RKD STUDIES

In addition to portraitist and painters of refined genre and still life, a few Dutch landscape painters travelled to the far north. Allaert van Everdingen (1617-1675) is certainly the most important of these figures. Louys Trip (1605-1684) sent him there in the early forties to render a great panorama commemorating his canon foundry in Julitabruk in Södermanland (Rijksmuseum) [1].¹ The Trips and De Geers had interests, in part shared, in Swedish ore deposits, steel trade and munition factories. Julitabruk was the site of one of many plants.² It is not van Everdingen’s masterpiece, as more often happens when an artist is tempted to undertake an unusual commission. Exceptionally attractive, on the other hand, are the small sketches and water colors that he created there, and the pictures with waterfalls and wooded crags [2-4] that he executed in Sweden or in his homeland after these studies.³

Some years earlier Anthoni Gouteris (c. 1573/4-after 1660) must have travelled through Sweden and Russia, as is established by a series of etchings that he published in 1639 [5].⁴

1
Allaert van Everdingen
The cannon foundry Julitabruk of Hendrick Trip, Södermanland, Sweden, c. 1662
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv./cat.nr. SK A 1510

Govert Camphuysen (c. 1623/4-1672) left Amsterdam in 1652 to travel to Stockholm via Gottorf and Copenhagen.⁵ He was graciously received by Hedwig Eleonora (1636-1715), the Holstein princess and spouse of Karl X Gustav, who made him her court painter. Camphuysen was a versatile artist. In addition to landscapes populated by typically Swedish peasants, he also painted genre pieces and portraits (e.g. portrait Olaf Larsson, engraved by Dionysius Padtbrugge [c. 1628-1683) [6-8]. The animal pieces and landscapes are reminiscent of the work of Paulus Potter (1625-1654) with which they are still often confused, and of the peasant pictures by Franciscus Carré (1630-1669), who probably also spent a few years in Sweden.⁶ Also attributed to Camphuysen is a handsome view of Stockholm (Uppsala, University), which is in any case by an accomplished Dutch hand [9-10]. We have seen that in 1662 he painted several aspects of the Jacobsdal property of State Chancellor Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.⁷ However, the artist soon returned home, for in 1665 we again encounter him in Amsterdam.

6
Govert Camphuysen (I)
Farmer and milking peasant woman with livestock at a farm, c. 1652-1665
Övedskloster, private collection Otto baron Ramel

A certain Jacobus Houstraet (c.1634-1671/1691) was probably in the service of De la Gardie at the same time as Camphuysen. We conclude this from an Amsterdam sale of 1669, which included a painting of ‘the house of Jacobsdael of the Compt. Houstraet’ (‘het huys van Jacobsdael von den Compt. Houstraet’).⁸ This Houstraet met up with one Aert Pietersz van de Venne [= Aert Cosijn (c.1631-after 1674)] in Sweden, for they submitted a shared petition to the queen to obtain a charter as painters.⁹ Finally, three Dutch engravers, Willem Swidde (1661-1697), Herman Padtbrugge (1656-1686) and Johannes van den Aveele (c. 1655-1727), need to be mentioned. Together they worked on a major publication entitled Ancient and Modern Sweden (Suecia antiqua et hodierna) [11-13].¹⁰

As we also want to mention the engravers in passing, we can still establish that David van den Bremden (1603-1655), Jeremias Falck (c. 1610-1677) (a native of Danzig who lived in the Dutch Republic for a few years) [14] and Jan van de Velde IV [15] found work at the Swedish court around the middle of the century.

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Willem Swidde after Erik Dahlberg
View of Maria Magdalena Church in Stockholm, dated 16[9]1
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv./cat.nr. BI-1924-103-19

Just as Camphuysen brought the cattle landscape in the style of Potter to Stockholm, so Johann Philip Lemke (1631-1711) introduced a variation on the battle piece in the manner of Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668) [16-18]. Though Lemke was born in Germany, he had undergone his artistic training in Haarlem with Jacob de Wet I (c. 1610-1677) though he had already been introduced to the conventions of Dutch painting in Hamburg with Matthias Scheits (c.1625/30-c.1700). A lengthy stay in Italy provided him with fresh impressions. Joachim von Sandrart believed that Lemke had especially studied the works of Jan Both and Pieter van Laer, but we can learn from his equestrian battles that he studied the manner of Jacques Courtois (1621-1676) with utmost diligence. In Swedish collections – he came to Stockholm in 1683 ‒ one still often finds his equestrian battles [19-20], which are compiled from a mixture of forms taken from Benjamin Gerritz. Cuyp (1612-1652), Wouwerman and Courtois le Bourguignon.

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Johann Philip Lemke
Charles X Gustaf (1622-1660) after the Battle of Iversnaes, after 1683
Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, inv./cat.nr. NMDrh 149

We know of no pictures by Kort Withold, another Wouwerman student. He is supposed to have painted portraits too. Wouwerman is to have protested that Withold had run off to study with Jacob de Wet, but nothing other than this anecdote is known about him.¹¹

Judging by his old-fashioned pictures, the history painter Johan Hammer (c.1640-1698), who came from Germany, must also have learned from Dutch painting. Around 1670, he painted a series featuring Gustav Adolf's battles for Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie, which is still at the stage of development of Hendrik Vroom's history paintings [21].¹²

21
Johan Hammer
De battle of Lützen, 3 November 1632, 1670s
Karlbergs Slott, Military Academy