A fake Potter: history of a small album of prints

The Friesian Horse

In 1652, Paulus Potter (1625-1654) produced a series of five prints of horses in landscapes.^[1] In 1974 Jan Verbeek suggested that these prints represent different seasons, namely spring, late spring, summer, autumn and winter, and that the demeanour and the condition of the animals correspond to the stages in human life.^[2]

The Album

The album in our collection contains remarkable copies of the second and third states of this well-known series by Potter. It is highly likely that these etchings were made by Ignace-Joseph de Claussin (France, 1766-1844). De Claussin was an amateur engraver who travelled through England and the Netherlands. He etched an impressive number of copies – more than 200 – after the most famous Dutch masters in his collection: Rembrandt, Potter, Berchem, Du Jardin. From literature we know that he definitely copied Potter’s Vaches et taureaux.^[3]

 

The Worn-out horse

The album is bound in blue paper, with an annotation on the front: “Vente de Rigal en 1817 (...)” and a note pasted in the doublure with a brief description of the volume in French. These prints are best seen in their original setting, in their frail but at the same time effective binding. The plates however do not follow the order proposed in 1974 by Jan Verbeek. Although he suggested that the prints should have been read as a progression, from the young and healthy horse to the worn-out and dead ones, the album is not in the order as proposed by Verbeek which is: 1) the healthy clean Friesian; 2) the Neighing horse; 3) the Cropped horse; 4) the Plough horse; and finally 5) the Worn-out horse. In the album however, the Worn-out horse is placed between the first two plates and the Cropped horse is located at the end. 

 

The Cropped horse

The symbolism of decay was not taken into consideration in this album. Instead, we think that the copyist arranged the prints according to the order of another album of originals by Potter that he might have seen previously. However, this remains speculation. 

 

The Neighing horse

The etchings are very sharp, so they might be from among the first pressed. Overall the plates are somewhat smaller than the originals, but they preserve the same direction and the copyist carefully transcribed the date and the signature of Potter on each plate. The etcher did his best to copy the originals faithfully, yet his skills did not allow him to obtain the same successful results of Potter. For example in the Neighing horse the head of the animal is very dark and flattened, especially in the neck area. Either the etcher etched too deeply in the plate and his scratches are too close to each other, or he did not know how to handle the mordant and its timing. Similarly, the landscapes in the background suffer de Claussin’s inexperience. Potter was able to create a thick atmosphere between the foreground with scant vegetation beside the horses and the villages in the distance, whereas in the plates by the French master the sense of a three-dimensional space is less perceivable, due to the sharpness of the contours of the houses in the background. 

 

The Plough horse

What is further interesting is that we know that the album was sold at the sale of the Count of Rigal in 1817 as a suite of copies.^[4] In the sale catalogue these prints are praised for their similarity to the originals: it is noted that they preserve the same direction but are smaller in size. 

by Anna Bianco

Ref. nr. 60561

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^[1] Hollstein, F.W.H. Hollstein's Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, Ca. 1450-1700. Vol. XVII. Amsterdam: Van Gendt &, 1976. Print. Andries Pauli (Pauwels) - Johannes Rem. “Series of Horses” 9-13, pp. 216-218. 

^[2] Verbeek, Jan. “Vroege staten van de etsen van Paulus Potter. 1625-1645”. Antiek vol. 10 (1974), pp. 854-861. In the same school of thought is the article by Alexandra Turnbull ‘The Horse in Landscape: Animals, Grooming, Labour and the City in the Seventeenth-Century Netherlands’ included in Shift: Queen’s Journal of Visual & Material Culture, no. 3 (2010), pp. 1-24, available online (link).

^[3] Treydel, Renate. "Claussin, Ignace Joseph de" Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon. Berlin, Boston: K. G. Saur. 2015.

^[4]Catalogue Raisonné Des Estampes Du Cabinet De M. Le Comte Rigal. Paris: Chez L'auteur, 1817. Print., lot 635, p. 288-289.

Two 'Vinkenbaan' manuscripts

The delightful past time of catching small birds

There are those dishes that everybody knows, but no one ever had. Perhaps the most famous one is the French delicacy of ortolan, a small bird that has to be eaten completely at once, including the head. It is also famous because eating the dish in the correct way requires wearing a blindfold. The consumption of this cute bird was forbidden by the EU in 1999. The ortolan is a small bird that resembles a finch and was difficult to catch, mostly with nets, which must have been a hectic endeavor. 

 

               In Holland the catching of small birds with nets was popular in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, but nowadays it has completely disappeared, little known about and would be very much frowned upon. It was a must for every owner of a larger country house with some land, a ‘buiten’, to have a range where these small birds could be caught. These were called finch-ranges, ‘vinkenbanen’. There were especially many ranges in the dunes area, because this was a natural reserve without any buildings and therefore used by birds to travel along the coast. Because finching was almost exclusively possible in areas that were owned by a landowner, it was the perfect activity for the upper class. Therefore any records of attendees to a finch-range would make excellent cultural-historical information about the upper-class networks of Holland.

