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Van Gogh Museum Journal 1996 (1996)

Van Gogh Museum Journal 1996

(1996)– [tijdschrift] Van Gogh Museum Journal–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende


illustratie
fig. 1
Theodoor Colenbrander, drawing from the Huldigingsalbum Mr. A.J. Wetrens, Leiden, Bibliotheek van het Gemeentearchief


Theodoor Colenbrander and Hendrik Willem Mesdag
Christien Smits

Between 1885 and 1889, Hendrik Willem Mesdag bought a large number of ornamental ceramics from an art pottery, Haagsche Plateelbakkerij Rozenburg. Nearly all of these had been designed by the decorative artist Theodoor Christiaan Adriaan Colenbrander (1841-1930), who was the factory's artistic director in the period during which these purchases were made. With his surprising and highly individualistic designs and decoration for ceramics, Colenbrander was one of the first in Holland to apply new theories of ornamentation from abroad.

Colenbrander and the Haagsche Plateelbakkerij Rozenburg

Although he had trained as an architect, from the very beginning Colenbrander's talents had probably lain in decoration rather than in construction.1 When, in 1867, his design for a new town hall in Amsterdam received an honourable mention, the jury found that his embellishments for the main façade ‘were reminiscent of an enchanted palace from The 1001 nights.’2

In that same year Colenbrander left for Paris, where, among other activities, he assisted in the preparations for the Dutch section at the 1867 Exposition Universelle. From the few details on his life that remain, we learn that he returned to the Netherlands in around 1869 and that he eventually settled in The Hague in 1876, where he worked as an architectural draughtsman.

Colenbrander started to design ornaments in his spare time. One of the earliest known examples of this work, from 1882, is the jubilee album presented to A.J. Wetrens, the choirmaster and director of the music school in Leiden.3 This contains 33 pages of congratulatory messages framed within Colenbrander's colourful decorations. These are striking in their references to a variety of architectural styles and for the fanciful styling of their flowers and leaves, which are modelled both on fresh and dried plants (fig. 1).

In 1884 Colenbrander was approached by Wilhelm Wolff Freiherr von Gudenberg, who had heard of his ‘very first assays of ceramic designs,’ and who asked for permission to produce these in his new art pottery factory.4 Colenbrander agreed.

This decision was to provide an important boost to Holland's depressed pottery industry. As early as the 18th century, Delftware, once highly praised, had been superseded by new types of English pottery. The technical advances and more efficient production methods that had begun in England caused a drastic decline in manual work. However, as these new techniques spread, so too did a style of excessive decoration that made random combinations of historical motifs. Accordingly, in the years around 1850, a number of English and French pottery works started to improve the aesthetic quality of their products by employing artists as designers. These new lines were decorated by hand. The results were good, both qualitatively and in terms of sales.

The first Dutch earthenware works to adopt these ideas was the sole remaining producer of Delftware, De Porceleyne Fles. In 1876 the company was taken over by Joost Thooft. Adolf Le Comte, a lecturer in the theory of ornament at the Polytechnische School in Delft, was appointed

designer.5 For the first time in years the decoration was once more applied by specially-trained pottery painters. Using a formula that had already been successful for some years abroad, Le Comte had plates, tiles and other articles painted with representations of famous paintings. Despite being relatively highly priced, they sold well.

Wolff von Gudenberg had been employed at De Porceleyne Fles for a short period before founding his own art pottery works in the centre of The Hague in the autumn of 1883.6 It was his shareholders' dissatisfaction with the first product range that led him to ask Colenbrander to supply designs in 1884. The first of these appeared in the factory shop a year later. In 1885, following complaints in the neighbourhood and renewed problems with the shareholders, Gudenberg re-established the works at an outlying country house, Rozenburg, hence the company's new name, Haagsche Plateelbakkerij Rozenburg, adopted in 1886. On this point, Colenbrander remarked, ‘I was also involved in the factory's early history [...].’7 At the new works he became artistic director. He was responsible both for the supervision of the workers who executed his models and of the painters who applied the decorations.

Colenbrander's work attracted attention as soon as it appeared on the market in 1885. The fancifully-shaped flowers and leaves of the 1882 jubilee album and the ‘enchanted oriental palace’ that had occupied him in 1867 still appeared to please him as much as ever. He designed a remarkable number of sets of lidded vases with accompanying cups of matching contours. Besides vases, bowls and candlesticks, there were also many decorative dishes and plaques. The accompanying patterns were executed in bright glazed colours.

