athena art foundation — The View From Leamington Spa: Copies In Dutch Painting

by Jane Simpkiss

*Basket of Flowers,* Attributed to studio of Jan Van Kessel, probably c. 1650-1675, Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum

Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum, like most regional and national collections, holds a number of copies. In fact, the majority of our Dutch paintings are copies, either reproducing a certain artist’s style or directly copying an original painting. Some of these copies were painted in the 17th century but others were made many years later. Nowadays, we are often more interested in seeing original masterpieces by the genius artists of an age. The presence of caveats such as ‘after’, ‘studio of’ and ‘circle of’ can be seen as an immediate turn-off, often implying as they do works of seemingly lesser quality that were never touched by the master’s hand. However, such a fascination with the ‘authentic original’ is, as many scholars have commented, rather anachronistic. This approach can undervalue the significant role copies played in the Netherlands in the 17th and 18th centuries and the complex socio-economic conditions which defined how paintings were made. A deeper exploration of what copies are and how they have been understood allows us to re-examine the hierarchy in which we place paintings from this period, particularly in museums, leading to a greater appreciation of these under-valued works and a more nuanced reading of so-called ‘originals’.

Today, the words ‘original’ or ‘authentic’ are often loaded terms. They are infused with ideas derived from 18th-century art theory which placed importance on an artwork being produced by one, identifiable hand from that same artist’s original idea. However, these words would not necessarily have had the same meaning in the Netherlands in the 17th-century. Whilst a master’s name held great importance, the idea of the ‘authentic original’ held less sway. Artists like Rubens, Rembrandt and Van Dyck had vast workshops of artists who would assist them with the large quantity of works they needed to produce. In some cases, a member of an artist’s studio would complete the majority of the work on a painting, with only the finishing touches added by the master’s hand. An artist’s name, therefore, acted in this instance, more as an assurance of quality rather than a guarantee that it was solely by them. Indeed, a key part of an artist’s training as a pupil would have been to copy the works of their master. Artists like Abraham Bloemaert produced resources such as his Tekenboeck, a book of 166 prints based on his own drawings to be used as a teaching compendium, so that they could be studied and, most likely, copied from. Once a pupil’s copies were of a certain standard, they could even be sold under the master’s own name, a practice used by Rembrandt. This practice could cause confusion. So many paintings were made after the work of Willem van Mieris and his father Frans during their lifetime that, in one recorded instance, Frans van Mieris the Elder could not be called upon to correctly identify a work done by one of his pupils. The importance of the master’s name as a mark of quality control and, later, as a tool for museological categorisation, has meant that the names of many of the artists who produced Dutch copies are lost to us.

With this in mind, we can start to look at copies of artworks from this period in a slightly different way. Copies were not necessarily seen as lesser versions of a masterful original: in fact, they were highly sought after by a number of collectors. Copies of a particular painting could be commissioned by an art dealer with access to the ‘original’ or created at the direction of the artist himself. Copies existed at numerous price points depending on their quality and the labour involved in making them, allowing collectors of all incomes to own fashionable and popular paintings. Technical analysis of copies of Gerrit Dou’s paintings indicates that artists often used fewer layers of paint to make these works, meaning less labour was involved which justified a cheaper price. The existence of copying as a practice in the Netherlands not only benefitted the collector, but also the artist; it allowed him to diversify his output, generating greater income and further increasing public awareness of his work.

*A Visit from the Doctor*, After Caspar Netscher, 1775-1800, Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum

Owning a copy also allowed connoisseurs to see a master’s work if it had left the country or their local area, or if the original was lost. Indeed, rather than a lesser work, the copy was sometimes seen as a direct substitute for the original. This reasoning still applies today. The dissemination of Dutch copies means that more people have access to Dutch paintings beyond national collections and ensures that certain images have been preserved although the original no longer exists. Caspar Netscher’s The Doctor’s Visit, (see above), for example, was destroyed in Dresden in 1945. However, at least 21 copies were produced after this work, one of which is still safely on display in Leamington. LSAG&M’s copy after Jan Both of A View on the Tiber, near the Ripa Grande, Rome, can be seen simultaneously there and at the National Gallery, London where the original is located.

Copies could also be made to advance political messages, as was the case with the painting in LSAG&M’s collection, Cavalcade of the Princes of Nassau, after Adriaen van de Venne. The figures in this painting include William I, Prince of Orange, riding at the centre surrounded by three of his sons and three Counts of Nassau. These men were seen as the heroes of the liberation of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic in the Eighty Years War. This painting is one of several showing the same scene paid for by the States General (the government of the Dutch Republic) (for comparison refer to the collection of the Rijksmuseum). The image was also distributed through engravings.

