes Janszn Visscher after the Master of the Small Landscapes,  View of a Village, with Church Tower (from the , 1612,

Claes Janszn Visscher after the Master of the Small Landscapes,  View of a Village, with Church Tower (from the , 1612,

Fig. 6c Claes Janszn Visscher after the Master of the Small Landscapes, View of a Village, with Church Tower (from the series Regiuncule, et villae [...]), 1612, etching, 10.4 x 15.8 cm. (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]

Claes Janszn Visscher after the Master of the Small Landscapes,  View of a Farmstead (from the series Regiuncul, 1612,

Claes Janszn Visscher after the Master of the Small Landscapes,  View of a Farmstead (from the series Regiuncul, 1612,

Fig. 6d Claes Janszn Visscher after the Master of the Small Landscapes, View of a Farmstead (from the series Regiuncule, et villae [...]), 1612, etching, 10.3 x 15.9 cm. (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]

That just these prints became so popular at the beginning of the seventeenth century is highly significant. Both series were republished by Theodor Galle in Antwerp in 1610, and a fairly free etched copy of the greater part of the second series was made by the Amsterdammer Claes Janszn. Visscher in 1612 (fig. 6a-d). The title page of the latter publication emphatically states that they are Brabant landscapes after Pieter Bruegel ( Regiunculae et villae aliquot ducatus Brabantiae à P. Breugelio delineatae).⁶⁷ Visscher surely included Bruegel’s name as a selling point (and may actually have thought that Bruegel was responsible for the designs). He would have realized that republishing the prints was highly worthwhile because of their appeal to a public homesick for its native country,⁶⁸ and which knew what Bruegel’s name stood for. The publication of this series immediately elicited rivalry an d countless imitations followed, including those by Esaias and Jan van de Velde. Claes Janszn. Visscher had earlier begun to produce a Dutch pendant to this series, including the four views outside of Amsterdam from circa 1610 (figs. 7a–b) and the famous series of “plaisante plaetsen” near Haarlem from circa 1612-13 (figs. 8a-c).⁶⁹ From this moment on, depictions “after life” of the countryside around the towns where many Brabanders and Flemings had settled for good became exceptionally popular.⁷⁰ The numerous print series from this period include all kinds of motifs that would determine the image of the “Dutch” landscape for the next twenty years in varying combinations.

Claes Janszn Visscher,  The Chartreusian Monastery (from the series Fo, ca. 1610,

Claes Janszn Visscher,  The Chartreusian Monastery (from the series Fo, ca. 1610,

Fig. 7a Claes Janszn Visscher, The Chartreusian Monastery (from the series Four Views outside Amsterdam), ca. 1610, etching, 5.6 x 9.7 cm. (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]

Claes Janszn Visscher,  Amsteldijk by Kostverloren (from the series Fo, ca. 1610,

Claes Janszn Visscher,  Amsteldijk by Kostverloren (from the series Fo, ca. 1610,

Fig. 7b Claes Janszn Visscher, Amsteldijk by Kostverloren (from the series Four Views outside Amsterdam), ca. 1610, etching, 5.6 x 9.7 cm. (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]

Claes Janszn Visscher,  The Road to Leiden (from the series Pleasant P, ca. 1611-14,

Claes Janszn Visscher,  The Road to Leiden (from the series Pleasant P, ca. 1611-14,

Fig. 8a Claes Janszn Visscher, The Road to Leiden (from the series Pleasant Places [...]), ca. 1611-14, etching, 10.3 x 15.8 cm (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]

Claes Janszn Visscher,  Bleaching Fields by the Haarlemmerhout (from th, ca. 1611-14,

Claes Janszn Visscher,  Bleaching Fields by the Haarlemmerhout (from th, ca. 1611-14,

Fig. 8b Claes Janszn Visscher, Bleaching Fields by the Haarlemmerhout (from the series Pleasant Places [...]), ca. 1611-14, etching 10.4 x 15.8 cm (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]

Claes Janszn Visscher,  Bleaching Fields by the Dunes (from the series Pleasant Places [...])

Claes Janszn Visscher,  Bleaching Fields by the Dunes (from the series Pleasant Places [...])

Fig. 8c Claes Janszn Visscher, Bleaching Fields by the Dunes (from the series Pleasant Places [...]), ca. 1611-14, etching, 10.3 x 15.8 cm (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]

VI

In many of his early paintings, Esaias van de Velde concentrated on a sober, instantly recognizable type of landscape based on motifs from the print series mentioned above. He did this in extremely simple compositions with only a few figures and objects and, as we have seen, usually in combination with a rapid production technique (figs. 1–2). It has often been assumed that these seemingly unpretentious subjects were also intended for an unpretentious laymen’s public.⁷¹ This seems to me, certainly in its generality, to be a misapprehension. While the relatively low prices, indeed, allowed a far larger public to buy such works, someone like Esaias van de Velde will have painted them foremost in the hope of gaining recognition from a fairly “sophisticated” audience of art lovers. One would need some degree of expertise to discern that in such modest landscapes the artist has played in an exquisitely refined manner with conventions that reach back to the by then highly regarded work of Pieter Bruegel and his circle.⁷² One would also require some knowledge to be able to distinguish and appreciate the virtuosity of his technique: the seeming ease, the “sprezzatura” of the facture, and the sophistication of the unassuming composition, which seems to be nonchalantly built up and in which depth is exceptionally convincingly suggested with a minimum of means.⁷³ The expert will have been aware that achieving the effect of such great spatial depth in a flat landscape seen from a low vantage point and with a limited palette was very difficult and required greater skill than a traditional mountain or hilly landscape with a high vantage point and contrasting colors. The natural atmosphere of familiar surroundings and the suggestion that this was done entirely “from life” is rendered with unprecedented nonchalance.

