Circle of Hendrick Goltzius, Study of a Male Lumpsucker

Carina Fryklund Curator, Old Master Drawings and

Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Stockholm Volume 22 Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, © Stockholms Auktionsverk, Stockholm Graphic Design is published with generous support from (Fig. 5, p. 35) BIGG the Friends of the Nationalmuseum. © Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels (Fig. 2, p. 38) Layout Nationalmuseum collaborates with © Teylers Museum, (Fig. 3, p. 39) Agneta Bervokk Svenska Dagbladet and Grand Hôtel Stockholm. © Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Shelfmark: We would also like to thank FCB Fältman & Riserva.S.81(int.2) (Fig. 2, p. 42) Translation and Language Editing Malmén. © Galerie Tarantino, Paris (Figs. 3–4, p. 43) Gabriella Berggren, Erika Milburn and © Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain Martin Naylor Cover Illustration (Figs. 3–4, pp. 46–47) Anne Vallayer (1744–1818), Portrait of a Violinist, © National Library of Sweden, Stockholm Publishing 1773. Oil on canvas, 116 x 96 cm. Purchase: (Figs. 5–6, pp. 48–49) Janna Herder (Editor) and Ingrid Lindell The Wiros Fund. Nationalmuseum, NM 7297. © Uppsala Auktionskammare, Uppsala (Publications Manager) (Fig. 1, p. 51) Publisher © Landsarkivet, Gothenburg/Johan Pihlgren Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum is published Berndt Arell, Director General (Fig. 3, p. 55) annually and contains articles on the history and © Västergötlands museum, Skara (Fig. 4, p. 55) theory of art relating to the collections of the Editor © Svensk Form Design Archive/Centre for Nationalmuseum. Janna Herder Business History (Fig. 2, p. 58) © Svenskt Tenn Archive and Collection, Nationalmuseum Editorial Committee Stockholm (Fig. 4, p. 60) Box 16176 Janna Herder, Linda Hinners, Merit Laine, © Denise Grünstein (Fig. 5, p. 152) SE–103 24 Stockholm, Sweden Lena Munther, Magnus Olausson, Martin Olin, © The National Gallery, (Figs. 1–3, 6–7, www.nationalmuseum.se Maria Perers and Lidia Westerberg Olofsson 17, pp. 167–169, 172–173, 179) © Nationalmuseum, the authors and the owners © The National Museum of Art, Architecture and of the reproduced works Photographs Design, Oslo/Jarre Anne Hansteen, CC-BY-NC Nationalmuseum Photographic Studio/ (Fig. 8, p. 174) ISSN 2001-9238 Linn Ahlgren, Bodil Beckman, Erik Cornelius, © Nicholas Penny (Figs. 9–10, 12–14, 16, Anna Danielsson, Cecilia Heisser, Per-Åke Persson pp. 175, 177, 179) and Hans Thorwid © Museum Gustavianum, Uppsala (Fig. 11, p. 176) Picture Editor © Getty Museum CC-BY. Digital image courtesy of Rikard Nordström the Gettys Open Content Program (Fig. 15, p. 178) Photo Credits © The Swedish Royal Court/Håkan Lind © Samlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle, (Fig. 9, p. 188) Hamburg (Fig. 5, p. 15) © Eva-Lena Bergström (Figs. 1, 3–4, 6–7, 9, © Museum Bredius The Hague (Fig. 6, p. 16) pp. 191–192, 194–196, 198) © The National Museum of Art, Architecture and © Statens Museum for Kunst/National Gallery of Design, Oslo/Jacques Lathion (Fig. 2, p. 23) Denmark, Copenhagen, CC-PD (Fig. 2, p. 193) © Kalmar läns museum, Kalmar/Rolf Lind © The Nordic Museum, Stockholm/Karolina (Fig. 3, p. 27) Kristensson (Fig. 5, p. 195)

Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Volume 22, 2015 acquisitions/study of a male lumpsucker

Circle of Hendrick Goltzius, Study of a Male Lumpsucker

Carina Fryklund Curator, Old Master Drawings and Paintings

Fig. 1 Circle of Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617), Study of a Male Lumpsucker (Cyclopterus lumpus L.), 1590s. Watercolour and washes, over traces of black and red chalk, 226 x 365 mm. Purchase: The Wiros Fund. Nationalmuseum, NMH 12/2015.

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Fig. 2 Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617), Lumpsucker, 1589. Black, red and yellow chalk, washes, 230 x 310 mm. Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels.

