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Belle van Zuylen and the pastellists of her time.
In the context of the painting of portraits in XVIIIth century Holland, of Belle van Zuylen's personality, of her pronounced taste for pastelportraits in particular, and of the artists which were available in her time to make them, I would like to begin with two quotations.
The first one seems a prime example of the art of how nót to make friends and keep them, always assuming that its author wished to keep the friendship of his Dutch readers. It comes from the writings of Lothar Brieger, the man whose work on the art of pastel-painting is still our most complete guide in this matter. He wrote:
‘Wo Holland sich bemüht, zu einem durchaus getreuen Schüler des französischen Rokoko zu werden, da wird aus Grazie Plumpheit, und eine derb zugreifende Hand mordet die lächelnde Pointe’: Where Holland strives to become a truly faithful pupil of the French Rococo, there gracefulness turns into ungainliness, and a hamfisted hand murders the smile of finesse.
Brieger, having thus made himself the arbiter of what was graceful, and what hamfisted, coined this phrase when he dealt with the phenomenon of the sudden and almost complete eclipse of Dutch pictorial artists from the European stage after the beginning of the 18th century. The phenomenon of the 17th Century flowering of a truly Dutch culture in painting and in the art of living which had accompanied the emergence of an independant Dutch nation, and which at the end of that century had made way for an imitative following of a style inspired by the French, and radiating from the glittering court in Paris.
It may be permitted to counter this unflattering quotation from one great connoisseur, by a quotation from another. This time from the man who should really have been in my place today to deal with this subject: Adolf Staring, who, in his treatise ‘French artists and their Dutch models’ deals with another aspect of the same phenomenon: Of Dutch art having lost its outgoing influence and having become a borrower of ideas from French art; and of the Dutchman of culture, capitulating before this new esprit, this new elegance and this sense of style, emanating from France. Reflecting on this he says:
‘Both for the Englishman and for the Dutchman, there was the difficulty, that their nations had a sturdy culture of their own, to which they had to remain adjusted, if they did not wish to become strangers among their own people. In that respect, the Russians, the Poles, the Swedes, Danes and Northern - Germans, were in a different position: In adopting French culture,
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9. Ditie, le frère préféré de Belle, pastel, probablement par Belle (Château de Zuylen)
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they were faced in a far lesser degree with the loss or renunciation of a national culture of an equally valuable or distinct nature’.
Both these quotations today need qualifying. And whereas Brieger was referring primarily to Dutch artists, and Staring to the artists' Dutch clients, the two angles considered together, may serve as another sidelight upon the contradictions, the conflicting loyalties and affections, the pains of knowing herself to be different from her surroundings, with which we are confronted in the person, the life and the thoughts of Belle van Zuylen.
As dates of reference for this contribution to the Symposium, I have taken the period in Belle's life in which she took an active interest in pictorial art, more particularly that period of her life during which she showed the most interest in having her own picture painted as well as that of those near and dear to her. Because her letters show that there was a time when she was interested in having the portraits of her friends and relatives made, and her interest in the making of her own portrait by De La Tour was very graphically described in her letters at the time. And yet we find an illustration of one of the strange contradictions in her likes and dislikes in her first published novel: ‘Le Noble’. Here she describes with relish how her heroine uses the familyportraits in her father's house to fill in a waterlogged obstacle to her route of escape to freedom. And the heroine is thoroughly pleased at the idea that these portraits fulfil a useful purpose at last. Like her heroine, Belle too, wished to live in the present, she wished to be unhampered by the people to whom she owed her very existence, but who belonged to a past from which she was already inwardly set free. Was she then oblivious of the fact that the very portraits of her own generation, portraits about which she was with good reason enthusiastic, would one day none the less in their turn become history, speaking to us from their frames?
All the same, interested in portraiture she was, at least during the period which coincides with the great successes of the French and Swiss pastellists which visited the Netherlands.