Constantijn Huygens, a preeminent connoisseur, would most certainly have recognized such technical brilliance. That he considered being able to assess technical skill as an important aspect of art appreciation can be inferred from his comment that his father – a Brabander by the way – believed that one was only qualified to judge paintings (which nowadays one finds everywhere, he adds), if one had learned the rudiments of this art in practice oneself.⁷⁴ Huygens placed great value on the work of Esaias van de Velde. In his account of the art of painting of his time he singled out the Antwerper Jan Wildens and Esaias van de Velde for particular praise from the (according to him) countless number of landscape painters, equating them with the celebrated Paul Bril.⁷⁵ Three painters who made landscapes in entirely different techniques, varying greatly in both style and price range, were thus elevated to the same artistic level. In the preceding line, Huygens had already characterized – in a single breath – the still relatively young Cornelis van Poelenburch, a painter of costly and extraordinarily refined idyllic Italianate landscapes, and Jan van Goyen, the equally young virtuoso of modest Dutch landscapes as particularly famous artists.⁷⁶ Not much later Leiden’s burgomaster, Jan Orlers, too, would call Esaias van de Velde the “excellent and renowned landscape painter” and subsequently sing the praises of Van Goyen, saying that his works “were highly valued by all art lovers.”⁷⁷ Their simple, rapidly executed paintings were greatly appreciated by experts despite the inexpensive production method.

The “loose” technique, new for Holland, was highly suited to suggesting naturalness, and this must have been a primary goal of many artists in this period, one about which Huygens, once again, testifies. To be sure, he is not discussing painting when he writes with disapproval about the stiff draftsmanship of Hendrik Hondius, his drawing master, but Huygens’s judgment betrays the particular importance he attached to naturalness, which he linked to a fleet, lively technique. Hondius’s way of working, he writes, was suited only for the depiction of immobile architecture, and certainly not for the depiction of “free moving things, such as grass, leaves and bushes, or the rendering of the charm that can emanate from ruins in all their shapeless splendour.”⁷⁸ That Huygens valued Jan Porcellis’s work far above the more detailed and more expensive work of the still active Hendrik Vroom – the most famous marine painter of an older generation – is entirely in keeping in this context. Porcellis had so surpassed Vroom that Huygens wrote he hardly dared mention their names in the same breath. In this case too, the lower prices, related to the more rapid production process, had no bearing on the artistic appreciation of a connoisseur such as Huygens.

Admiration of virtuosic, loose brushwork in fact was at odds with the indigenous tradition of the “neat” painting technique. When a large number of landscape painters from the next generation, such as Pieter de Molijn, Salomon van Ruysdael, and Jan van Goyen, took up this rapid painting style, there were others of the same age who opted for an “expensive” technique involving finely painted, carefully layered, highly detailed works. A good example of this is the aforementioned Cornelis van Poelenburch, who had successfully developed his innovative type of Arcadian idylls during his sojourn in Italy. The technique he used for this – with painstakingly applied glazes, shining surfaces, transparent bright colors, and exquisitely refined details – would have been perceived there as typically northern. It is striking that precisely these Italianate painters – as was probably expected of them in Italy – cultivated this northern tradition of “neat” painting, a tradition associated with northerners ever since Van Eyck and Lucas van Leyden.⁷⁹

Due to the substantial expansion of the art market and the accompanying process and product innovations that had taken place since the beginning of the seventeenth century, young painters – depending on their background, training, ambition, and talent – could choose from far more differing paths than ever before. The impulses generated at the beginning of the century by the inexpensive Antwerp paintings that fairly suddenly flooded the market and the reactions to this on the part of the immigrant public were probably important stimuli for the expansion of this market, as well as for the growth in specialization and the changes in production technique. The rest was subsequently effected by the resulting fashion among burghers of decorating their homes with a profusion of paintings, combined with an increasing prosperity and a consciousness that the Dutch masters were implementing a remarkable achievement, to state it roughly. In the course of the second and third decades of the seventeenth century the production of paintings was intensified and differentiated in keeping with the desires of the burghers to such an extent that one no longer needed to fear the Antwerp market. Giving instructions to her sister Magdalena in 1632, when the latter was on the verge of moving from Antwerp to Amsterdam (Magdalena had lived in Italy for twelve years and was apparently not entirely au courant about the situation), Elizabeth Stockmans wrote that it was entirely unnecessary to buy paintings in Antwerp, for “paintings are also available here in great numbers. Some of the best masters live here presently.”⁸⁰