Going Dutch_ How England Plundered Holland's Glory - Lisa Jardine [55]
Art auctioned in Antwerp passed from one owner to another quite rapidly, whereas élite owners considered their acquisitions as part of a sustained process, sometimes extending over an entire lifetime, of building a valuable and distinguished collection. The middle half of the seventeenth century was a period during which plague and other epidemics took their toll. It was also a period of fluctuating financial fortunes, with bankruptcy a frequent occurrence among those trying to make their living in the new markets. Art collections crop up regularly in the ‘Orphan Chamber’ auctions in Amsterdam, at which the possessions of deceased citizens were sold on behalf of their underage heirs, in order to provide for their subsequent upbringing, and in the so-called ‘Desolate Boedelkamer’ (bankruptcy chamber). Here, complete collections of systematically accumulated paintings which had hung on the walls of one family home, pass to another. In a number of such cases, relatives of the deceased acquired several items, or entire collections, thereby keeping well-loved works in the family.7
Paulus Bisschop, whose art collection was auctioned by his widow in 1620, was born in London to parents from the south Netherlands, and lived there until at least 1601, when he was betrothed to Elizabeth van der Moer. After Elizabeth’s death he remarried, and moved back to the Low Countries, where he built up a significant collection of paintings by northern artists. Bisschop’s second wife was Petronella van Baerle, the sister of David van Baerle. Another sister of David’s, Susanna, married Sir Constantijn Huygens. At the auction of Paulus Bisschop’s art collection, David van Baerle bought four Dutch paintings, while another brother, Johan van Baerle II, bought four further paintings and ‘an atlas with horn bound in gold’.8 All but one of the paintings – including several landscapes and a ‘painting of a market with fruit’ – cost them between nine and fifty-six guilders; the most expensive of the works acquired was a landscape by Gillis van Coninckloo, for which Jan paid 120 guilders. When David himself died, his 1671 inventory still contained a number of the paintings he had acquired more than fifty years earlier.
Auctions, however, introduced a further element of risk into the acquisition of works of art. Private dealers could be asked to vouch for the authenticity of a work attributed to a particular artist, and buyers could – and did – complain to the supplier of a painting if it failed to comply with the description provided by them. Sir Dudley Carleton, for instance, protested to Rubens that paintings offered to him as by the hand of the artist himself were in fact largely the work of his studio. Rubens was quick to replace them with works he could vouch for as being entirely his own – it would not do to acquire a reputation for passing off inferior work as original. In a market in which legitimate copies of rare works and works by prestigious artists circulated freely, a bidder at auction might find himself with a copy when he had believed himself to be bidding on an original.
Jan Meurs, an Antwerp city councillor, died in January 1652. He left an impressive collection of paintings, largely by artists from the region, and the sale of his effects in May caused a considerable stir. A number of items were carefully identified in the sale catalogue as copies (mostly of rare works which Meurs knew he was unlikely ever to get the chance to purchase as originals). Several further items, however, were listed as originals, but had had questions raised about them by the auctioneer, Hendrik Tessers, who was knowledgeable about paintings. One of these was a Cattle Market by Jan I Brueghel, which Tessers was unsure was genuine. At the auction itself, Tessers began the bidding on