RKD STUDIES

The urge to travel is a returning theme in Arnold Houbraken’s Groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen (Great theatre of the Netherlandish Painters and Paintresses, 1st edition 1718-1721), which has been analysed by Hein Horn in his The Golden Age Revisited (2000).¹ Notably, adventurous travels and experiences fascinated him and the anecdotes he wrote down, made his biographies of artists all the more entertaining. Houbraken paid plenty of attention to the ways artists could ‘get possessed’ by Wanderlust, which was ‘congenital to Painters in particular’.² The affliction could simply show up in someone’s head one day, or would come on like a kind of influenza, even a contagious one. Sometimes a person could get over it, too, and decide not to travel at all. To Houbraken, the urge to travel was simply a human tendency for which no explanation was needed in terms of plausible goals.³

Needless to say, in real life it was more complicated than that, if only because the whole undertaking took quite some planning. In the well-drafted introductory article of The Encyclopedia of Migration and Minorities in Europe, the authors dedicate some words on the process of decision-making concerning migration on a macro, meso and micro level, according to the current holistic view of modern social historians. The first, macro level reasons, such as wars, oppression and economic downturn, were formerly simplified as mechanic ‘push and pull factors’. The last two levels involve human agency in the context of a network-family economy (micro level) and cultural and societal factors (meso level), resulting in both family and professional chain migration. ‘In the minds of the migrants these levels are integrated, according to the information available […]’.⁴

In his study of 1986, Brulez made an attempt to calculate goals or motives for international mobility of artists before 1800, namely commission, education, pleasure, family affairs, political-military reasons and religious reasons, again on the basis of sampling Thieme/Becker. In no less than 63.9% of the cases of international migrations, a motive was identified.⁵ Although such a strict division of motives is artificial and no longer in line with the modern paradigm assuming mixed motives, the exercise is interesting. For artists of all countries, the motive ‘commission’, which belongs to the category of network migration, was the most common: in 59.4% of the cases.⁶ This high score implies that courts, town councils and churches played an important role in the motivation of artists to migrate.

For artists of the Northern Netherlands, Brulez found the average of 59.4% in the category ‘commission’, 20% in ‘education’ and, curiously, 9.4% travelled for pleasure.⁷ Pleasure trips (‘speelreisjes’) in the recreational sense, however, became only fashionable for the elite in the 18th century.⁸ This type of leisure cannot have been a major motive for Dutch artists to travel in the early modern period, simply because they could not afford it. Houbraken literally used the word ‘speelreis’ in relation to three artists who travelled abroad: Gillis Schagen (1616-1668), David Beck (1621-1656) [14] and Hendrick Verschuring (1627-1690), who indeed didn't lack cash.⁹ Southern Netherlandish travelling artists were even in 64% of the cases motivated by ‘commission’ and in 21.4% by ‘education’ in the findings of Brulez.¹⁰ This desire for education could be stimulated by a paying parent, as was the case, for exemple, of the brothers Gilles and Hans van Hemessen, who were sent to Italy by their father Jan van Hemessen (c. 1500-1556/7) in 1551 ‘to learn, to hear and to see’.¹¹ In contrast to Germany, France and England, for example, wandering years – domestic or abroad – were not an obligation in the Netherlands, but a matter of choice, and, in some periods more than in others, of fashion.¹²

Again according to Brulez’s survey, Italian (87.8%), Austrian (71.2%) and artists from the Low Countries were the most often motivated to travel for commissions, while countries like England, Spain and Germany scored highly on the motive of education. These numbers indicate that, generally speaking, Italian artists and, to a lesser extent, the Austrian and Netherlandish ones, were educated in their own country and were attracted abroad by commissions. For English, Spanish and German artists, foreign travel was considered to constitute the completion of their education. Brulez claimed that the Netherlands were an export country of court artists as a result of the attraction of commissions abroad, in combination with a high density of artists at home.¹³

13
Jacob Houbraken after Arnold Houbraken
Portrait of Arnold Houbraken (1660-1719), 1718 or shortly before
The Hague, RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History

14
Joseph Antoine Couchet after David Beck published by Joannes Meyssens
Portrait of David Beck (1621-1656), before or in 1649
The Hague, RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History

Indeed it seems important to focus on migrating artists from the Low Countries who were active at foreign courts as a group. So far, not much attention has been paid to the subject in art-historical literature.¹⁴ In his lecture Court Artists from the Low Countries in Germany at the symposium Masters of Mobility, Marten Jan Bok claimed that Dutch artists were not very interested in having a permanent job serving princes and monarchs, as they treasured their freedom and independence, and, above all, because they lacked a subservient nature.¹⁵ To substantiate his point, he used Houbraken's story about the brothers Berckheyde as a pars pro toto. This train of thought seems to be in line with traditional art-historical notions. Also Gerson reported many times that long-term employment at some isolated court was not very desirable, as it could be a bit boring and involved other, less creative activities, such as refurbishing the castle, buying artworks for the collection and teaching the monarch’s offspring.¹⁶ Many rulers may have had a great interest in art, patronage and collecting, but the larger part of them cared more for hunting and warfare than anything else.

