Review of: 'Dutch art in a global age' (2023)
September 2024
ELMER KOLFIN
Review of: C.D.M. Atkins (ed.), Dutch art in a global age, Boston [MFA Publications] 2023
Dutch art in a global age is a book that accompanied an exhibition touring the U.S.A. from September 2023 until July 2024. The show drew on the collections of Dutch art of the Museum of Fine Art in Boston and Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, much of which is a promised gift to the MFA.[1] Slightly confusingly, the book is not an exhibition catalogue. Instead, seven relatively short and accessible essays are followed by shorter texts on remarkable objects that are related to the topic of these essays. There is a list of illustrations, but not of the exhibited works, and not every illustrated object is featured in the exhibition. This might also cause some confusion as to the function of some illustrations in the book. For instance, Rembrandt van Rijn’s (1606-1669) Two African men (1661) never leaves the Mauritshuis (and was therefore not on display in the U.S.A.), but it plays an important role in the essay about images of the Dutch population (p. 119). Meanwhile Pieter de Hooch’s (1629 – in or after 1679) Interior with two women and a child (fig. 1) was shown at the exhibition, but is it really the right example to illustrate the use of porcelain in Dutch households (p. 45)? In any case, the well-designed book that is the subject of this review, contains excellent reproductions, wonderful details, and two useful maps. It seems to have been written for a wider audience with an interest in Dutch art. Yet it is relevant for a more scholarly audience as well. Notes are kept to a minimum and there is no complete bibliography, but, instead, a shortlist of essential literature is made available.
The book’s aim is to explore the impact of the Dutch republic’s new, global engagement on the production and consumption of art. The authors synthesize existing scholarship and invite readers to rethink their ideas on Dutch art: what happens when we consider Dutch art primarily as a response to Dutch global trade? Where and how do we encounter the global, how does it change our understanding of Dutch art, and what does that tell us of the ways in which we engage with comparable issues in our own time? These are topics that have occupied an increasing number of scholars since the end of the twentieth century. But to my knowledge, this is the first time, since Mariët Westermann’s Art of the Dutch Republic (1996), that they are presented in a coherent narrative about the Dutch encounter across the world, and not limited to a particular region or topic. This is what makes this book important: much work has been done since 1996, that has now been brought together to form a new view on Dutch art.
Left: cover of Dutch art in a global age.
Middle: fig. 1. Pieter de Hooch, Interior with two women and a child, 1663, oil on canvas, 70 x 73 cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. SK-C-1191.
Right: fig. 2. Willem Kalf, Still life with fruit in a Wanli bowl, 1664, oil on canvas, 53 x 63 cm, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. L-R 296.2017. Promised gift of Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, in support of the Center for Netherlandish Art.
The introductory essay, ‘Centering the global’, by the book’s editor Chris Atkins, explains that the global trade emerging at the start of the seventeenth century affected the art consumption of the Dutch elite society, and therefore also the art production. He describes how, following the immigration from the Southern Netherlands, Dutch foreign trade expanded and transformed into an economic strategy in the Eighty Years’ War against Habsburg Spain. While intra-European trade in the Baltic and Mediterranean area remained in place as solid pillars for the Dutch economy, newly established networks of the Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (Dutch East India Company, est. 1602) and the West-Indische Compagnie (West India Company, est. 1621) laid ground for a global trade that was as extensive as it was aggressive. The import of new products and materials made Amsterdam into a global warehouse and an economic hub. The combination of wealth, a new taste for art and the availability of previously little known products and materials deeply affected consumer-habits. Consequently, art began to reflect the new, cosmopolitan interest of the wealthy Dutch merchants, but also of scholars, at court, and in diplomatic circles.
