Going Dutch_ How England Plundered Holland's Glory - Lisa Jardine [93]
This was to be no palace, Huygens hastened to add:
It will only be on a small scale, and to the extent that the climate and my coffers will allow. But the fact remains that, in the heat of these considerations, I hardly need tell you how eager I am to steer you in my direction here, since you excel in the knowledge of this illustrious field of study, as you do in everything else, and could give me many lessons in it. But the fates intend otherwise … If I manage to realise my plans successfully, I will in any case inform you further, on paper or in person.5
Huygens was true to his word. On 2 July 1639 (a year before the artist’s death), he sent Rubens a set of engravings of his completed house: ‘Here as I promised is the bit of brick that I have built at The Hague.’6 His pride in the gracious home he has created is palpable, as is his respect for Rubens as a connoisseur of antique and modern buildings. At the end of the letter, almost as an afterthought, Huygens added the real business of his communication – a commission from Frederik Hendrik for a painting to be placed above the hearth in his palace, the subject to be of Rubens’s choosing, but with three, ‘at most four’, figures, ‘the beauty of whom should be elaborated con amore, studio e diligenza’.7
So when, in the 1650s, on his frequent visits to Antwerp, Sir Constantijn Huygens attended musical soirées at the home of William and Margaret Cavendish, or spent the afternoon with Margaret in her chemistry laboratory, he was able to take a particularly keen pleasure in frequenting the very house about which he and Rubens had corresponded – the home created by a kindred architectural spirit in his heyday. And the Cavendishes and Sir Constantijn undoubtedly carried back with them, upon their return to England and the United Provinces, an enhanced and deepened understanding of Rubens’s carefully reconstructed architectural neoclassicism, to feed into future projects of their own.
Huygens took a connoisseur’s interest in architecture throughout his life. The country house he designed for himself at Hofwijk, completed in 1642, was his pride and joy, and he loved to invite close friends there to enjoy the beauty of the location, and to savour the elegance and congeniality of the building.8 He worked tirelessly advising Frederik Hendrik and Amalia van Solms on their extensive and ambitious building works at the Dutch royal palaces – Frederik Hendrik had a reputation as a knowledgeable amateur of architecture himself, and involved himself closely in the design process.9 It was Huygens, too, who, in consultation with van Campen, completed the careful integrated programme of architecture and painting for the Oranjezaal of the Huis ten Bosch on the outskirts of The Hague (designed by Pieter Post), where an elaborate cycle of paintings and decoration commemorated and glorified the achievements of Frederik Hendrik for his widow Amalia van Solms, following Frederik Hendrik’s death in 1647 (the project was completed in 1652).10 The Cavendishes, once back in England after the Restoration, retired from public life and devoted themselves almost entirely to architectural projects for William’s hereditary seats at his main Nottinghamshire home, Welbeck Abbey, and at Bolsover.11
The story of the interchange of talent and expertise in architecture between England and the Dutch Republic has been told a number of times. That of the close relationship between horticulture and garden design in the two countries, less often. In the case of Dutch and English gardens it is also possible to see that the similarities in practice are overlaid on a subtly different set