Nevertheless, it must have been attractive for artists to be attached to a court. Being allowed to work as a foreign artist in a city could be difficult and expensive, as one had to become a citizen, member of the guild and in some towns also deliver a ‘master’s piece’, which could be too big an investment for an artist who was not completely at home. In her prosopography of artists from the Low Countries who were active in Paris between 1550 and 1700, Stefanie Levert found that 24% of them were connected to the court or a member of the academy, which also meant protection of the court, 18% were established as masters in the guild and 15% was registered as a pupil or journeyman.¹⁷ This means that a substantial percentage of Netherlandish artists welcomed a connection to the court while they stayed in Paris.

We can use RKDartists& as an instrument for quantitative research in order to study the importance of court contacts for migrating artists. We tagged artists who made artworks directly for courts, including episcopal courts, or were documented as being employed by a sovereign.¹⁸ By selecting travelling artists who are tagged as ‘court artist’, we should get an impression of the amount of artists whose travels may have been motivated by commissions.¹⁹ However, we are not sure if the results are completely reliable for now, as the tagging of court artists possibly has been applied inconsistently in the past, and not all the data on travelling artists have been processed. So far, the average number of court artists abroad extracted from RKDartists& is much lower than the amounts indicated by Levert and the ones suggested by Brulez: only an average 15.3% of the travelling artists of the Low Countries appear to have been active in one or more courts.²⁰ Probably more representative are the substantial higher percentages of artists connected to the courts in Germany, Austria and Bohemia, as we will see below.

‘Court-hopping’ was not unusual for artists from the Low Countries: we see quite a number of them pop up at different courts all over Europe.²¹ Rulers sent their artists to other courts to portray family members or suitable brides, but it was also quite possible that it was the artists’ own initiative to try his luck at another court when it suited him.²² Annual salaries and other arrangements of payments occur in many archives of the financial administration of court households. In addition, it was also quite usual for a monarch to reward an artist with a golden chain and medal with his (or her) portrait, or other precious mementos, not only to honour the artist, but also to advance his own reputation [15-16].²³ It is clear that praise and rewards of princes looked good on an artist’s CV, so to speak, and was something to brag about. Plenty of anecdotes about these gifts occur in Van Mander, De Bie and Houbraken and artists who had such a golden chain proudly show it as an attribute in their self-portraits [17-20]. David Beck (1621-1656) [14] even boasted on having received as much as nine of these golden chains!²⁴ The above also indicates that commissions from foreign princes were sought after, not only to earn a living or to enjoy a protected status, but also to gain fame and glory.

15
Samuel van Hoogstraten
Letter rack with golden chain and medallion of Emperor Ferdinand III, in or after 1666
Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, inv./cat.nr. 2620

16
Golden medallion of Emperor Ferdinand III
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum

Lastly, there is a motive for traveling abroad that is not mentioned by Brulez, and is specific for painters, draughtsman and printmakers. This motive could be described as ‘motif collecting’, i.e. gathering attractive subjects and places which were new to the art market. For centuries, there was a vibrant market for topographical art of foreign places, particularly in prints and drawings. The artists often collaborated with publishing houses which were keen on publishing series of towns and regions. Some topographical artists, such as Anthonis van den Wijngaerde (c. 1525-1571), worked for a ruler, in this case Philip II of Spain, who commissioned him to document towns, which resulted in an extremely well-documented mobility of the artist in Spain, Italy, France and Britain. There was simply a huge demand for images of places as well as major events, particularly on the battlefield.²⁵ Drawings by travelling artists of whatever caught their eye while they were travelling, were used for multiple purposes. They could be sold during the trip to cover costs,²⁶ they could be used as sketches for more elaborate drawings to sell during or after the trip, they could be engraved back home and also be used as models for motifs or backgrounds in their paintings.²⁷ In the Dutch Republic, ‘motif collecting’ became a reason for the wanderings of landscapists who were trying to conquer a part of the diversifying art market with new types of remarkable views. By coining such motifs in their paintings, they could create a niche market. In some cases it was enough to have a short look just across the border, for example in the Cleves area, like Bad Bentheim [21].²⁸

21
Jacob van Ruisdael
Landscape with a view of Bentheim castle, dated 1653
Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland, inv./cat.nr. NGI 4531