The Rijksmuseum Bulletin
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the rijksmuseum bulletin 348 the rijks selling prints to the rijksmuseum in 1827:the christiaanrijks josi and cornelis apostool museum bulletin SellingAcquisitions Prints to the RijksmuseumPrints and Drawings in 1827: Christiaan Josi and Cornelis Apostool • erik hinterding, huigen leeflang, jeroen luyckx and brooks rich • • erik hinterding and olenka horbatsch • n 1827 the recently established Rijks- gives an overview of prints that were I museum print room acquired a large then added to the Rijksmuseum’s group of prints from the art dealer collection. Christiaan Josi. The protracted negoti - Apostool and Josi were old acquain t- a tions that preceded the acquisition ances. They met for the first time in were led by the then director, Cornelis London in the early seventeen-nineties Apostool, who also had a decisive role and their paths crossed regularly after in the final selection. He by no means that. Both had trained as printmakers wanted to buy everything on offer and so had sound technical knowledge and he was later blamed for that.1 The of the discipline, even though neither indig nation was further fuelled by of them had worked as a graphic artist the impression that King William i for long. They became prominent had placed generous resources at his figures in the art world of their time, disposal and they had not been used. albeit each from a different back ground It raises the question as to what and in an entirely individual way. A Apostool’s motives were and whether brief overview of their careers including there may have been other issues that earlier encounters with each other helps dictated the outcome. Although the to put the events surrounding the pur- purchase had been known about for chase in 1827 into perspective. a long time, what precisely happened and what was ultimately purchased had Apostool never been fully established. This has Cornelis Apostool (1762-1844) came now been done. With the aid of the from a family of Mennonite merchants, surviving correspondence between manufacturers and clergymen. He was Josi, the Ministry of the Interior and the eleventh of the twelve children of the Rijksmuseum, we have recon- Jan Apostool, a dealer in hides and structed the progress of the negotiations cocoa, and his wife Cornelia de Witte. and considerations that played a role He received his first education from a for the various parties involved.2 It French schoolmaster in Delft, after sketches a fascinating picture of early which he was apprenticed to a gold- nineteenth-century acquisition policy smith and silversmith in Rotterdam. and sheds light on the processes that He trained as an artist from 1784 to went on behind the scenes. More 1786 at the Amsterdam City Drawing broadly, the purchase can be seen as a Academy under the landscape painter good example of the artistic taste of and draughtsman Hendrik Meyer the period. The attached appendix (1738-1793). When Meyer went to Detail of fig. 6 349 the rijksmuseum bulletin London in 1786, Apostool accom- same author were also executed by Fig. 1 panied him. In his first years there he Apostool, although his name only cornelis apostool, may have been active in the trade,3 but appears in the title prints at the The Valley of in the early seventeen-nineties he found beginning of these publications.6 Innsbruck, from Albanis de Beaumont, regular employment transforming Apostool supplied landscape prints Travels through the drawings his clients had made on their for Albanis Beaumont on at least three Rhaetian Alps, 1792. 7 travels into aquatints. In the published occasions, this time all with his name. Etching and aquatint, travel journals, these aquatints were In 1792 there were ten for Travels 317 x 445 mm. invariably printed in sepia. He began through the Rhaetian Alps (fig. 1), two London, British with forty-two plates for Samuel years later fourteen for Select Views Museum, inv. no. Ireland’s Picturesque Tour through in the South of France and eighteen 1927,0107.10. Holland, Braband and Part of France landscapes for Travels through the of 1790.4 None of these prints are Maritime Alps.8 Even though it is not a signed, but in the introduction the travel guide, The Beauties of the Dutch author acknowledged that Apostool School, which was published in 1792- made them.5 This leaves open the 93, slots neatly into Apostool’s print possibility that the eighty-five very output in London.9 They are all land- similar aquatints in Picturesque Views scapes, executed as sepia aquatints, but of the River Thames (1791), Picturesque after seventeenth-century masters such Views of the River Medway (1793) as Philips Wouwerman, Salomon van and Picturesque Views of the Upper, Ruysdael and Jan van Goyen. Apostool or Warwickshire Avon (1795) by the also made aquatints other than