CHAPTER 3 The Forchondt Business Model

3.1 Antwerp’s Painting Industry and Guilliam Forchondt

The practice of marketing paintings in Antwerp changed from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century. For a long time, the main outlets for paintings had been the traditional fairs and later the fixed sales halls in the Dominican cloister that opened in 1445 for luxury goods, including paintings. The Church of Our Lady followed the Dominican example and also built a pand in 1460. The hegemony of these two market outlets ended with the establishment in 1540 of the Schilderspand, or painters’ gallery, in the second floor of the New Exchange building, or New Beurs, finished in 1531. The Schilderspand enjoyed great success until the 1560s revolts and the Spanish takeover of the city in 1585.1 After these turbulent years, the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609–21) gave way to a gradual recovery of Antwerp’s economy and trade. The local demand for paintings also reflected this gradual recovery. Probate inventory studies show that local ownership of paintings in Antwerp households in fact increased during the seventeenth century and remained strong until 1680. Bruno Blondé estimated an average of 15.4 paintings per household in 1630 and of 24.35 in 1680.2 Only in 1730 do we observe a drop below the levels in 1630. From the supply side, the number of painters and dealers added to the Antwerp Guild grew especially between 1600 and 1650 as the specialization of art dealers also intensified—reflected in part in the many alternative designations for “dealer in paintings” that circulated, at least until mid-century.3 These developments

1 Vermeylen, Painting for the Market, 50–61. 2 See table 2 in Blondé, “Art and Economy,” 383. Blondé also quotes prior scholarship that explains the increasing ownership of paintings in Antwerp during its so-called Indian Summer through a conspicuous consumption function among burghers and a merchant elite that sought their “aristocratization” in the face of Antwerp’s lost preeminence in the European economy and trade. However, he notes that it does not fully explain Antwerp’s high level of ownership of paintings in households across income categories. 3 For the evolution of the designations merchant or dealer of artworks or more specifically paintings, see: De Marchi and Van Miegroet, “Exploring Markets for Netherlandish Paintings,” 82–85. Bruno Blondé relates the emergence of specialist dealers in paintings to two circum- stances: first, the still-growing local demand for paintings; and second, that centralized fairs and halls (such as the Schilderspand) gradually gave way to professional shopkeepers in the city. Blondé, “Art and Economy,” 379–91.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/9789004334830_005 74 CHAPTER 3 express a ­reinvigorated painting production, which started to slow down only from around 1650 and did so gradually.4 Throughout this period, as foreign merchants no longer frequented the city in the same substantial numbers as they had before, specialized Antwerp-based art dealers and traders in paint- ings took it upon themselves to supply existing markets for Flemish paint- ings and actively seek out new markets through their extended networks of agents in key cities abroad. A production of paintings for export thus sustained Antwerp’s overproduction levels—that is, in excess of local demand—during the majority of the seventeenth century.5 Guilliam Forchondt’s commercial activity sprang from his own workshop production as he increasingly engaged in selling his artworks and works by other artists.6 His natural development towards an international art dealer was in fact embraced by the local regulators, in contrast to painters’ guilds else- where. For instance, guilds in Spain and its territories in the Americas con- stantly strove to separate the production and the commercialization of art by prohibiting painters from selling works by other painters, which—in theory at least—restricted their activities to the primary market only. By contrast, Antwerp’s Guild of Saint Luke was quick to incorporate changing market reali- ties and embraced among its ranks producers of paintings as well as resellers. Regardless of whether this was a willing or unwilling stipulation, this shows that Antwerp’s community of painters was more attuned to market develop- ments than communities elsewhere. This view agrees with the scholarship of

4 These changes took place during the 17th century, especially after mid-century, and by the 18th century a different sort of consumption dynamics were very much in place. For these new consumption dynamics, see: Blondé and van Damme, “Retail Growth and Consumer Changes,” 638–63; Bert De Munck, “Skills, Trust and Changing Consumer Preferences: The Decline of Antwerp’s Craft Guilds from the Perspective of the product Market, c. 1500– c. 1800,” International Review of Social History 53, No. 2 (2008): 197–233. For a broader context, see also: Jan de Vries, The Industrious Revolution. 5 De Marchi, van Ginhoven and Van Miegroet, “Supply-Demand Imbalance,” 37–76. 6 As already mentioned in the first chapter, Guilliam Forchondt started in the furniture workshop of his father Melchior, a woodworker originally from Silesia who came to Ostend and later Antwerp in 1600. Melchior Vornhout and Franchoys van Stryp were the first two woodworkers established in the city. The different variants found of the name Forchondt are: Forchout, Forcum, Fourcaut, Fourchon, Vornhout. “Melsen Vorichout, ebbenlystmaker” appears in the 1612 list of masters in the Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp; see: Rombouts and van Lerius, De liggeren, 485. For Melchior’s father and his activity in Antwerp, see: Ria Fabri, De 17de-eeuwse Antwerpse kunstkast: typologische en historische aspecten (Brussel: Paleis der Academiën, 1991), 112–14. For the signature of Forchondt, see also: Erik Duverger, “Zeventiende-eeuwse schilderijen.” The name Guilliam Forchondt is used throughout these pages.