Although it is left unremarked and unexplored, there is something striking and fundamental about the impact of the global on Dutch art. All essays in the book demonstrate that in painting and printmaking interest in the subject remained by and large limited to matters of iconography: uncovered elements from nature and cultures around the globe provided new artistic motifs. The same applies to drawing, although completely ignored by the authors – one of the more serious omissions of the book. In painting and drawing, materials such as tropical hardwood or Japanese paper never became very popular in comparison with local products, nor are there any signs of stylistic appreciation for the visual arts outside of Europe. Yet, this is different in the decorative arts. The best example is the well-known porcelain from China and Japan. Here, painting styles, material as well as iconography were much appreciated in the Netherlands. Additionally, the same applies, mutatis mutandis, to Indian ‘chintzes’ and ‘palampores’ with their decorative patterns. This suggests that, for reasons still to be explored, decorative arts seem to have been more open to novel artistic inventions than painting and printmaking. If we really want to focus on the impact of global art, we should invest more on its role on the early modern Dutch decorative arts.[2]
The curator of the exhibition in question, Anna C. Knaap, wrote an essay about tobacco and porcelain in still-life and genre painting. She argues that artists like Pieter Claesz (1597/98-1660/61) and Willem Kalf (1619-1693) explored the artistic possibilities of tobacco and porcelain as pictorial motifs in their work to distinguish themselves on the competitive market for still-lifes. With the introduction of enhardened smokers that followed suit after the import of American tobacco at the end of the sixteenth century, Adriaen Brouwer (1603/05-1638) set a trend for later painters of peasant scenes. Knaap could have referred to Willem Buytewech (1591/92-1624) and his follower Dirck Hals (1591-1656) who set standards for aristocratic scenes. Instead, she turns to the obvious Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), pointing out that he made porcelain a signature motif in his genre paintings, such as many other genre painters did in their interiors. The suggestion that all these paintings “signaled wealth, status, colonial success, and access to maritime trade networks” (p. 47) is not entirely convincing. Kalf’s work might (fig. 2), but Brouwer’s certainly does not. What they do have in common is a demonstration of the speed and depth with which the foreign was domesticated. The pictorial strategy seemed to reflect a casualness in which such new motifs were assimilated into a local world. The resulting bond between the local and the global became so strong that it has literally taken us ages to realize that it is not as self-evident as these paintings suggest.
The traditional bias toward painting is emphasized in the essay of Ronna MacBeth, Katrina Newbury, Gerri Strickler and Christine Storti, who discuss artists’ materials from a global perspective. Although painting is the most popular – and therefore most-researched – medium that receives most attention here as well, it displays the least impact of globally acquired products. The section on silverwork is problematic for another reason. Silver was imported from South America, Mexico and parts of Asia, but also from Austria. However, it is still difficult to distinguish which object was made from which silver. From a material perspective, not much can be said about the impact of the global on the production of silver objects, without thorough analysis of data. Shell marquetry is another fine result of global trade, and here too, one would wish for more detailed research results. The beautiful panels by Dirck van Rijswijck (ca. 1596-1679; fig. 3) may have been inspired by Japanese lacquer or by Italian ‘pietra dura’: the material suggests the first, the technique the latter. The discussion of Japanese paper is more revealing, as it shows how Rembrandt responded to newly available material. Creating some of his finest and rarest impressions, the printmaker eagerly explored the paper’s artistic and commercial value.
In ‘Luxury goods, luxury objects’, Courtney Leigh Harris demonstrates that the Dutch global trading networks changed the types of objects that people preferred to collect. New consumption patterns of luxury goods, such as tobacco, tea, sugar and tulips, gave rise to new products for storage and use. This development started in the richest classes of society, but eventually also reached the middle and lower income groups. These products were not only commissioned abroad, but also copied at home. The story of Dutch delftware as imitation Asian porcelain is well known, and the taste for Japanese lacquer resulted in imitation lacquer and black delftware.
At this point, one would have liked to read an extra essay on textiles and furniture. Once the VOC trading posts had their trading networks up and running, tropical hardwood started to arrive regularly in the Netherlands. Soon, specialist woodworkers emerged, such as Lambert Doomer (1624-1700), who was portrayed by Rembrandt (1640, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art). Ebony was used for picture frames, furniture, and, for example, on Dirck van Rijswijck’s panel (fig. 3), although it remains undiscussed in the text on artist’s materials.[3] Such objects “signaled wealth, status, colonial success, and access to maritime trade networks” (p. 47) even more obviously than paintings with their pieces of Asian porcelain, delftware or even globes. Other examples, such as oriental carpets, Japanese gowns and Indian chintzes had a similar function, and like the furniture, porcelain, delftware, and tobacco became a robust part of Dutch culture as well. During this assimilation, these objects acquired a dual identity: they were foreign and new, and familiar and Dutch at the same time. In other words, under the pressure of the emerging consumer culture of luxury objects in an age of global expansion, the global and the local became inseparably fused. This created a completely new identity for the Dutch that has unequivocally been praised until recent.
Left: fig. 3. Dirck van Rijswijck, Floral still life, c. 1630-1679, oak panel with ebony, rosewood, mother of pearl and African blackwood, 43.7 x 33.5 cm), Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection.
Right: fig. 4. Frederiks Andries, Covered coconut cup, 1607, silver and coconut, 34.5 x 22.9 x 12.7 cm, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. 2020.410. Gift of Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, in honor of Thomas S. Michie, and in support of the Center for Netherlandish Art.