               This is exactly what is on offer at Antiquariaat Van der Steur: two very rare books in which the catchings and catchers at a number of finch-ranges are meticulously noted by hand by the owners of the ranges.

               The first book is a large register, bound in vellum, with about 200 written pages. In this Mr. Paulus Cornelis Hoynck van Papendrecht (Dordrecht 1793 - Rotterdam 1877) noted the amount of catches on his finch range at the Weilust estate (probably near Rotterdam), over the years 1840-1858. The manuscript starts with recordings of the number of caught finches per day (3000 to 6000 finches a year). But Hoynck also gives an account of the weather, wind, other caught birds, visitors, etc. Then follow notes on the contruction of the range. The celebrated architect Zocher had designed the Weilust estate, but when Hoynck asked him to do the finch range in 1839, Zocher recommended the expert Manus Lokerman to do the job, who was a fincher himself and his father too.

In the winter of 1839/40 Lokerman made a single 'druip' (open field) finch range, but this was not to the liking of Hoynck, who preferred to have a double range, by example of the famous double range of Jan Bondt (1766-1845) at the Jachtduin estate in Bloemendaal. Lokerman followed the wishes of his client.
The manuscript ends with lists of friends and acquaintances, who were given 25 to 50 finches per year as a gift, to take home as a pet or for consumption.

               The other book is a 19th century copy of a part of the manuscript of Cornelis van Lennep’s Fasti fringillares, a two volume manuscript book on the finching practice, also with numbers of caught birds (Van Lennep family archive 104-105). However, this copy has additional information up to 1850 with catch numbers of the ranges Jagtduin, Spaarnberg, Elswout, Watervliet, Huis te Bloemendaal, Manpad, Saksenburg, Roos en Beek, Duinlust, Boekenrode en Weilust.

               Together these books contain valuable information about the practice of finching, an activity that had a firm role in daily life and is completely faded away from memory. Moreover, it shows us who visited who and what amount of finches they were given by the host. There is really no comparison to this in our current times.


by Hugo Rijpma

B2284

Antiqbook:
http://www.antiqbook.com/search.php?action=search&l=nl&searchform=antiqbook&o=steu&action=search&l=nl&catalog=&author=&title=&year=&century=&keyword=&since=&sBn=&full=vinkenbaan

Source: Matthey, Ignaz. Vincken moeten vincken locken, Vijf eeuwen vangst van zangvogels en kwartels in Holland. Hollandse Studiën 39. Verloren, Hilversum, 2002.

How the raven became a gentleman: the evolution of the fable of the fox and the raven in book illustrations

Gustave Doré in: De Fabelen van La Fontaine, 1895

J. Punt in: Fabelen van J. De la Fontaine, 1805

Practically everybody knows the story of the tortoise and the hare. The overconfident hare that decides to take a nap in the middle of a running contest, while the slow but modest tortoise follows through and finally wins the competition. A story that teaches us that slow but certain is better than fast and improvident and that teaches us morals about how to behave well in society.

These fables find their roots in the sixth-century before Christ. It is thought that they were written by the Greek slave Aesop. Although his existence remains uncertain and none of his writings survived, numerous tales credited to him, were gathered across the centuries. Many of the tales are characterized by animals and lifeless objects that speak, solve problems, and have human characteristics.

The representation of fables in pictures has a long history as well. In comparison to other illustrative fashions the fable was a conservative one, which makes the development of the fable illustration a very interesting subject. From the fifteenth to the nineteenth century there has been little to none evolution in the way the fables were depicted. To demonstrate this, one can compare different illustrations of the fable ‘the fox and the raven’. In this fable a raven (or sometimes a crow) has found a piece of cheese and decides to eat it on a branch. The fox, who wants it for itself, flatters the bird, calling it beautiful and wondering whether its voice is too. While it starts singing, the cheese falls out of his beak and is eaten by the fox.

J. Gole in: Sinryke Fabulen, 1685

The scene is originally portrayed in the same way over and over again as seen in the small selection of the work by J. Gole, J. Van Vianen and J. Punt. This goes on until the French illustrator and caricaturist J. J. Grandville (1803-1847) gets his hands on the story. Instead of disguising the moral of the story in animal figures, he gives the animals back their human characteristics and places the scene in the spirit of his age. The raven becomes an elite gentleman with his glasses and honorary medal, while the fox is depicted as a mischievous fellow of the lower class.

J. van Vianen in: Ezopische fabelen van Fedrus, 1703

Another innovator of the fable illustration was the French illustrator and painter Gustave Doré (1832-1883). Doré perfectly represented the romantic ideas of his time in his illustrations. 

He did this by depicting the events of the fable in the corner and filling the predominant part of the plate with dark forests and wild cloudscapes, although his picture of the fox and the raven is more conservative than innovative.

J. J. Grandville in: Fables de La Fontaine, 1852

De Rave om hoog op eenen boom gezeten

Zou een stuk kaes, dat zy gerooft had, eten.

Dit zag de Vos, en sprak aldus haer aen:

Wat zytge, o Raef, met schoonheit aangedaen!

Hoe schoon is uw gelaet! hoe schoon uw veren!