With their curves and constrictions, the striking shapes of these pieces most resemble embossed metalwork from the Near and Far East. Sometimes they are reminiscent of the domes and minarets of an Arab mosque, or of a Chinese pagoda. The names of the designs listed on the factory order forms are equally evocative of oriental inspiration: turban vases and turban cups compete with pagoda vases, pagoda cups and Japanese vases.8 Clearly, these were names that had been devised by Colenbrander and then maintained in the descriptions provided in the catalogue.

The painted decorations are even more remarkable. These embellishments, entirely flat, have been applied in rich colours onto a creamy white or salmon-pink ground. In most cases the contours of the designs have first been drawn on the body with dark lines, and have then been coloured in. In some cases, however, they have been left blank on a plain background. Although a significant proportion of the motives are derived from nature, they are highly stylised and no attempt has been made to create effects of shade or depth. Indeed, in some cases they are hard to decipher. Flowers, leaves, fungi, birds and insects have been transmuted into brightly coloured patterns such that the original form has been reduced to a collection of coloured fields whose outline is simultaneously wavy, jagged and curling. In a similar fashion, natural phenomena (such as moonlight or rainfall), or a view of Constantinople, are transformed into a colourful blend of bright fields and planes.

While Colenbrander's decorations make occasional reference to the ancient arts and crafts of the Far East, the designer must have drawn the greater part of his inspiration from ceramics produced in the Ottoman-Turkish town of Iznik during the 16th and 17th centuries. This work featured natural motifs similarly reduced to two-dimensional patterns on a white, and sometimes on a salmon-pink ground. Carnations, roses and tulips, and leaves - curling or split - are spread loosely over the surface, or, their stems bound together, are arranged in symmetrical compositions. They are also shown, highly-stylised, as components of a geometrical figure, or are woven into arabesques of trailing tendrils. Insects, birds (especially peacocks) and calli-

graphic proverbs occasionally appear in the work. For the rims, an extensive repertoire of embellishments are used, into which geometrical figures and stylised leaves and flowers are incorporated. The motifs frequently have a dark outline (fig. 2).9

All of these features can be found in Colenbrander's designs for the decorative pottery made in the Rozenburg factory. There are even motifs resembling Arabic script. These are not, however, straight copies. Instead, while the principles of the Turkish works are applied in a recognisably individual style, the shapes of Colenbrander's vases, cups, jars and plates are often more complex, the stylisation of his motives is more developed, and his patterns are more fanciful. At Rozenburg's, he also had a far greater range of colours at his disposal than the blue, turquoise, red and green used in Iznik. It should also be added that during Colenbrander's time at the factory, Rozenburg's range included imitations of islamic ceramics, although it is not known whose responsibility these were.10

Colenbrander was by no means alone in his admiration for Middle Eastern pottery. Interest in islamic art was widespread in Europe in the period from 1850. Miniatures, fabrics, carpets, ceramics, glassware and embossed metalwork from a variety of countries including Persia and Turkey could all be seen at the international exhibitions, and these quickly found their way into the art trade, private collections and museums. Mesdag was just one owner of items from the region. Naturally, likenesses soon appeared.11 At the 1867 Paris Exposition Universelle - in which Colenbrander collaborated - the Frenchman Théodore Deck presented not only his modern fayences d'art, but also fine reproductions of Iznik ceramics.12 It is possible that these inspired Colenbrander's interest.

The use of natural motifs in Middle Eastern decorative art was demonstrated to European artists as early as 1856 by Owen Jones, the British author of an extremely influential book on decorative art.13 In his opinion, contemporary

illustratie
fig. 2
Glazed earthenware plate from Iznik, private collection


ornamentation could benefit from a return to nature as a source of inspiration, and oriental art would provide the best basis for the development of a new and original style. The final chapter of his book showed examples of a modern manner in which new patterns could be created from flowers and leaves by means of their reduction to simple outlines. Similarly diagrammatic motifs are conspicuous in Colenbrander's work (fig. 3).