In the fifth essay, Michele L. Frederick turns to portraiture and ‘tronies.’ Discussing fact and fiction in images of various social, ethnic and religious groups in the Netherlands, she argues that the Dutch expansion, economic prosperity and civic pride were deeply intertwined – a central premise in the book. Consequently, some of the key points also apply to other genres. That the rise of the merchant class generated new consumers with a taste for the luxurious and the foreign, and that Dutch paintings avoided reference to actual colonial labor was also pointed out by Knaap in her essay on genre and still-life. While it is certainly true that the dark side of the global expansion is totally absent, it is also important to realise that these portraits, still-lifes, genre paintings and landscapes were never intended to discuss colonial labour. Paradoxically, the strength of the book is its stress on the expression of success, prosperity and pride in all these paintings. The authors remind us that images, even the naturally looking Dutch seventeenth-century paintinsg, present a selective reflection of society at best. It is today’s art history’s role to understand which selections were made, why, and with which consequences. Short as the essays in this book may be, this is exactly what they illustrate.
Benjamin Weiss explains the background and impact of the booming book and print publishing industry in the first half of the seventeenth century. He argues that the shift from Antwerp to Amsterdam did not see any real process or product innovation, but that the scale and the reach were new. Somewhat surprisingly, this is one of the essays with relatively little reference to the global. For example, Weiss does not point to the combined global expansion and increased prosperity as factors that contributed to the blossoming of Dutch print culture. Yet, Claes Jansz Visscher (1586/87-1652) does make the connection in his famous view on Amsterdam from 1611, a print that is discussed in the introduction by Atkins. Although, I have to admit, this point is also missing in my own essay about the emerging Dutch printmaking in Gedrukt tot Amsterdam (2011). However, Benjamin Schmidt made up for this lacuna in his admirable Inventing exoticism (2015) that highlights the many connections between printmaking and globalism.[4]
Suitably, the final essay, by Christopher Atkins, is the most thought-provoking. He suggests a connection between the increase of depictions of the local landscape and the Dutch global engagement, arguing that both demonstrate a related sense of spatial exploration and territorial expansion. However, the central statement “As the Dutch encountered and experienced new places and spaces, it made them see the local in new ways” (p. 180) is difficult to prove, even if the contrary is evident: new places and spaces were seen through the lens of the local. Frans Post’s (1612-1680) Brazilian landscapes are a case in point, as is the water management of the sugar plantations in Surinam as illustrated in the drawings by Dirk Valkenburg (1675-1721), or Dutch town planning across the world.[5] However, the starting point for this idea, namely that “the Dutch had a way of looking at and perceiving the world that was conditioned in part by commerce and capitalism” (p. 189) is a fruitful way of understanding the developments in Dutch art, including the genre of landscape painting. Connecting the esthetic qualities of art to socio-economical and ideological aspects, the book seems to follow a the Marxist understanding of art, although this remains unspecified.[6] When thinking about a truly encompassing, new book on Dutch seventeenth-century art, this perspective may also provide a ground to integrate current debates on the female impact on art and environmental studies.[7]
Each of the seven essays in the book is followed by a shorter connecting text about a single object. Although all are interesting in themselves, not all seem as relevant. The discussions of Ludolf Bakhuizen’s (1630-1708) Ships on the IJ before the city of Amsterdam (1666, Boston, MFA) and the model of a VOC ship by Jeroen van der Vliet and Pepijn Brandon respectively are a logical addition to Atkins’ introduction, and Mary E. Hicks’ focus on Brazil and sugar adds an insightful perspective to Knaap’s discussion of global aspects in still life and genre. However, Claudia Swan’s welcome explanation of the function and appreciation of a bizarrely ornamented coconut cup (fig. 4) adds little to the discussion of artists’ materials and techniques – the topic of the prior essay of Ronna MacBeth, Katrina Newbury, Gerri Strickler and Christine Storti. Also, the global lens on portraits in Frederick’s essay does not lead to new insights into Rembrandt’s painting of Aeltje Uylenburgh (1632, Boston, MFA, Promised gift of Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo) discussed by Stephanie S. Dickey. That Uylenburgh’s son worked for the VOC is a very thin connection; no Dutch elite sitter would be more than one handshake away from the Dutch overseas companies. A focused discussion of the origin of fur in Dutch costume (to which Dickey briefly refers), the Japanese gown, or the ubiquitous Persian carpet would have been more appropriate, since these are all topics that Frederick briefly mentions. But this would require another painting by another artist. Sometimes, less Rembrandt can be more.