This period falls between the active careers of the two great pastellists and portraitists whose works can be claimed as belonging to Holland's artistic heritage:
At the one end:the carreer of Cornelis Troost, Dutch by birth, Dutch in his outlook on his subjects, Dutch in his sense of humour. A carreer which had come to an end with his death in 1750, when Belle was 10 years old.
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At the other end: the carreer of Charles Howard Hodges, which began too late for Madame de Charrière, by that time, and by her own choice, almost an exile from Holland and its artistic scene. Hodges, though English by birth, a native of Portsmouth, gave up a succesful carreer as a mezzotint engraver in England, when, at the age of 24, he came to Holland in 1788, to remain there until his death in 1837, leaving behind a vast oeuvre of highly esteemed portraits, in pastels as well as oils, in size ranging from intimate small ovals to lifesize, full-length canvasses. With fex exceptions his artistic output is to be found in Holland only, and has become part of our Dutch heritage in the same way that Dutch Peter Lely's works did in England.
Equally too late to be treated within this period was that other darling of the Dutch elegant world, Friedrich Tischbein, who, between 1780 and 1798, produced those many charming, distinguished as well as competent portraits which now form the prize items in so many family collections in Holland, though rarely as pastels.
But between Troost on the one hand and Hodges and Tischbein on the other, and throughout the first 45 years of Belle's lifetime, Holland can boast no artist capable of competing with the visiting portrait-painters from the French-speaking countries. For it was they who during that period dominated the market for portraits, at least in those circles to which Belle belonged: The circle of the holders of office at the court of the Prince of Orange, or in one of the numerous governmental bodies concentrated at the Hague around the Estates General; in addition to whom came the country-noblemen, rich enough to spend the winter season in the Hague with their families.
This is the period when there is relevance in Brieger's ungallant remark about Holland turning French gracefulness into ungainliness, and in Staring's reflection upon the cultivated Dutchman's quandery about loyalty to an inherited culture, and affinity with a new, imported culture. They point at two real, parallel aspects of Dutch life of that time. Aspects that were real in the life of Belle's parents, of which they took notice, but made no problems. But these two aspects were reflected in their eldest daugther with an intensity which they had neither forseen nor were able to cope with, and which in their child produced this feeling of no longer belonging there where her affections were yet strong, and of wishing to escape to that miraculous ‘abroad’, that on arrival always turns out to be so much less miraculous than imagined.
Yet had not her parents themselves sowed the seeds? They who had chosen Daniel Marot and his French taste to improve their ancient moated castle, and turn it from a stronghold into a country gentleman's
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residence? Had not the parents sent their child to spend some of its most impressionable early years among French-speaking people, far beyond the confines of Dutch provincial life?
When we return to the context of portraits, where did these parents' first choice in artists lay? Not with Tako Jelgersma, whose pastel portraits at their best seem a worthy successor to Troost, but also show the homeliness of the man born in provincial Friesland, and who was taught, and spent his working life in Haarlem, a staid and worthy town, full of staid and worthy people, with whom the Tuylls had little contact.
Nor did they use an even more worthy successor to Troost, his own daugther Sara, who found her clients among her connections in Amsterdam.
Nor, when they turned to visiting French artists for their services, as they consistently did, did they choose Pierre Frédéric de la Croix, who came to Holland from France before his 30th year, and produced, between 1738 and 1782, an unending stream of pastelportraits, as well as portraits in oils. But he worked for the professional bourgeoisie, and for those members of the nobility who had remained in the country, far from the more expensive tastes and artists of The Hague. He was an autodidactic deaf-mute, and his pastels seem to carry the marks of the very reason why his medium was so popular with travelling artists: its speed. Maybe we take these portraits too seriously. It was surely partly because of their small size, pretty colours and attractive frames, that they have been kept so faithfully by the descendants of the sitters, where they still keep on turning up. But one is tempted to recognise in these small pastels, with their often misshapen anatomical proportions, something of a joke. A joke now lost to us, and possibly wrongly interpreted as ineptness. Because he was also capable of largescale canvasses which are anatomically correct and which have a certain boldness and merit, in the groupportraits in particular, whereas the individual ones seem to be the perfect illustration of what Brieger said about clumsiness.