Jones's innovative views were reflected in 1882 in another English book, Every day art, by Lewis Foreman Day. A Dutch adaptation by Carel Vosmaer, an art connoisseur and man of letters from The Hague, appeared two years later. In this work. De kunst in het daaglijksch leven, Vosmaer



illustratie
fig. 3
Plate XCVIII: Leaves and flowers from nature, no. 8, from Owen Jones, The grammar of ornament, London 1856 (photograph courtesy of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague)


expressed the view that the work Colenbrander executed for Rozenburg's was the perfect embodiment of the principles Day had expounded.14 As he wrote in an early review: ‘In his limitless imagination he sometimes seems to be distant kin to the Japanese, and a Persian in his luxuriance, freshness and contrasts. Yet, in its utter originality, it has no exact parallel in any previous work. Here, his embellishments are of a fine blue, soft-edged rather than hard; there, they are harmonies of a deeper blue, green and lemon yellow, on occasion with a purple flower. Of unusual form, such totalities entwine themselves around objects equally unique in shape, winding tendril-fashion around body and neck, and rippling their fresh, harmonious colours, stems, foliage and buds overall. [...] Here one finds vases and cups - and even the smallest of miniature sets - that are an inexhaustible source of pleasure to the eye and the imagination.’15 When the second edition of Vosmaer's book appeared in 1886, it included as a supplement an amalgamation of two more recent articles he had written on Rozenburg's. It is worth noting that in 1887 Vosmaer became both a shareholder and a member of Rozenburg's executive board.

In 1888 the critic L. Simons did not hesitate to describe the products of the Rozenburg works as full-fledged works of art: ‘They are vibrant with the life they knew in the soul of their creator, vibrant with the shocks of their conception and of their nativity. [...] in these works I see and hear

the trembling and quaking, the wailing and sighing, the crying and rejoicing of modern man, who feels himself propelled ever onwards by the ever-faster revolution of life, and who finally, still panting, begins to attain the respite, peace and rest that he has craved with such ardour.’16

In order to realise Colenbrander's design objectives to the maximum, full use was made of contemporary technology.17 Gudenberg carried out extensive investigations in England and Germany, sparing himself nothing in his desire to introduce the latest innovations to the company. Naturally, there were accidents. In the early years very few premium quality goods were produced and significant losses were made.

The bodies designed by Colenbrander were either cast or thrown on the wheel in cream-coloured English clay, and were biscuit-fired before being painted, glazed and fired for a second time. Gudenberg's travels had turned up a wide variety of new pigments resistent to burning at the high temperatures needed to melt lead glaze, and which could therefore be used under the glaze. Until far into the 19th century many colours had been matt, as they could only be applied to the glaze after firing and then refired at lower temperatures. Rozenburg's glossy new colours made a great impression. Once again, Simons described them in ecstatic terms as ‘a glowing red, a flashing green, a roaring yellow, a stiff, introverted brown, and, resting between them, an earnest grey, an amiable light green, an intimate, caressing creamy yellow.’18

As head of the painters' studio, Colenbrander maintained a strict supervision of the artists charged with applying his designs to the biscuit. Each pattern was destined for a specific body shape, and was not to be applied to others at random. In the rough draft of a letter dating from 1888 he wrote that designing for pottery had initially caused him some difficulty, but that he had finally become very adept: ‘In the beginning, neither a shape nor a pattern was quick to come. Now, however, it is only rarely that neither of them immediately appears in its definitive form. The imagination is now well trained.’19 Colenbrander himself painted examples of the appropriate patterns on biscuit-fired models, painting in the colours in extra hard, contrasting watercolour in order to indicate clearly to the painters the differences between the various fields. Any pattern could be painted in a number of colour combinations with the pigments he specified.20 Once Colenbrander had approved the decorated body, this could be glazed and fired for the second time. After firing, Colenbrander inspected each item and displayed it in the sales depot at no. 39, Lange Poten.21

During the early years a modest number of tiles were painted at Rozenburg's. Little is known about any designs Colenbrander may have made for these. Vosmaer wrote in 1885 that Colenbrander had ‘designed a series of fine decorations for tiles, that may be composed in a great variety of ways,’ but up to the present only one single tile has been ascribed to him.22 It is known that several young artists from The Hague, among them Willem de Zwart, had been engaged during Colenbrander's time as artistic director and that they were free to paint tiles, tile panels or plaques as they saw fit. For this work they used special colours developed by Gudenberg, including a brown sepia.23 In addition, reputed artists from The Hague, such as Christoffel Bisschop, Johannes Bosboom and Hendrik Willem Mesdag allowed the painters to copy their work onto such panels or plaques.24