plate 350 selling prints to the rijksmuseum in 1827:the christiaanrijks josi and cornelis apostool museum bulletin Acquisitions Prints and Drawings • erik hinterding, huigen leeflang, jeroen luyckx and brooks rich • Fig. 2 works for travel books, although they to lie in the field of negotiation, diplo- cornelis apostool, are likewise highly topographical matic manoeuvring and maintaining Action between subjects. In 1794, for example, the view friendships. He moved in the highest His Majesty’s Frigate of Her Majesty’s Lodge at Frogmore, circles with ease. In 1807 he became La Nymphe and near Windsor, after Richard Cooper, secretary to the Dutch ambassador in the French Frigate La Cleopatra, 1794. two prints of the Action between His Naples, which he particularly enjoyed Etching and aquatint, Majesty’s Frigate La Nymphe & the because it gave him time to immerse 480 x 610 mm. French Frigate La Cleopatra after himself in Italian art.11 This is almost London, British Thomas Yates (fig. 2), and A Meeting certainly where he made the large dip - Museum, inv. no. of the Society of Royal British Archers tych of a panorama of the port of Naples, 1870,0514.2821. after John Emes were all published. like his earlier work executed in aqua- The evidently higher quality of these tint.12 He did not stay there for long. examples translated directly into better In 1808 – by now forty-six – he was ap- aquatints. point ed director of the Royal Museum Apostool returned home in 1796, in Amsterdam, at that time in the Palace reduced his work as an artist and took in Dam Square, where he was able to up professional appointments and combine his social and diplo matic skills commercial functions which, as with his knowledge of art, acquired Ellinoor Bergvelt neatly put it, ‘were during his practical training, in his years often interrupted or did not go ahead in London, and on his later travels.13 because war broke out again’.10 In the A starring role awaited him in 1815. posts that he did hold, his skills proved After Napoleon’s final defeat in that 351 the rijksmuseum bulletin year, he was put in charge of the Charles Howard Hodges (fig. 3).21 In committee responsible for the 1816, the Royal Library’s print collec- recovery of the art that the French had tion in The Hague was assigned to the taken to Paris in 1795, and the prints Royal Museum in Amsterdam, which that had followed in 1812.14 Other had been housed in the Trippenhuis countries were also represented in along with the Royal Institute since Paris to reclaim their stolen art.15 1815.22 This gave Apostool stewardship Apostool received help from Colonel of the print collection that he had Maximiliaan Jacob de Man (1765-1838), helped to return. who had been tasked with repatriating the maps and topographical material Josi that had been taken from Stadholder Christiaan Josi (1768-1828) came from William v’s military office.16 It took the Utrecht. He was the son of Christiaan forceful intervention of the Duke of Josi Sr and Berendina van Doorn.23 His Fig. 3 Wellington, commander-in-chief of mother died in childbirth in 1774, and charles howard the allied forces, including threats of his father was unable to take care of his hodges, Portrait of military action, to get the paintings offspring.24 The seven children went to Cornelis Apostool, off the walls, but in the end this part the Utrechtse Stads Ambachtskinder- c. 1816. of Apostool’s mission was a success. huis,25 which was not an orphanage, Oil on canvas, The next step was to retrieve the but a more basic care home for children 73 x 53 cm. Amsterdam, 10,243 prints that the French had taken whose parents could not care for them Rijksmuseum, 26 some years before from the newly for various reasons. In 1784 Josi was inv. no. sk-a-654; established print room in the Royal admitted to the Foundation of Rens- C. Apostool Bequest, Library in The Hague to fill gaps in woude, a boarding school linked to the Amsterdam. the national collection in Paris.17 For The Hague this was a dramatic loss that almost halved the size of the collec- tion at the time.18 From a lecture about his adventures in Paris that Apostool gave later it emerged that, faced with the sheer volume of material and French obstructiveness, he realized that he could not manage that part of his mis- sion alone, ‘so I asked the government if C.H. Hodges, member of the Royal Netherlands Institute, and C. Josi, art dealer in Amsterdam, might be assigned to assist me’.19 His request was granted. In the space of two weeks, working with Charles Howard Hodges and Christiaan Josi, he had identified practically all the prints with the aid of the detailed records that had been compiled before they were handed over and on the basis of the red stamp with which all prints were marked when they were added to the Royal Library.20 They were sealed and dispatched to The Hague.