RKD STUDIES

The Schwerin collection was largely put together by this one prince. Next to being one of the finest treasures of its kind extant, it therefore mirrors the specific outlook of his period on the art of the Netherlands.

It is curious to see how Horst Gerson, a modern day scholar only sixty years before our time, today can be seen to clearly adhere to another canon than scholars do today. Together with virtually all his generation (1907-1978) he assumed the core characteristics of Dutch art to have run their course by the end of the century, as many remarks on the side convey. He for instance states that Dutch art around 1700 had lost its overall leading role throughout Europe.¹ The style of ‘Netscher-Verkolje’ to him is ‘not very Dutch’² and Matteus Terwesten not a pure proponent of true Dutch painting.³ He rates the late finepainting by Adriaen van der Werff and others, although in the unbroken tradition of Dutch influence, as ‘French-Dutch taste’ and a ‘symptom of decline’, wondering that ‘at the time it was regarded as wholesome (vollwertige) Dutch art’.⁴ In history painting, too, ‘French influence had destroyed the essential,⁵ and ‘by 1700, the domination of the Grand Style of Dutch art in Germany was over’.⁶

It is hardly surprising that with this framing Gerson could not do justice to the taste of the times in which the Schwerin collection was put together. On the other hand it must be admitted, that it was precisely Dutch art of the 17th century, its spreading out and its after-life he was occupying himself with, not the art of the 18th century per se. But it is obvious that he had little qualms about the confines, on the contrary its denigration came to him naturally.

Nevertheless, after seeing both Johann Nicolaus van Hafften and prince Friedrich visiting the van Mieris family in Leiden, chatting with the old Willem van Mieris about his father Frans the Elder and negotiating paintings by his son Frans the Younger, it is very hard indeed to see anything being ‘over’ by 1700. The duke of Mecklenburg was eager to acquire pictures of all three painters of the family. In fact, the three van Mieris generations are well represented in Christian Ludwig's collection to this day [1-2].⁷

The same holds true for still life painting. The name Jan Davidsz. de Heem obviously was high on the list, but so were Melchior d'Hondecoeter , Willem van Aelst, and, evidently, Otto Marseus van Schrieck.⁸ Jan van Huijsum stands apart from these only for the fact that he was still alive, and perhaps by ranking highest, but was not at all seen as anything new or categorically different, neither in the Dutch Republic nor by German collectors. As for the Nachwirkung of Dutch art in German painting, we have the example of Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich painting for Duke Christian Ludwig not only in Boucher’s manner [3] but at the same time in the wake of Nicolaes Berchem’s vein [4]. To be fair to Gerson, all the names actually are mentioned in his book.

Apart from getting an inadequate view on the history of art, the limitations of the 20th-century canon of Netherlandish art severely distort the outlook on the Schwerin collection. Many of the names that are the strength of the Schwerin collection were, in Gerson’s time, still seen as minor masters or representing a decline in Dutch art. The focus was on the beginnings of the special traits of Dutch painting and the ensuing ‘Golden Age’, in Dutch and German also called the ‘golden century’ that nevertheless was seen to have held sway only in the second and third quarter of the 17th century. It roughly encompassed Rembrandt’s active lifetime and was centered around Frans Hals, Johannes Vermeer and Jacob van Ruisdael, next to Rembrandt himself. Particularly, Dutch artists with Italian leanings still had to be rediscovered as belonging to the core of the nation’s art production and not at the side of it. The Italianate landscape painters were first celebrated in 1965 in an exhibition by Albert Blankert.⁹ It took two more decades to give Utrecht Caravaggism a place in the Dutch school actually shining a ‘New light on the Golden Age’ as late as 1986. The Leyden school of fijnschilders had been well known but hardly acknowledged as more than a strange preoccupation with a narrow and stiff form of art. Two influential exhibitions in 1988 and 1989 marked its high ranking with contemporaries and the pristine quality as well as its intricate iconography often enfused by deeply humanistic concepts.¹⁰ The painters active around 1700 had to wait until a new millennium to be rediscovered in exhibitions that introduced to the public a kind of Dutch art that had been seen as 'Verfallskunst', art in decline, by Gerson’s contemporaries. Confronting the actual works, it rather turns out to put 'de croon op het werk', to be the crowning achievement, as it were, of the art of the Netherlands.¹¹

Scholars are well aware of the continuity of the history of art. But the educated public still clings to the concepts that ultimately date from the times of Wilhelm von Bode. This outlook is sustained by the simple fact that most museums still hold the collections that were brought together in his time. Quite differently, the Schwerin paintings collection, mostly for lack of funds, has even until today remained by and large the collection of Christian Ludwig and therefore still represents the canon of Netherlandish art that was valid during the first half of the 18th century. During the mid-19th century, an attempt was made to broaden the collections in order to represent the whole of art history as it was understood then. Quantities of Italian, German and Netherlandish paintings, mostly of the 16th century, were added, but due to financial constraints few of these pieces are noteworthy.¹² After the opening of the museum to the public in 1882 there were a few more opportunities to acquire some Dutch and Flemish paintings filling gaps. Typically, these are pictures from the first half of the 17th century, because such works were mostly missing from the collection. Among the most remarkable of these late acquisitions are, for instance, two beautiful landscapes by Jan van Goyen [5] and a nice Jan Miense Molenaer [6], outstanding pieces by Alexander Keirincx [7] and Gillis Peeters [8], and an impressive landscape that is traditionally attributed to Allaert van Everdingen [9]. In the entire 20th century only a single painting from the Low Countries was acquired, a letter rack by Edward Collier [10].

The few additions do little to alter the very special 18th-century feeling the collection still conveys. The Dutch and Flemish masters have always been the core of the museum and, apart from the almost arbitrary fact of holding in number more Oudry paintings than any other collection in the world, they may easily be Schwerin's only claim to renown. Therefore, it can be said that it is not only the history of the collection, but the collection itself that is a showcase example of an important aspect of Gerson’s book.

1
Frans van Mieris (I)
Woman at a harpsichord, dated 1658
Schwerin, Staatliches Museum Schwerin, inv./cat.nr. G 82

2
Frans van Mieris (II)
Vertumnus and Pomona, dated 1716
Schwerin, Staatliches Museum Schwerin, inv./cat.nr. G 2346

3
Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich after Pierre Alexandre Aveline
The beautiful cook, 1744
Schwerin, Staatliches Museum Schwerin, inv./cat.nr. 2530

4
Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich
Southern landscape with shepherd and herd, dated 1744
Schwerin, Staatliches Museum Schwerin, inv./cat.nr. G 2543

5
Jan van Goyen
River landscape with windmill, dated 1648
Schwerin, Staatliches Museum Schwerin, inv./cat.nr. G 49

6
Jan Miense Molenaer
Merry company of peasants, c. 1640
Schwerin, Staatliches Museum Schwerin, inv./cat.nr. G 149