With some good reason then, did the Tuylls turn to Guillaume de Spinny, born in Brussels in 1721, but trained in France, and the master of courtly elegance, lace and frills. His first portrait in Holland was dated 1753, and his success in The Hague must have been immediate. There he proved a welcome successor to Jean Fournier, a Parisian and pupil of Francois de Troy, who had left The Hague after having made a series of elegant portraits of its notables in the years 1749 - 1753. Three years after his arrival, in 1756, Spinny was made a member of the
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Painters' Guild in The Hague, and was appointed court-painter. As such he remained in The Hague until his death in 1785.
In that same year of his court appointment Spinny was commissioned to make the large fullength portrait of Belle's father in the ancestral series in the diningroom at Zuylen. And at least 5 more commissions from the Van Tuylls followed, amongst these the three portraits dated 1759: Those of Belle's parents, still at Zuylen, and the very first portrait known to have been made of Belle herself. This portrait passed from her brother Vincent to his descendants in the female line, where it remained undetected until 1972. So well hidden in fact, that its contemporary copy, now in the depot of the Geneva Museum, and once in the Musée de l'Ariana, was at one time hotly disputed as to the identity of its sitter. Not without reason, when we compare its rather wooden, and almost insipid prettiness with the unrivalled vivacity and veracity of Belle's portrait by La Tour.
Before turning to this highlight, not only in the oeuvre of La Tour, but also in Belle's enthusiastic appreciation of the art of pastelpainting, I ought to mention four more pastellists, which did not figure in the world of Belle and her relatives: Two artists of skill and quality and of a personal touch and merit: One, the Swiss Benjamin Bolomey, from 1763 until 1791 a member of the Hague painters' guild, and courtpainter to Prince William V of Orange. He was painter as well as pastellist, and a prolific maker of drawn portraits in crayon.
The other, Izaäk Schmidt, born in Amsterdam in 1740, whose dignified, sympathetic pastels are still largely hidden in family collections, but immediately recognisable by their obvious sincerity and competence, and above all by his very personal characteristic of highlighting delicate fabrics with white, almost a hallmark which jumps out at one.
Finally two more, one a Frenchman, De Sompsois, the other Dutch, Van Hien, as examples of that characteristic which tended to bring the art of pastelpainting into disrepute: facile, over-sweet charm in colour and details of dress.
It is when observing the portraits made by the three pastel portraitists Liotard, Perroneau and La Tour, who towered above all the artists which have sofar been mentioned, that one begins to realise how closely they touched the life of Belle van Zuylen.
As the portraits of her immediate circle came to light step by step, one realised how many of these relatives had sat to these pastellists who rose above the mediocre, and who had produced portraits of
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their clients that one could really cherish. Portraits that must have been able to bring the sitters into the presence of their friends in a way that none of the painters in oils, working in Holland at that time, could achieve.
To Belle this realness of the sitters must have been its main virtue: Appearances were at all times the objects of her struggles, reality the aim. And she must have felt a great affinity to the artists who reproduced this real, tangible proximity of their sitters. At the age of 10, on her way back from Switzerland through Paris, she already had had the good fortune to sit at the same table as Maurice Quentin de La Tour, already, at 46, at the height of his powers. Three years later she is reminded of this incident in a letter from her former governess, Mlle Prévost. Her interest in him must have been stimulated by Mlle Prévost's reports about him as a thinker and a talker, and even more by the report that he had painted her aunt, Madame van Tuyll née De Geer. The unfinished sketch of her portrait is now in the La Tour Museum at St. Quentin.
