Abstract
When I first heard about the proposed PhD research by Remmelt Daalder, into the painters Willem van de Velde the Elder and the Younger, I could not deny a small fit of jealousy. What a fantastic challenge, to use the modern expression! In the course of my career as a curator I got to appreciate the work of Willem van de Velde the Elder in particular more and more, to find out how relatively little about him and his life was known. To get the chance to find that out, to explore archives, to visit collections worldwide and get all the questions answered, and thereby contribute to an important piece of maritime (art) history, is great. Remmelt’s book, the result of his research, does not disappoint in any way. Not only does he answer many pressing questions, he also gives a context of the art historical environment in which father and son lived and worked. And all that written in a friendly, personal narrative style so known to Remmelt.
The book is structured chronologically and divided into themes. The reader is introduced to the family Van de Velde from the move (flight) from Flanders to Leiden, the city where both the Elder and the Younger were born. You follow them to Amsterdam and to London, reading both personal stories and business matters of the studio, which father and son ran for about 70 years. By detecting and studying known and unknown documents in all kinds of archives, by visiting public and private collections and studying the paintings and drawings of the Van de Veldes, Remmelt completed both the personal and the business story of the studio. After the turn of the last page, I really felt I became acquainted with the painters.
The company was for a long time about the Elder, who became famous with his maritime pen painting. He travelled a lot and moved in important Navy circles, where he found clientele (for example, Cornelis Tromp) and also the opportunity to go along with naval battles (for example Battle of Scheveningen 1653, Battle of Lowestoft 1665, Four Days Battle 1666 and the Battle of Solebay 1672), where he made a lot of drawings. Thus was born a drawings archive, the base from which he made paintings with the detail and historical accuracy that his customers wanted. In their English period the distribution of roles between father and son shifted. Where father had a clear leading role in the Netherlands and the largest share of work, the son became the leader in England. The Younger focused successfully on the manufacture of oil paintings, while the Elder focused mainly on the administration, marketing and financial matters of the studio. The studio had, as it were, two production lines: the Elder kept to documentary work, both with the pen and in oil, and the Younger made artistic seascapes. However, they continued to work together, for example in the detailing of the ships. In England the painters also had important clients, in particular the English monarchs Charles II and James II.
At the beginning of Van de Velde & Son: Marine Painters, Remmelt looks at the way the work of father and son is described and valued over the years. In the second chapter he underpins his approach, to use the works by the Van de Veldes as source material, in addition to written records. In the course of the book many ‘facts’ about the Van Veldes as stated in the older literature are thus corrected.
The family history of the Van de Veldes starts to take shape in the third and fourth chapter. Remmelt looks at the development of the Elder, in relation to the presence of other maritime painters such as Simon de Vlieger: from his first period making prints, to the development of the pen painting. To comprehend the further career of father and son, Chapter 5 looks at the market for maritime paintings, both the artists (Porcellis, Blanckerhoff, Nooms, Bakhuizen), and the traders and dissemination of maritime art work in Dutch households. He does the same for England in Chapter 10.
Chapter 6 is about the studio in Amsterdam: the role of Adriaen van de Velde, the locations of the studio and the role of Hendrick Dubbels. The chapter looks at the social aspects of running a studio by zooming in on the family relationships and problems. Chapter 7 tells of the mighty customers of the painters. We follow the Elder in his contacts with major fleet guardians as Michiel de Ruyter and Cornelis Tromp. The chapter on the relationship with Carl Gustav Wrangel, whose drawings have been preserved in Skokloster Castle in Sweden (Battle of Fehmarn, 1644), gives an excellent picture of the interaction between clients and the painters on the subject of painting, the historical information, the price for the painting etc. It shows how committed, ambitious even, the Elder was to obtain contracts. Chapter 9 is devoted to the work of the Elder for Cosimo and Leopoldo de’ Medici. These two chapters are extensive, detailed and give a good impression of how business was done: customers viewed the drawings, after which they could decide to commission a painting. If that was done, they had to agree on the size, after which the Elder made his design. The price was agreed upon once the painting was finished.
From Chapter 10 the Van de Veldes are in England, where father and son moved with their families in the winter of 1672–73. It looks at the possible reasons for the move, which remarkably fell in the Dutch ‘year of disaster’, 1672. Both economic and personal reasons might have played a part, or perhaps a personal invitation from the English court. Although they were not the first marine painters to go to England, father and son Van de Velde brought a new kind of art to the English art market: the seascape. They initially needed all their time and attention to paint for the Court, because they were appointed as court painters to King Charles II and his brother James. It was the Younger who made the paintings, to the design of the Elder. They were given a fixed annual salary and payment per painting. An important task was a series of twelve paintings that father and son made together between 1675 and 1683. Remmelt looks at them in Chapter 11. Father and son have a lot to thank Charles II and James for, who gave importance to an accurate representation of ships and the display of events at sea. The two monarchs were closely involved in the maritime interests of their country – something which cannot be said for successor, William. He did not give them a position as court painters and therefore the family moved from Greenwich to Westminster after the coronation of William and Mary in 1688. Fortunately they also had clients in circles of the English Navy, such as the families Edgcumbe, Dartmouth, Lowther, Deane and Russell. The second last chapter describes the years in which the studio was run by the Younger and his son Cornelis, and the years after the death of the Elder in which Cornelis and his brother-in-law Johan van der Hagen ran the studio until 1714, when Cornelis died. The book concludes with an excellent summary of the history of the company Van de Velde.
In a review some critical notes are required. Although the book has a neat appearance and a nice balance of text and image, there are a few flaws. On p. 37 it says that Magdalena van de Velde was baptised in 1633, which should be 1632. The year 1540 on p. 45 should, of course, be 1640. It’s a shame that not all works of art that are specifically named in the text are illustrated. As a reader you are curious and want to see what is being written about. And the third point: it occurred to me that I occasionally felt that the chapters are written almost like loose articles, and the book thus less one whole. That is, for example, in describing people or events which in an earlier chapter already have been addressed: this feels like a repetition. Having said that, these flaws are of little importance in this more than excellent dissertation, which will for decades to come be the standard work about father and son Willem van de Velde.