RKD STUDIES

In Berlin the Great Elector first employed a number of Dutch portrait painters, who especially had to paint portraits of himself and his spouse, actually in countless repetitions that were presented to befriended courts. Gerard van Honthorst (1592-1656) received large commissions, although he never was in Berlin. In 1647 he delivered a total of 36 pictures, both full-length and bust-length portraits. From the invoice it is clear that not all of them were ‘originals’! Altogether he demanded 2,624 Thaler.¹ Already the year before the electoral couple had bestowed their portraits painted by Honthorst upon Johan Maurits, who still was commander of the Wesel Fortress. At a later date the Berlin court employed the artist once more, but the payments did not always go so smoothly (invoices from 1654 and 1660). The fact that the Great Elector especially chose Honthorst was not very surprising. Possibly he got acquainted with him during his stay in the Netherlands, since Honthorst also painted some things for his aunt, the Countess Palatine. Honthorst will not have been a stranger to the Elector’s wife either, as he worked for the court in The Hague too. It is said that at her instigation his younger brother Willem was called to Berlin in 1646.

Willem van Honthorst (c. 1604-1666) received a fixed salary as a court painter and also payments for his portraits, which meant in this case that his heirs, due to the poor finances of the Elector, only received a part of the outstanding amounts. Willem worked almost his whole life in Berlin. Only in 1664 he returned to Holland, where he died two years later. Even today a whole series of his paintings is found in the Prussian castles. For Oranienburg Castle he made a ‘foundation painting’ [1].² His works are barely distinguishable from those of his brother, in particular when the Honthorst workshop was largely involved, which was the case here.³

During the first twenty years of the Elector’s reign the Honthorst workshop determined the style of the official court portraits, to which local artists had to submit. One of these is for instance Mathias Czwiczek (c. 1601-1654). The father of the Great Elector already appointed him as his court painter in Königsberg [now Kalingrad, Russia] and sent him for his education to England, France and the Netherlands. The portraits he painted of his employer and his spouse in the 1640s (Königsberg, Montbijou) [2-3] entirely meet the type and style of Honthorstian prototypes, only they are harsher and colder, more or less like good studio repetitions.⁴

Michael Conrad Hirt (1613-1671) was in the service of the Brandenburg court from 1645 until 1663.⁵ It is said that his portraits look rather Netherlandish.⁶ A symbolic painting in the cathedral of Stendal is supposed to show the style of a pupil of Rembrandt [4].⁷ His son Adriaen Heinrich (1640-after 1678) succeeded him some years later as court painter in Berlin, while he was working himself in the south of Germany.⁸

1
attributed to Willem van Honthorst
Allegory on the building of Schloss Oranienburg, c. 1650-1660
Oranienburg, Kreismuseum im Schloss Oranienburg

2
Mathias Czwiczek
Double-portrait of Friedrich Wilhelm van Brandenburg (1620-1688) and Louise Henriëtte van Oranje-Nassau (1627-1667), 1649
Charlottenburg (Berlin), Schloss Charlottenburg

On his trips to the Netherlands the Elector took the opportunity to have his portrait painted by other artists, painters that he could not attract to his court. So he sat for Govert Flinck (1615-1660) and Pieter Nason (1612-1688/90), who both made several portraits of him [5-6], as well as of Johan Maurits [7]. We already considered Nason’s portrait of the ‘master of the knights’ in Sonnenburg castle [§2.7]. Flinck was born in Cleves and created a Solomon's prayer for wisdom in 1659 [8].⁹ The Elector stayed in this residence from November 1665 until November 1666.

Besides Flinck and Nason, Johannes Mijtens (c. 1614-1670) painted Friedrich Wilhelm’s portrait at that time as well [9].¹⁰ From his hand also hails the representation of Great Elector’s wedding (1646, now in the museum in Rennes) [10] and several pictures of the Elector’s family and other relatives.¹¹ During another occasion Adriaen Hanneman (c. 1604-1671) must have painted the portrait of the Elector that passed into the possession of Henriette Catharina of Anhalt-Dessau, probably as a gift of the sitter to his sister-in-law [11].¹² The sons of the Elector, Prince Karl Emil and Friedrich, were portrayed once in Utrecht by a certain Janson (= Cornelis Janson van Ceulen the Younger [1634-1715]?).¹³ A large part of these works ended up in Berlin, where they were proudly displayed as models of Dutch portraiture.

7
Pieter Nason
Portrait of Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen (1604-1679), 1663 (dated)
Olsztyn (Warmia-Masuria), Muzeum Warmii i Mazur, inv./cat.nr. MNO 134 OMO

The actual successors of Honthorst at the court were the painters Nicolaes Willingh (c. 1640-1678) [12] and his pupil Robbert Duval (1649-1732), who moved to Berlin together in 1667. Duval only stayed a few years, Willingh became a court painter and held this position until his death.

Jacques Vaillant (1643-1693) arrived five years later. His portraits of the Great Elector, his wife (Königsberg Castle, Monbijou, Charlottenburg) and other relatives [13-15],¹⁴ as well as his mythological scenes (Narcissus of 1671 in Schwedt an der Oder) [16] show him as a fine painter in the style of Godefridus Schalcken and Frans van Mieris. He also had to train Friedrich von Cussé, the black servant of the Electress, as a painter, for which he received 100 Thaler a year. For the same salary his brother Andries Vaillant (1655-1693) [17] had the more honourable [sic!] assignment to teach the princes.¹⁵ Adam de Clerck (c. 1645-1705) came to Berlin as a court painter in 1678, where he died in 1705 as a professor of the academy.¹⁶ In 1681 he painted a portrait of the Elector that was sent to France,¹⁷ others were preserved in print [18].

12
Nicolaes Willingh
Fortune Teller, after 1667
Oranienburg, Schlossmuseum Oranienburg, inv./cat.nr. GK I 5401

From the later Dutch portrait painters, whose activity partly falls already in the governmental period of King Friedrich I, we mention also Laurens Eppenhoff (active 1685-1689), a Dutch enamel worker who had to copy the originals of Abraham Romandon († 1687) ‘in a small scale in enamel’;¹⁸ furthermore the completely unknown J. van Groningen (drawing of c. 1680 in London) [19] and Jan van Sweel (active 1673-1676), nephew and pupil of Jan de Baen, who sent him to Berlin in 1676, while he himself rather wanted to stay in the Netherlands.¹⁹

However, Jan de Baen (1633-1702) did come to Cleves several times, where Johan Maurits was very favourable to him [20]. In 1676 the Elector paid him a visit, ordered portraits of himself and his wife [21], but he did not succeed in attracting the artist to Berlin.²⁰ His successor was able to acquire a portrait of Johan Maurits by De Baen that had been returned to the painter after the death of the stadholder.²¹ De Baen’s portraits of the Duke of Celle and the Prince of Brandenburg-Ansbach also must have originated in Holland.²² Theodorus Netscher (1661-1728) apparently started a portrait of Friedrich I, which he never bothered to finish.²³

19
J. van Groningen
Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg and his wife on horseback in front of a town, c. 1680
London (England), British Museum, inv./cat.nr. 1846,0509.212