The Nationalmuseum has acquired fresh impetus not least from the Haarlem cedents in the art of Albrecht Dürer and an impressive watercolour Study of a Male circle in which Goltzius moved. There were Joris Hoefnagel. Commissioned by rulers, Lumpsucker (Fig. 1), dating probably from menageries at many European courts, and universities, and collectors, artists were ma- the mid- to late 1590s.1 The drawing is universities founded botanical gardens. king large numbers of detailed drawings of closely connected with a group of nature The recording of different aspects of the plants and animals from nature. studies executed around the same time visible world formed part of the humanist The present life-size study of a male by the Dutch artist Hendrick Goltzius creed, and inspired contemporary col- lumpsucker would have fitted perfectly in (1558–1617), an important figure in the lectors to assemble albums of increasingly a distinguished 16th-century cabinet of na- rising tide of interest in the phenomena of accurate drawings from nature and to fill tural history. The image is entirely in line the natural world that occurred in Euro- their cabinets with valuable specimens. By with the urge at the time to record the de- pe in the second half of the 16th century. the last decades of the 16th century, studies tails of different species of animals, particu- Interest in nature in all its forms had the of animals and plants had become an esta- larly the rarer ones. Found in coastal areas highest academic priority, and received a blished genre in the , with pre- of the Atlantic, the lumpsucker is a poor

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Fig. 3 Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617), John Dory (Zeus faber L.), c. 1595–1600. Various coloured chalks, rubbed with a stump, lightly washed, 179 x 319 mm. Teylers Museum, Haarlem.

swimmer and spends most of its life stuck Leiden in the 1620s. Moving beyond the interest in rare species of fish and marine in rocky crevices. Its thick skin lacks scales, nascent spirit of scientific enquiry, unfami- mammals. Aside from the lumpsucker, he rows of wart-like lumps run the length of liar natural phenomena of all kinds could drew a John Dory (Haarlem, Teylers Mu- its sides and back, while the ventral fins also encompass negative associations to the seum)4 (Fig. 3), a sperm whale and a pilot form a sectorial disc on its belly. Its back is occult. It is thus possible that the odd-look- whale and, through old sale catalogues, we blue-grey, the sides are paler. In the male ing lumpsucker might have been interpre- also know of a crab and a shark. In terms the colours are at their most intense during ted as a bad omen.2 of materials and technique, however, the the mating season, as seen here, when its The Stockholm study was long consi- newly acquired sheet differs from Goltzius’ sides, belly, and fins turn a red-orange. This dered to be a work by Goltzius himself, autograph studies, a majority of which were study, executed with a brush in watercolour based on comparisons with his meticu- drawn almost entirely in coloured chalks and ink washes, over traces of black and red lous coloured study of a lumpsucker (Fig. with only some added wash. The Stockholm chalk, combines transparency and opacity 2), signed and dated “1589”, in Brussels drawing is, therefore, no longer considered in such a way that the colour and special (Bibliothèque Royale Albert I).3 The artist to be a work by the Haarlem master, but texture of the lumpsucker is rendered in a here resorted to a combination of colour- rather by someone in his immediate circle. wholly realistic fashion. Due to its unusual ed chalks and ink washes that is unusually The study comes from the renowned appearance, the lumpsucker seems to have elaborate among his surviving drawings, in- collection assembled by Professor I. Q. van been regarded as something of a curiosi- viting associations to Dürer, who had used Regteren Altena (1899–1980), Amster- ty and was, for example, represented by a watercolour in several studies of plants and dam, and its purchase was made possible specimen in the Theatrum Anatomicum at animals. Goltzius clearly had a particular through a generous contribution from the

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Wiros Fund. It represents a significant ad- dition to the Museum’s excellent collection of Old Master drawings and, at the same time, adds a new perspective to the group of nature studies by Goltzius and his circle.

Notes: The author would like to thank paper conservator Cécile Gombaud for assistance with the inter- pretation of the technical data. 1. Watercolour and ink wash, over traces of black and red chalk, 226 x 365 mm. Inv. no. NMH 12/2015. Purchased at Amsterdam, Christie’s, 13 May 2015, lot 115. Provenance: Coll. J. Q. van Regteren Altena (1899–1980), Amsterdam; by inheritance to his heirs. Bibliography: Jeroen Giltaj in Le Cabinet d’un amateur: Dessins flamands et hollandais des XVI et XVIIe siècles d’une collection privée, (exh.cat.), Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, / Fondation Custodia, Paris/ Bibliothèque Royale Albert I, Brussels 1976–77, no. 60, pl. 32 (as Goltzius); Martin Royalton-Kisch, in Dawn of the Golden Age: Northern Netherlandish Art, 1580–1620, (exh. cat.), , Amsterdam 1993–94, p. 355, under no. 19, note 2 (attrib. to Goltzius). 2. Royalton-Kisch in Amsterdam 1993–94, p. 355, under no. 19. 3. E. K. J. Reznicek, Die Zeichnungen von Hendrick Goltzius, Utrecht 1961, vol. 1, no. 418, vol. 2, pl. A 117; and Martin Royalton-Kisch in Amsterdam, 1993–94, no. 19, repr. 4. Reznicek, Hendrick Goltzius: Drawings Rediscovered 1962–1992. Supplement to Die Zeichnungen von Hendrick Goltzius (1961), New York, 1993, p. 264, under no. 418; Michiel C. Plomp in Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617): Drawings, Prints, and Paintings, (exh. cat.), Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam/The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York/The Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH 2003–04, no. 64, repr.

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