POTGIETER’S ‘RIJKSMUSEUM’ AND THE PUBLIC PRESENTATION OF DUTCH HISTORY IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM 18001844
Ellinoor Bergvelt
In 1844, the celebrated Dutch author Everhardus Johannes Potgieter (1808–1875) published his criticism of the Rijksmuseum (national museum) in De Gids, which at the time was the most important cul- tural periodical. Potgieter—who was one of the founders and editors of De Gids—argued in his essay that the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam should off er an overview of Dutch history; however, Potgieter’s criti- cism had no eff ect either within the museum or anywhere else in the Netherlands.1 Th e Rijksmuseum remained primarily an art museum— or rather a museum of paintings—that also had a print room. It was only in the new Rijksmuseum building, which was designed by archi- tect Pierre Cuypers (1827–1921) and opened in 1885, that a separate history department presented the Dutch past, not only in paintings but also in three-dimensional objects. To explain why Potgieter’s calls went unheard in 1844, I shall address the following questions: Which—and whose—past was repre- sented in the paintings in the Dutch national museum in the fi rst half of the nineteenth century? Did the museum rooms present a coher- ent view on the Dutch past—or was such a task not possible? And, in the light of this book, how accessible was this museum to the general public? One thing is clear: the Romantic ideas about the Dutch past— as expressed by Potgieter and shared by many Dutch historians and men of letters—clashed with those adhered to within the art museums. Th e Dutch connoisseurs, like their foreign counterparts, had interna- tional standards, which meant that Dutch painting, even that from
1 Everhardus Johannes Potgieter, ‘Het Rijks-Museum te Amsterdam’. De Gids 8.2 (1844), 17–26, 208–216, 391–423, 585–595, and 599–609. A recent historical inter- pretation of this text in the intellectual context of De Gids: Remieg Aerts, De Letter- heren. Liberale cultuur in de negentiende eeuw: het tijdschrift De Gids (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff , 1997), 114–116. And an art-historical interpretation in Ellinoor Bergvelt, Pantheon der Gouden Eeuw. Van Nationale Konst-Gallerij tot Rijksmuseum van Schil- derijen (1798–1896) (Zwolle: Waanders Uitgevers, 1998), 154–159. 172 ellinoor bergvelt the Golden Age, was deemed inferior to art from the southern regions (and the more southern the better): southern Netherlandish paint- ings were better than those from the northern Netherlands (at least Rembrandt was considered to be inferior to Rubens),2 as was art from France (Poussin, Claude Lorrain) and the Italian Renaissance and later (Raphael, Domenichino, Guido Reni). As for sculpture, the height of perfection was to be found in sculpture from classical antiquity. Such old-fashioned, classicist ideas about art were very tenacious in Dutch artistic circles. However, I shall fi rst describe the exceptional situation in the Neth- erlands regarding history and art—and thus museums—and sketch the history of the Dutch national art museums in Amsterdam and Th e Hague until 1844.3 First, free access to the visual past in the Netherlands did not start around 1800: art collections had been freely accessible in several Dutch town halls since the end of the sixteenth century. Following the icono- clasm of 1566, some of the altarpieces and other artworks that had previously been in the possession of churches and cloisters had been saved from the hands of the iconoclasts and kept by the cities in their town halls. Later, when the municipal militia (or civic guards) were disbanded in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, their art col- lections—consisting of group portraits and various items of applied art (such as silverware)—were also saved by the cities. When the guilds were abolished by the fi rst Dutch Constitution (1798), the same hap- pened to the guilds’ collections of paintings and decorative arts. Every- body—citizens and foreigners—could visit these municipal collections, which could be considered protomuseums.4
2 As appeared when in 1817 the Fourth Department of the Royal Dutch Institute of Arts and Sciences decided, aft er a lot of discussion, that a bust of Rubens rather than Rembrandt should be made. Th e decisive fact was that Rubens was a better historical painter, while Rembrandt was better in expression, colour, and ‘dat tover-achtige’ (that magic[al thing]). Historical paintings were paintings with historical, biblical, or myth- ological subjects. Th e Royal Dutch Institute was founded by King Louis Napoleon in 1808 and was based in Amsterdam. Most of the fourteen members of the Fourth Department who were present at the meeting (most of them resided in Amsterdam!) preferred Rubens to Rembrandt. Bergvelt 1998, 131 (n. 250). 3 See Bergvelt 1998. 4 Ellinoor Bergvelt, ‘Tussen geschiedenis en kunst. Nederlandse nationale kunst- musea in de negentiende eeuw’. Ellinoor Bergvelt, Debora J. Meijers, Mieke Rijnders (eds.), Kabinetten, galerijen en musea. Het verzamelen en presenteren van naturalia en kunst van 1500 tot heden (Heerlen: Open Universiteit / Zwolle: Waanders Uitgevers,