Meanwhile, Liotard, the Swiss Huguenot, by two years La Tour's senior, had started his regular visits to the Netherlands, and in 1755 and 1756 not only drew the portraits of the children of the Prince of Orange, later presented to Belle's kinsman, Count William Bentinck, but also of her uncle and aunt Jan Max van Tuyll. That same year he painted another child portrait, that of her cousin by marriage, the small daughter of the 4th Earl of Athlone. He paints Lady Athlone, the mother of the child, at the same time. How much Belle must have been impressed by these portraits, can be judged from the fact that later, when she herself has taken up the art, she makes a posthumous pastel portrait of her mother, which, in the composition, direction of the head sideways, and the dress, is a copy in reverse of this portrait of old Lady Athlone!
Another series of crayon drawings, done in black only but yet in their directness closely related in character to pastelportraits, must have been known to her intimately. These were made in 1761 and 1762 by the then 40 year old German Ernst August Abel or Abele, a cosmopolitan in his rounds of the European centres of society. They were probably made for Belle's cousin Anna Elisabeth, before she became the wife in 1765 of the 5th Earl of Athlone. It must have been she who brought them to Amerongen Castle, where they remain to this day. The series consist of a portrait of his favorite cousin, and of her aunt, Madame van Lockhorst née van Tuyll, as well as her three daughters. Among these was Belle's namesake, Isabelle Agneta van Lockhorst, who shows a remarkable resemblance to her cousin at Zuylen, 8 years her junior.
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About the same time Jean Baptiste Perronneau also arrived on the Dutch scene. More than 10 years younger than La Tour and Liotard, and forever struggling to make a living out of the art for which the other two seemed to find a more ready and rewarding market.
Again, Belle's circle of friends brings her in immediate contact with his work: Probably during his visit of 1763 he makes the portrait of her favorite cousin, shortly to become Lady Athlone. It shows a frank, fearless face, in that sense too, a forerunner of Belle's own portrait by La Tour. The face of a person that must have inspired Perronneau to a portrait of far greater human directness than some, but by no means all, of his portraits. I cannot entirely share the general view that Perronneau fell short of the penetration of personality and of the truth behind the mask, however smiling, of his sitters, to the same extent as La Tour is held to excell in this respect.
But when the moment of truth arrives at last, when the great La Tour himself has come to stay with the Tuyll family in 1766 and paints Belle's portrait, then we must concede that he must have lived up to all her expectations. The effect which artist and sitter made on each other on that occasion, must have been very great indeed, and cannot be summed up better than in Belle's own letters:
In September 1766 she writes:
‘Depuis 15 jours je passe toutes les matinées chez mon oncle, et je dîne avec La Tour, quand il a travaillé 2 ou 3 heures à mon portrait. Je ne m'ennuie point, parcequ'il salt causer, et il ya de l'esprit, et il a vu bien des choses. Je lui donne une peine incroyable, et quelquefois il lui prend une inquiétude de ne pas réussier qui lui donne la fièvre, car absolument il veut que le portrait soit moi-même.
A few days later she continues
‘Il a fallu effacer la plus belle peinture du monde, car il n'y avait plus ni resemblance, ni espoir d'en donner.
But after the tragedy of all this fruitless labour, there is the final triumph in October:
‘Depuis 2 mois il en est au second portrait, tous les matins, toute la matinée
And she concludes: ‘... en vérité, il vit.’
‘il veut que le portrait soit moi-même.’ And Belle's own final verdict ‘En vérité il vit’.
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How readily we can believe this when we look at this portrait of a young woman who knew that she was no longer part of all that was traditional and accepted in her family, who loved that family, but could not stay with them, who loved her own country but could not remain in it. Who wanted truth and facts rather than all the things that adorned life.
Behind these worldly adornments she had been hidden by Spinny, when he painted her at the age of 19, attired with all the frills that a young girl, just out in society, was expected to wear.
But La Tour had caught her eagerness for life, showed her as it were straining at a leash to get out and on with it. The eyes expectant joie de vivre incarnate. And to achieve this, La Tour had himself to choose a form and stance of the head which in the fashionable portraits of the day was most unusual, whilst totally omitting any reference to fashion in dress.