These sections would have been the right place to systematically zoom in on topics that are lacking in the essays, such as whaling expeditions – a blind spot in research on the global engagement, and highly relevant from the topical environmental perspective on art history. Johannes Pontanus’ Beschrijvinghe der seer wijt beroemde Coop-stad Amsterdam from 1614, for example, has a famous and wonderfully illustrated section on Willem Barentsz’ (c. 1550-1597) shipwreck on Nova Zembla. The Arctic as a topic would have added more to the aim of the book than Katherine Harper’s discussion of Rembrandt’s prints on Japanese paper. Again, the text itself is excellent, but the topic was already discussed in the essay on artists materials – indeed another case of too much Rembrandt.
To conclude: Dutch art in a global age is a valuable, inspiring and sometimes provocative book that convincingly synthesizes recent research on the engagement of Dutch artists with the global expansion while responding to an emerging consumer society. The strength of the book is that it starts from the objects and not from theory. The authors explain and connect apparent details that, when combined, highlight a fundamental driving force behind the development of the visual and decorative arts in the Netherlands. The book would have benefitted from a more consistent treatment of this central idea. Important media, themes and motifs are being ignored, while others remain relatively irrelevant to the books’ premises. Nevertheless, it presents a fruitful and up to date way of looking at Dutch art. In doing so, it invites students, aficionados and scholars alike to rethink their ideas on the subject matter, exactly as it set out to do.
Dr. Elmer Kolfin
Assistant Professor
University of Amsterdam
NOTES:
[1] In the book I could not find a list of museums that hosted the exhibition. The website of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston mentions the North Carolina Museum of Art (16 September 2023 - 7 January 2024, Raleigh, North Carolina), and the Kimbell Museum of Art (10 November 2024 – 9 February 2025, Fort Worth, Texas), see ‘Traveling Exhibitions | Museum of Fine Arts Boston’ (mfa.org). The Codart website gives the High Museum of Art (19 April – 14 July 2024, Atlanta, Georgia), (Dutch Art in a Global Age: Masterpieces from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - CODART). Neither mention the MFA itself as a host.
[2] Recent examples are J. van Campen and T. Eliëns (eds.), Chinese and Japanese porcelain for the Dutch Golden Age, Zwolle 2014; K.H. Corriogan et al. (eds.), Asia in Amsterdam: The culture of luxury in the Golden Age, New Haven/London 2015, and the Journal of the Historians of Netherlandish Art’s specials issue on Dutch textile trade, edited by C. Anderson and M.H. Kehoe, see JHNA 15 (2023), no. 1 .
[3] P. J.J. van Thiel and C.J. de Bruyn Kops, Prijst de lijst: De Hollandse schilderijlijst in de zeventiende eeuw, Amsterdam/The Hague 1984; R. Baarsen, Wonen in de gouden eeuw, Amsterdam 2007.
[4] E. Kolfin and J. van der Veen, Gedrukt tot Amsterdam, Amsterdamse prentmakers en -uitgevers in de gouden eeuw, Zwolle 2011; B. Schmidt, Inventing exoticism: Geography, globalism and Europe’s early modern world, Philadelphia 2015. See also K. Zandvliet, Mapping for money: Maps, plans and topographic paintings and their role in the overseas expansion during the 16th and 17th centuries, Amsterdam 2002 (lacking from the selective bibliography).
[5] R. van Oers, Dutch town planning overseas during VOC and WIC rule, Zutphen 2000 (also lacking from the selective bibliography).
[6] In Marxist art history “the esthetic quality of an art work and its iconological content cannot be separated from ideological and and socio-economical aspects”, see F.J. Witteveen, ‘Een bril voor het onschuldige oog: Marxisme, neo-marxisme en postmarxisme in de kunstgeschiedenis’, in M. Halbersma and K. Zijlmans, Gezichtspunten: Een inleiding in de methoden van de kunstgeschiedenis, Nijmegen 1993, p. 175.
[7] See Judith Noorman’s project ‘The female impact: Rethinking the early modern art market’: The Female Impact – Rethinking the Early Modern Art Market. On environmental approaches to Dutch art, see E. Bièvre’s rather provocative essay ‘Green art studies and the local subconsciousness’, in K. Zijlmans and W. van Damme, World art studies: Exploring concepts and approaches, Amsterdam 2008, pp. 183-202; and, recently, J. Keizer et al. (eds.), thematic issue ‘Wetland: Shaping environment in Netherlandish art’, Nederlands kunsthistorisch jaarboek 73 (2023), and the broader study of T. Weststeijn, De toekomst van het verleden, Amsterdam 2023.
CITE AS:
E. Kolfin, ‘Review of: Dutch art in global age, edited by Christopher D.M. Atkins’, Oud Holland Reviews, September 2024.