Not all copies produced in this period can be traced back to an original ‘source’ painting. Copying was not considered to be an act of slavish imitation but was intended to incorporate an element of creative variety, whether produced under the eye of the master in a workshop or by an artist in a later period. Collectors enjoyed analysing the variations of a painting and were reassured of a work’s connection to a master through the inclusion of repeated motifs such as, in the case of Gerrit Dou, the framing device of the window. It is for this reason that some scholars have chosen to refer to these works not as copies but as repetitions and to even acknowledge the existence of ‘multiple originals’. Charles I is said to have had at least 60 copies of Old Master paintings in his vast collection, sometimes of works of which he already owned the ‘original’. The many previous attributions given to works in Leamington’s collection and the difficulties of identifying an individual author are testament to the interconnected networks that existed in the seventeenth century period of artists working in another’s style.

Copies made after an artist’s death can act as an important historical record of changing artistic tastes and preoccupations. Those made in the 18th century in the Netherlands are a testament to the enduring appeal of ‘Dutch Golden Age’ works and the place they held in the Dutch national imagination. Portrait of an Elderly Husband and Wife has been attributed to an artist working in Leiden (possibly after Willem van Mieris) in the late 17th or early 18th century (see above). The finely observed dog and tapestry indicate the artist’s appreciation for the fijnschilders (fine painters) of the earlier period, but the rendering of the figures’ faces, which is cruder than those produced by Mieris himself, suggests they were not working closely with these artists.

There are certain 18th- and 19th-century copies in LSAG&M’s collection which show sections of more famous images. The artist of Outgaping an Oven, for example, has selected one character from Flemish artist David Teniers the Younger’s much larger canvas at Belvoir Castle entitled The Proverbs. The character represents the medieval proverb that ‘he who would out-gape an oven will have to gape for a long time'. In other words, there is no point in trying to achieve the impossible, as the mouth of an oven will always gape wider. The reasoning is not entirely clear, but it highlights the long-standing interest in these works, as well as the desire to own, even just a small part of a larger original. Interestingly, there are familial as well as artistic ties at work here: Tenier’s The Proverbs is clearly based upon the work Netherlandish Proverbs by his grandfather-in-law Pieter Bruegel the Elder, further highlighting the network of repeated imagery embedded in the visual culture of the period. Whilst the quality of copies from this period undoubtedly varies, especially when compared to works where a master was more directly involved, these paintings perform an important art-historical function. They are vital to our understanding of the circumstances under which paintings were developed, made, and sold. Furthermore, they help us to understand the market for and reception of an artist’s work, not only in their own time but in the centuries since, right up to the present day when such works are still readily bought and sold.

Jane Simpkiss is the Art Curator at Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum where she is responsible for the art collection and art exhibition programme. She specialises in seventeenth and eighteenth-century British and Dutch painting. Before working at Leamington Spa, she undertook freelance positions and interned at the Royal Collection Trust, Royal Museums, Greenwich and Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Selected texts

Junko Aono, ‘Reproducing the Golden Age: Copies after Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century, Oud Holland’ (2008), 121:1, pp. 1-34

Maddalena Bellavitis (ed.) ‘Making copies in European art 1400 to 1600, shifting tastes modes of transmission and changing contexts, Brill's Studies in Intellectual History’ (2018), 286:30

Sietske Fransen & Katherine M. Reinhart, ‘The practice of copying in making knowledge in Early Modern Europe: an introduction, Word & Image’ (2019), 35:3, pp. 211-222

Neil De Marchi and Hans J. Van Miegroet, ‘Art, Value, and Market Practices in the Netherlands in the Seventeenth Century’ (1994), The Art Bulletin, 76:3, pp. 451-464

Charlotte Guichard, ‘What is Authenticity? New Insights in the History of Original and Autographic Painting in Early Modern Europe’ (2010), Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 65:6, pp. 1387-1401

Jochai Rosen and Pieter Codde, ‘The Industry of Copies in 17th-century Dutch Painting’ in The Primacy of the Image in Northern European Art, 1400–1700 (2017), pp. 564–571

If you would like to write a feature piece about your own collection for Athena Art Foundation, we would love to hear from you! Please send your proposal to: esme@athenaartfoundation.org