Although Colenbrander's designs were received with enthusiasm in artistic circles, sales were sluggish. The most important reason for this probably lay in the fact that rising production costs had necessitated a very high selling price. And although Gudenberg, in his capacity as technical director, invested large sums in expensive resources and materials, he frequently forgot to make notes of his findings. In this way a number of developments were lost and the factory repeatedly had to contend with expensive failures. Board and shareholders expressed their dissatisfaction, and on 1 June 1889 Gudenberg felt compelled to resign.

After his departure, relations between Colenbrander and the board also became strained. Finally, on 15 August 1889, Colenbrander, too, decided to leave. To his great dissatisfaction, however, the factory continued to manufacture to his designs for a number of years, albeit at vastly inferior standards.

It was only between 1893 and 1895 that the finances of the works became healthy. From 1895, when the architect Jurriaan Kok was appointed as artistic and financial director, the company began to flourish. Under his leadership, the eggshell porcelain was developed that would lead to the ‘Royal’ designation for Plateelbakkerij Rozenburg and to world fame.

Following his resignation from Rozenburg's, Colenbrander devoted himself to designing for interiors, work which included wallpaper and textiles. According to T.K.L. Sluyterman, who succeeded Le Comte as lecturer in the theory of decorative art at the Polytechnische School in Delft in 1895, Colenbrander had designed carpets sometime around 1875, i.e., at approximately the same time he drew his first designs for pottery.25 He is also supposed to have shown this work to a number of carpet mills; however, none of these had dared to take on what Sluyterman termed such ‘madness.’

It was probably around 1889 that the Deventer Tapijtfabriek first produced carpets designed by Colenbrander.26 In the spring of 1893, Colenbrander's new work was shown at the Haagsche Kunstkring. This included designs for carpets, portières, curtains, upholsteries and braids, and for runners in Smyrna and Persian weave with matching wallpapers. Critics reported that there was a variety of beautifully-coloured, two-dimensional patterns to be seen; once again it was plain that artefacts from the Middle and Far East had been their inspiration. Johan Gram, who had reported seeing carpet designs by Colenbrander at private Saturday-evening sessions of the artists' association Pulchri Studio some years earlier, was enraptured by the runners with tulip-motifs; by the curtains and wallpapers with ‘a ground of Moorish arches’; and by those ‘whose circular figures are reminiscent of mosques.’27

Eventually, in 1896, a group of his admirers were able to secure a regular position for Colenbrander by taking over the Tapijtfabriek Garjeanne & Co., a carpet factory in Amersfoort. Founded three years earlier, they had already manufactured carpets to Colenbrander's designs; now, under the new name of N.V. Amersfoortsche Tapijtfabriek, it continued in business with Colenbrander as artistic director. His carpets sold well, and when the factory merged with Deventer Tapijtfabriek in 1901, it was with Colenbrander as designer (fig. 4).

It was only when he was nearly 80 years old that Colenbrander had another opportunity to carry out his own designs for ceramics. Following the failure of a collaborative venture with the earthenware producer Zuid-Holland in 1913, plans were drawn up for the foundation of a factory dedicated to the production of his own art pottery. It was thus that the ram art pottery works was created in Arnhem in 1921.28 Colenbrander's imagination was far from exhausted, and within a short number of years he had created dozens of shapes and hundreds of decorations to accompany them. The new patterns were even more exuberant and abstract than those he had designed at Rozenburg's. He was to remain occupied with new plans for ceramics up to the time of his death in May 1930.

Mesdag and Colenbrander

There is no doubt that Mesdag was one of the first admirers of Colenbrander's new decorative art. The few records that remain concerning their relationship show that Mesdag defended and supported Colenbrander whenever



illustratie
fig. 4
Design for a carpet for the Koninklijke Vereenigde Tapijtfabriek (copyright Koninklijke Van Besouw NV, Goirle)


he could, while Colenbrander in turn had a great respect for Mesdag's opinion and was certainly grateful for his help.

