RKD STUDIES

All painting genres ─ landscape, history, genre, portrait, still-life and architectural painting ─ are represented In the Dutch and Flemish sections of the Miniature Cabinet. In what follows, I will focus on landscape, history and genre painting.

It does not come as a surprise that, in the Miniature Cabinet, landscapists are predominant within the ‘Dutch school’. The naturalistic landscape with its rustic views of the local countryside is characterised, for example, by Esaias van de Velde (1587–1630), whose Rocky Landscape with Ruin and Horsemen is signed and dated 1624,¹ or by Jan van Goyen (1596–1656), who is represented with a few river landscapes.² However, the southern or Italianate landscapes clearly outnumber these typically Dutch landscapes Many of them are copies or imitations. An interesting example is the Southern evening landscape [16], which was formerly considered (by Carl Prehn) as a work of Frederik de Moucheron (1633–1686), but in fact a copy after a composition by Jan Both (ca. 1615–1652) which only survived in a (preparatory?) drawing in the Rijksmuseum [17]. Thanks to the Prehn copy we can assume that an executed painting by Both did exist, since the drawing probably did not serve as the model for the small copy. The latter in turn provides us with an impression of the lost original painting in colour. Judging by the clothing of the figures (which, incidentally, are not shown in the drawing) with the fashionable long justaucorps and the rider’s tricorn, the Prehn copy was not produced before the 18th century. Unfortunately, we do not know where it was painted and by whom, which might have given us further information on the whereabouts of the original.

The preference for southern and Italianate landscapes and especially for the pastoral landscapes by Nicolaes Berchem is no peculiarity of the confectioner. According to Horst Gerson this preference was typical for 18th-century collectors in Frankfurt, which he explained by the existence of the local school of Johann Heinrich Roos (1631–1685) and Theodor Roos (1638–1687) who already painted such subjects in the 17th century.³ Prehn owned several works by members of the Roos family, especially by the former, all of them in the collection of ‘larger’ paintings, besides some copies in the Miniature Cabinet. Amongst them are an obviously impressive Ox Wading in the Water,⁴ which is known only by an etching of Johann Friedrich Morgenstern (1777–1844), and a picturesque Roma Camp in a Roman Ruin,⁵ acquired by the Städelsche Kunstinstitut at the second Prehn auction in 1842 for the handsome price of 160 gulden.⁶

Several italianate landscapes in the Prehn Collection depict mythological or biblical scenes. Apart from a handful of copies and works from the circle of Cornelis van Poelenburch (1594–1667), ⁷ the Finding of Moses by his best pupil Daniel Vertangen (1601–1681) is particularly noteworthy [18]. The picture is meticulously executed, with finely drawn faces and a porcelain-like smoothness in the incarnates. The figures are, as typical for Vertangen, more elongated and angular than those of his teacher. Increased attention to detail and smaller areas as well as a tendency towards playfulness are evident in the fabrics and garments with their countless billowing folds, which possibly hint at a creation of the painting rather late in a hypothetical line of development of his oeuvre. Vertangen painted the subject at least four times.⁸

The early Flemish landscape is represented by some very fine examples by Adriaen van Stalbemt (1580–1662)⁹ and Jan Brueghel I (1586–1625) or his circle.¹⁰ The companion pieces by Peeter Gijsels (1621–1690), River Landscape with a Village and a Wide Landscape with Travellers by Wagon and Horseback [19-20], were listed as ‘J. Breughel’ in the auction catalogue of 1829.¹¹ At a later date, possibly when the small paintings were restored by the Morgenstern family in 1831, the signature was discovered on the latter. Consequetly, Ernst Friedrich Carl Prehn changed the artist’s name in the handwritten register of the catalogue into ‘Gÿzen’.¹² This spelling of his name was used primarily by early biographers like Arnold Houbraken (1660–1719) and Johann Dominico Fiorillo (1748–1821), who’s characterisation of the artist seems is in line with his works in the Prehn collection: ‘His skies are too dark-blue, his trees too green, without the haziness and airiness that one perceives in distant objects’.¹³