Hoe zeer zoud gy elk een betrionferen,

Indien ’t geluk, dat alles overheert,

U midelyk had met een’ stem vereert,

Waer van gy ongelukkig blyft versteken!

De domme Raef begint hier op te spreken.

Maer zy verliest terstond naer lekker aes.

De looze Vos schiet toe, gaet met de kaes.

Voort stryken, en belacht dees grove botheit.

De Rave ziende in ’t einde hare zotheit,

Sprak dus: Ik leer met schade dezen dag,

Dat wysheit meer dan sterkte en kracht vermag.

Ezopische fabelen van Fedrus, 1703, 21-22 pp.



[left] (Probably) J. van Noord, 1791

[right] J. Desandré and W. H. Freeman in: Fables de J. de la Fontaine, 1868

by Sanne Hansler

Steven Blankaart's ‘De borgerlyke tafel, om lang gesond sonder ziekten te leven’

 

With the New Year come new resolutions. What more popular than the wish to eat healthier in the next year, or at least until we feel better about ourselves or swimwear worthy.

So how do you go about eating healthier? First of all you should know what to eat and what not of course. These days it is all about the super foods, raw food, no carbs, no fat (or is fat good now?) and so on. Every year seems to have a new trend in what is healthy and what not. 

Apparently hundreds of years ago people suffered from the same ideas as we do now. In fact it is the other way around: we still have this obsession with health trends, and have had this for a long time. In 1683 a book was published in Amsterdam called ‘De borgerlyke tafel, om lang gesond sonder ziekten te leven’ (The civil table, to live a long healthy life without illness). 

The title is so refreshing: it says exactly what the purpose of the book is! So this book is a kind of cookbook with the latest healthy food tips, just like there are so many today. Actually the title of the book is more elaborate, it goes on as follows: ‘Waar in van yder spijse in ‘t besonder gehandelt werd. Mitsgaders een beknopte manier van de spijsen voor te snijden, en een onderrechting der schikkelijke wijsen, die men aan de tafel moet houden.' (In which every ingredient is treated separately. Furthermore with a concise manual of the cutting of the dishes, and an education in table manners). So the author Steven Blankaart, a physician of profession, had huge goals in mind with this book. The frontispiece (engraved title print) shows that he had a very broad audience in mind as well. At the table young, adult and old all eat the healthy food that Blankaart prescribes in this book. 

[Reference Nr. B1467]

by Hugo Rijpma 

Theodor de Bry (1528-1598) ORGUEILLE ET FOLLIE

Portrait of Pope Paulus IV(?)

Published c. 1580 this plate, Pride and Folly, belongs to a series of four designs for tazzas by de Bry. It is a medallion with a double head: if turned around the print shows a profile of a satyr, reminding of Folly. The border is decorated with fantastic creatures, themes and symbols referring to Superbia like a peacock, the mistress of Babylon, the fall of Phaeton, the Fall of Marcus Curtius, Adam and Eve under the tree. The other four plates of the set feature the same characteristics: a medallion included in a wide border with grotesques with figures, animals and vines on a dark ground. The border around the medallion and the outer edge feature Dutch and French verses.

It has been suggested that the male profile might be that of Pope Paul IV (born Gian Pietro Carafa, 1476-1559) who instituted the Inquisition as a political organ of the Church, to control not only dogmatic issues but also political and economical businesses. Under his papacy was introduced the 'Index librorum prohibitorum' and 'ghettos' for the Jews were institutionalized with the 'Cum nimis absurdum' bull (1555). This bull revoked all the rights of the Jewish community and placed religious and economic restrictions on Jews in the Papal States, renewed anti-Jewish legislation and subjected Jews to various degradations and heavy restrictions on their personal freedom.

Signed within internal border: 'T. D. B. F.'. On the verso unknown collector's mark.

The Satyr

The Mistress of Babylon

Engraving on paper, trimmed within platemark; diameter: 124 mm; only state; some dirt and traces of former mounting on the verso, irregular margins; Hollstein 180; Guilmard 368; Atlas van Stolk I, 413. Exhib 1987, Ornemanistes du XVe au XVIIe siècle, no. 68.

Reference nr. 60535


by Anna Bianco

Louise Charlotte Ritter (1779-1859): Self portrait as personification of Pictura

Beautiful drawing by Louise Charlotte Ritter (1779-1859). She portrayed herself as a personification of Pictura, sitting beside a table with a skull, the bust of Homer, a sculpture and a drawing; she is holding a palette and brushes, she's gazing at a painting on an easel. She is sitting in an ideal classical looking interior with a colonnade ending behind her and decorated with a green curtain . The painter is dressed in antique fashion in a white dress with a fallen shoulder pad, uncovering partially her breasts. A darker robe probably covering her shoulder has also fallen; only a small portion hangs from her right shoulder. Her skin is very pale, reminding the texture of a sculpture; almost like a goddess she wears sandals, a hairband and a golden armband, around her forearm. Signed on the bottom right: 'L: C: de Neufville née Ritter inv: t et pinx:t.'

Drawing on paper; pen and brush in grey, brush in color, framing line in pen brown ink; total: 128 x 99 mm
[reference nr. 60563]