Although it is unclear when the two first met, it can safely be assumed that they knew one another when, in 1883, Colenbrander was appointed ‘extraordinary member’ of Pulchri Studio. At that time both had been long-time residents of the town. Mesdag was 52, a wealthy man and successful painter. Colenbrander, who was ten years younger and who until then had supported himself as an architectural draughtsman, was, in the following year, to begin work as a pottery designer at Rozenburg's.

It is possible that Mesdag became involved with Rozenburg's at an early stage. Carel Vosmaer reported in 1885 that Mesdag had made one of his paintings available for copying to a tile panel.29 Mesdag soon had a financial interest in the factory. When it was decided to turn the works into a limited company, he and his fellow-artists Bisschop, Bosboom and Jozef Israëls wrote a testimonial in praise of Rozenburg's products, and an appeal was made to citizens of The Hague to invest in ‘this new art enterprise.’30

When at last the company was officially incorporated on 29 April 1887, Mesdag, in common with his cousin Jacob Dijk, had bought three 1,000-guilder shares.31 Mesdag's elder brother Taco (himself a painter) also bought a share.32 Carel Vosmaer, an acquaintance of Mesdag's from The Hague, simultaneously became a

shareholder and a member of the executive board, and enthusiastically threw himself into working for the new company. However, his state of health compelled him to withdraw in February 1888. In his letter of resignation he urged that the shareholders be prepared to make sacrifices for ‘a new industry and a new art.’ He was of the opinion that Colenbrander ‘as a draughtsman, colourist, and inventor of compositions, had developed a style that was simultaneously of such great singularity and of such great beauty that another country would be envious - and that this, in another country, would certainly transcend all objections and be valued and supported as something very remarkable.’33

Mesdag was Colenbrander's greatest support after Vosmaer's departure from Rozenburg's. The minutes of board meetings and shareholders' meetings frequently make reference to Mesdag as an intermediary and adviser.34 Colenbrander had repeated clashes with directors and board members, who thought that he too often interfered in matters beyond his artistic ambit. He was, for example, opposed to a measure whereby prices would be cut and economies made on the wages of the decorators. Time after time Mesdag managed to calm the members of the board and persuade Colenbrander to take a more flexible stance. In one matter, however, Mesdag himself consistently opposed the board's policy, whose intention it was to guarantee a basic source of income for the factory by means of manufacturing white tiles. He believed the company should limit itself to producing art pottery, and argued that tests for manufacturing tiles on a larger scale would unnecessarily drive up costs.

In 1888 Colenbrander expressed his great appreciation of Mesdag by designing a special plaque bearing an apposite motto. In the summer of that year he wrote to the author of an article in Eigen Haard, ‘There is a dish bearing the aphorism “La Richesse du Coeur est Le Soleil de l'Existence.” [...] I request you not to mention [this], as it is to be a surprise for someone.’35 Clearly, Mesdag was delighted with the plaque, as space was made for it in his house. It was sold by his legatees to the Haags Gemeentemuseum shortly after his death in 1916 (fig. 5).

Mesdag was unable to prevent Colenbrander's eventual resignation when, in 1889, directors and board demanded that he unconditionally accept their policy guidelines. After this final and unsuccessful attempt at mediation, Mesdag devoted a few more years to Rozenburg's. In 1893 he even financed the submission of the factory's works to the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago.36 However, on the appointment of Jurriaan Kok as director he finally withdrew. On 19 July of that year Kok sent Mesdag a letter in which he expressed his thanks for everything he had done for the factory.37 Hereafter, meetings of Rozenburg's shareholders made no further mention of Mesdag.

Together with members of his family, Mesdag had undoubtedly continued to support Colenbrander following the latter's resignation from Rozenburg's six years earlier. He may also have helped him find commissions. Mesdag certainly made some of Colenbrander's work available for exhibitions. Similarly, in the spring of 1893, a number of rooms were completed in the house of Mesdag's cousin Jacob Dijk at 49, Laan van Meerdervoort; the panelling, carpets, murals and ceiling decorations were all to designs by Colenbrander.38 In 1896 Dijk was also to become one of the eight shareholders of N.V. Amerfoortsche Tapijtfabriek (see above).39