Quite a few of the smoothly executed landscapes as well as the rougher, mass-produced ones seem to derive from Antwerp cabinets, as one can tell by the characteristic narrow shape of the small panels and copper plates. Fine examples of such works are two landscapes in portrait format with Apollo and Daphne and Cephalus and Procris, attributed today to Hans Jordaens III (1595–1643),¹⁴ but in 1829 listed as ‘Brueghel’. A river scene in a narrow, landscape format was painted on the cut-out, reused back of a copperplate for Gerard de Jode’s (1516–1591) Atlas Speculum Orbis Terrarum; it was probably painted by Abraham Govaerts (1589–1626),¹⁵ who is known to have executed small paintings for Antwerp cabinets.

The amount of Flemish history paintings in Prehn’s collections equals that of Flemish landscapes; with our new attributions, the number of history paintings is even higher. This group is dominated by sacred histories and contains only a few allegories and mythological themes, all of varying quality. There are routinely, often stiffly painted copies after engraved models, as well as high-quality individual paintings, such as the small, monogrammed Virgin and Child by Erasmus Quellinus II (1607–1678) of about 1640-1645, which probably also came from an Antwerp cabinet.¹⁶

Evidently, Johann Valentin Prehn wanted to play with a variety of themes and references in the composition of his Miniature Cabinet; the quality of the individual paintings was of secondary importance. In the second box, he placed a very delicately painted teamwork by Jan Breughel I and Hendrick van Balen I (1573–1632) depicting Three Nymphs Eavesdropping on a Satyr in the upper row on the left side [21], combining it, on the right-hand side, with a clumsy and crude copy after an etching published by the Amsterdam print seller Clement de Jonghe (1624–1677) showing Venus and Cupid Sleeping, Watched by a Satyr [22]. With subtle humour, the confectioner created a contrast in quality but a coherence in the erotically tinged subjects, in which the active roles of the satyr and nymphs in eavesdropping or spying are reversed.¹⁷

16
after Jan Both
Southern evening landscape, 18th century
Frankfurt am Main, Historisches Museum Frankfurt, inv./cat.nr. HMF, Pr210

17
Jan Both
Mountainous landscape with a ruin near a lake
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv./cat.nr. RP-T-1961-67(R)

18
Daniel Vertangen
Landscape with the finding of Moses (Exodus 2)
Frankfurt am Main, Historisches Museum Frankfurt, inv./cat.nr. HMF.Pr269

19
Peeter Gijsels (I)
Landscape with a village by a river
Frankfurt am Main, Historisches Museum Frankfurt, inv./cat.nr. HMF.Pr661

20
Peeter Gijsels (I)
Wide landscape with travellers by wagon and on horseback
Frankfurt am Main, Historisches Museum Frankfurt, inv./cat.nr. HMF.Pr105

Nearly all genre paintings of the Netherlandish school date from the 17th century. Only a few exceptions can be named, for example a pair of paintings by the little-known painter Abraham Carré (1694–1762) from The Hague [23-24] which are signed and dated 1720. Typical for Prehn, the counterparts unite a Man with a Pipe, a low genre scene, with a Girl with a Letter by Candlelight, a high life scene which goes back to the Leiden Fijnschilders. According to the auction catalogue of 1829, both trends of genre painting were equally represented in the Miniature Cabinet and the ‘larger’-sized painting collection. However, according to today’s attributions, the peasant genre clearly predominates, because the artists of several of these works listed in the 1829 auction catalogue as ‘unknown’, are now assigned to artists of the Dutch or Flemish schools. This applies, for example, to the two genre figures dated 1620 and monogrammed ‘H.B.’ that can be added to the small oeuvre of Horatius Bollongier (c. 1601–before 1682) [25-26].¹⁸ They show the influence of Adriaen Brouwer (1603–1638) in their ribald humour and are smoothly executed, with precise, pointed brushstroke in the details. Obviously, Johann Valentin Prehn’s was fond of humorous and sometimes carnivalesque subjects; in his collection of ‘larger’ paintings he kept a very similar work showing a fighting couple consisting of a cooper and a potter dressed in absurd costumes made of their own products, which is attributed to the workshop of Pieter Jansz. Quast (1605–1647).¹⁹