No wonder La Tour's copiists could not cope with this: Jacob Maurer and Jean Humbert, faithful, often plodding, retainers as portraitists of the Tuyll and Athlone families. When these were later commissioned to make copies of the pastel in oils, they would not, or could not cope with the eyes that were so alive in La Tour's portrait, alive even though they were not fixed on the beholder, but eagerly peering into a promising future. Only the challenging tilt of the head, and the impression of forward movement, given by the windswept hair, remain of what La Tour caught: caught, in our eyes, as if in one swift, daring dash. How revealing to learn from Belle's own pen how much agony, how many hours of labouring had gone into this work which to us represents nothing but lightness. How revealing to learn how the greatest of them all laboured in the technique which was chosen by the popular travelling portraitists as the quickest way to a finished article!
We know of that part of Belle's nature which wanted to identify wholly with the persons surrounding her in which she was interested. We know how on the one hand this made her so sympathetic and loyal a friend of the humble and of those that served her; and how on the other hand it caused her time and time again to be in love with love, in love with the great ideal of being at one with one beloved person. Was it this aspect of her nature which made her apply herself with such enthusiasm to the art of pastelpainting? Was it because in doing so she could the better identify with the whole man La Tour, the talker and the thinker as well as the artist whom she admired so much? And was it this attitude which made her such an eager and adoring pupil when she visited La Tour on her very honeymoon in 1771? For in all honesty, beyond this enthusiasm, she may have had a certain amount of aptitude, but certainly no great and creative talent. Most of the work that we may presume to be hers,
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consists of copies of already existing portraits -: I already mentioned her posthumous portrait of her mother, based on a composition by Liotard. And there is her beloved brother Ditie's portrait, which is a copy after his picture in oils by Spinny at Amerongen castle. There is her portrait of her cousin's husband, the 5th Earl of Athlone, also at Amerongen which was started by her in 1771, but had to be finished by Liotard in 1773, according to the inscription on the back.
Sofar, the only effort we know of Belle drawing from life, is her portrait of her brother Willem. If it does not tell us much about Willem, it certainly tells us something about the degree to which the maker was influenced by La Tour's technique: that of building up his picture from real, hard, drawn, almost scratched lines, which often showed clearly in his finished works.
In this respect, of the drawn line that builds up the finished whole, Perronneau stands halfway between La Tour and Liotard. For Liotard achieves an almost enamelled surface in his finished works that gives an impression of brushed-on coverpaint, and which makes him capable of an almost plastic clearness of detail in daringly contrasted colours. Belle certainly never attempted these. No matter how eager she expressed herself to be at the prospect of possessing the portrait made by Liotard of her cousin Athlone which still hangs in her little rooms at Zuylen, nothing in her pastels reminds us of Liotards technique of coloring.
Like so many stimulants of Belle's ideas, affections and thoughts, their place is taken, not by oblivion, but by other things that occupy her unceasingly active mind and interest. And so likewise her interest in portraits subsided. We hear or know of no more works made by her after the 1770's. And the miniature drawing by Arlaud, and the sympathetic painting in oils by Jens Juel, both made in the 1770's - '80's are the latest portraits that were made of her. As we have seen, the portraits by Maurer and Humbert of that same period were only copies after La Tour's portrait.
But Belle van Zuylen's interest in life centered first and foremost on people; on their struggles for freedom of the spirit, for their happiness in human relationships and for the ways and means to achieve these. Their portraits only formed one aspect of this love for people. So rather than give a mere catalogue of the pastellists of her time, as the somewhat misleadingly chosen title of this talk suggested, I have tried to show that portraits of people engaged Belle's interest only when these portraits brought those people closer to her.
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The form, in which this was done at its most succesful, at the time of her formative years in the Netherlands, was that of the portrait in pastels.
I hope that I have also been able to show that where there was a choice of artists, her family had led the way in choosing wisely and with discerning taste, thus preparing Belle, when the choice came to be hers, to choose the best.
Jhr. F.G.L.O. van Kretschmar.
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