Many years earlier, Colenbrander had decorated the drawing rooms in Mesdag's house at 9, Laan van Meerdervoort. This was before the addition of the museum building



illustratie
fig. 5
Theodoor Colenbrander, ‘La richesse du coeur est le soleil de l'existence,’ glazed earthenware plaque executed at the Haagsche Plateelbakkerij Rozenburg for H.W. Mesdag, The Hague, Gemeentemuseum


in 1887.40 Of this work the following was written by Philippe Zilcken, who devoted a book to Mesdag and his art collection (published in 1896; it appeared in French and English): ‘The drawing-room, arranged throughout by Colenbrander, who designed every part even to the most trivial ornament, even to the carpets, which harmonise in colour and style with the general effect of the whole, are all decorated in light, cheerful flower tinted hues. The walls are of a dull gold tone, perfectly uniform, with a quiet border of pale green and violet, in original designs, but with a style of their own such as none but Colenbrander can impart. The wall-space over the doors, always difficult to treat, is filled with a decoration suggesting a banner hanging in folds, on which are inscribed the names of the great masters: Daubigny, Millet, Dupré, Rousseau, Courbet, Corot, Troyon and Diaz.’41

Colenbrander may also have been responsible for the exceptional colours of the woodwork in Mesdag's house. As early as 1889, Johan Gram remarked that the stairs leading from the house to Mesdag's studio had been varnished in red, while in 1893 another visitor was astonished by the ‘singular colour of the paint that has been applied to the doors, stairs etcetera.’42 It is no coincidence that red was one of Colenbrander's favourite colours. In 1905 Sluyterman recounted the ‘diverting tale’ that Colenbrander had once used so much red in the preparation



illustratie
fig. 6
View of the salon in Mesdag's house, with the Dag en Nacht tower cups and vases, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, Museum Mesdag Archive


of a colour sample for the ceilings of the Haagsche Kunstkring that vermilion had temporarily become unobtainable in The Hague.43

Colenbrander's ceramics were also a colourful element in Mesdag's interior. These were surrounded by paintings and drawings by Dutch and French artists, and by objects from the great collections of western and eastern decorative art.44 During the time of Colenbrander's employment by Rozenburg's, Mesdag and his wife Sientje van Houten purchased his ceramics in liberal quantities. With approximately 165 pieces, the Mesdags' collection was the only one in Holland to constitute a representative sample of this work.45 It included exemplary items from the 1885-89 period, among them the very first five-piece cabinet set of tower vases and tower cups entitled Dag en Nacht (‘Day and night’). Colenbrander later called this ‘the most successful artistique work of my time.’46 The Rozenburg archives show that the Mesdags' outstripped themselves in 1888. Dozens of items were bought, possibly destined for the museum that had just been added to their house. In February and March 1888, Mrs Mesdag, accompanied by her nieces Barbara E. van Houten and Johanna Willemina Dijk-Mesdag, made a number of purchases, both ex-factory and at the depot at 39, Lange Poten. Mesdag also selected a significant number of items, both then and in August (fig. 6).47

It is striking that the Mesdags were undeterred in their purchases by the technical problems to which the minutes of the Rozenburg board refer. In the collection there are pieces whose glaze has not totally adhered to

the body, or on which, in parts, the glaze has burnt to a black metallic blotch. In some, the glaze is slightly pitted due to the formation of air bubbles during firing. In one or two cases value was even seen in an out-and-out reject. In the article he wrote after viewing Colenbrander's ceramics in the Mesdag house in the summer of 1888, L. Simons stated: ‘Why is it precisely these first, less perfect products hold a particular attraction for many of our painters is entirely comprehensible to those who have themselves learned to experience the attraction of such works of art; whose very imperfection reveals the groping semi-consciousness of the artist, and in which there reverberate the suddenness and immediacy of creation.’48 If Colenbrander's intentions were manifested to a sufficient extent, the Mesdags were satisfied, or so it seems. And in this regard, it is important to emphasise that Mesdag's collection of paintings does indeed show a predilection for studies and sketches.

The greater part of Colenbrander's ceramics were placed in a becoming position on the first floor of the museum. The pieces were arranged in wooden display cabinets lining the walls of a room that was connected to Mesdag's studio by a short flight of steps. The floors and walls were decorated with Persian carpets and gold-embroidered Turkish portières. The room was further embellished with richly-inlaid Turkish and Persian copperware, and with Japanese and Chinese bronzes. On the walls there was also space for a small number of watercolours; on the windowsills and tables stood oriental pottery and porcelain.49 If Colenbrander had been seeking understanding of his ceramics, or works to complement them, he could hardly have hoped for better.


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