CONTENT AND ABSTRACTS

Jenny Reynaerts, ‘A Curious Case of Neglect: The Collection of Paintings from Baron Van Lynden and Baroness Van Pallandt’

The ‘Van Lynden Collection’ comprises forty-four paintings that were hung in the Lyndenstein country house in Beetsterzwaag by Baron van Lynden (1827-1896) and his mother Cornelia van Borcharen (1789-1864), and forty-six paintings purchased from 1860 onwards, when the baron married Maria Catharina, Baroness van Pallandt (1834-1905), for their residence in The Hague. The baroness’s involvement is not mentioned in archival documents because of women’s legal incapacity at the time. The article corrects this by referring to the Van Lynden-Van Pallandt Collection and discussing the history of all the works. Lyndenstein was home to an almost encyclopaedic selection of finely painted works by Dutch Romantic artists to which Van Lynden, when a young man, added paintings from exhibitions of Living Artists that mostly had already received awards. Louwrens Hanedoes, himself a painter and a relative, might have mediated and represented the baron in purchasing. In their Hague residence, Van Lynden and Van Pallandt hung modern French works painted in a loose or even sketchy manner. These were acquired during visits they made together to sales and galleries in Paris and through their commercial relationship with Goupil & Cie (from 1884 Boussod, Valadon & Cie) and the firm of Wisselingh & Co, both with branches in the Netherlands. The collection from Lyndenstein arrived in the Rijksmuseum in 1899; in 1900 it was followed by the Hague collection, which had also been bequeathed but was then donated by Baroness van Pallandt during her lifetime. It was not possible to keep the Van Lynden-Van Pallandt Collection together because of the rapid expansion of the collection of late nineteenth-century paintings, the changing appreciation of modern art and the nationalist preference for Dutch art in general and the Hague School in particular, and long-term loans to other institutions. A number of the French masterpieces were not hung permanently until after the Rijksmuseum had been renovated (2013).

Ige Verslype, ‘A Unique Painting Ensemble Explored: A Technical Study of Jurriaan Andriessen’s Painted Chamber for 524 Herengracht in Amsterdam’

The back room of 524 Herengracht in Amsterdam houses a painted ensemble of Arcadian landscapes, made in 1771 by the Amsterdam wall hanging painter Jurriaan Andriessen (1742-1819). Technical research has shown that a complex creative process underlies this ensemble, in which major changes were made at various times. It demonstrates the painter’s quest for a balanced composition. An essential element in the painted wall hangings of Andriessen, who is known to have arranged his compositions in such a way as to guide the viewer’s gaze and movement through the room. The research also showed various techniques Andriessen used in the production of his paintings. For instance, he used a special measuring system and squaring grids to transfer the compositions from small sketch to large format canvas (one square in the sketches corresponding to one square foot in the canvases). It also appears that the painter arranged his compositions in such a way that the canvases could be easily adjusted for size in the event that the opening in the panelling was a little larger or smaller than envisaged. It could also be shown that Andriessen painted some elements in the room itself. As was customary at the time, Andriessen allied the shadows in his wall hangings to the fall of the natural light in the room. Remarkably, the painter hereby adjusted the light-dark contrasts to the position of the paintings in the room. In the hangings next to the windows, for example, the contrasts are greatly increased, with which the painter anticipated the bright backlighting that affected one’s view of these paintings. This attests to its strong connection to the room. A connection that has been preserved thanks to the efforts that the Van den Santheuvel, Sobbe Foundation, and the Rijksmuseum took at the time to maintain the interior in situ.

Daniel Hendrikse, ‘Body Double: Stereographic X-rays in the Rijksmuseum’s Collection’

The Rijksmuseum’s collection contains a number of X-rays, part of a series entitled Das Arteriensystem des Menschen im stereoskopischen Röntgenbild: ten stereoscopic X-rays that show the blood vessels and arteries in different parts of the body in adults and children. They were taken by three doctors, Otto Hildebrand, Wilhelm Scholz and Julius Wieting, from Hamburg-Eppendorf Hospital, and published by the scientific publishing house of J.F. Bergmann in Wiesbaden between 1901 and 1917. This article tries to nuance the view of stereoscopic photographs as merely a cheap source of entertainment; physicians deliberately opted for stereoscopic photographs to show the plasticity and depth of the human body.

Nora Belmadani, Marije Jansen, Charles Kang, Austėja Mackelaitė, Hans Rooseboom,
Maud Van Suylen and Laurien Van Der Werff, ‘Print Room Acquisitions’