RKD STUDIES

We will treat the duchy of Braunschweig-Lüneburg as a unit, which it indeed has been until 1692, when the larger part of Lüneburg was raised to the electorate of Hannover. It is all the better since this large area does not yield much material for our research. Already when considering artistic life in Hessen, it becomes clear that Dutch painters no longer appear in large numbers as was the case at the Düsseldorf or even at the Brandenburg court. Here, where the ambition of the princes is focused on other things, we find them only occasionally, and their respective activity did not last too long.

In Braunschweig the line of artists starts with Dutch/Flemish Hans Vredeman de Vries (1525/26-1609), who was employed by the duke for five years and then moved on again [1-2].¹ Paulus Moreelse painted (in Braunschweig?) a portrait of Duke Christian (1599-1629) [3].² Houbraken recounts that the Duke of Braunschweig tried to employ David Bailly in vain.³ However, the House of Welf also had a local ‘Contrafeyer and servant’, as Albert Freyse († 1652) was called in an staff inventory of Duke August the Younger in 1643 [4]. A small equestrian portrait of 1647 (collection Grand Duke of Hessen) [5] looks like a work by an average Dutch painter of the time, naturally a bit stiffer as was the custom from there. Freyse also painted Danish princes [6-7] and his work is most closely related to that of the Monogrammist AM (A. Muiltjes or Andreas Magerstadt).⁴

3
Paulus Moreelse
Portrait of Christian of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1599-1626), dated 1619
Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, inv./cat.nr. 649

Franz de Hamilton (before 1640-after 1702), who we already have seen working in Düsseldorf and Potsdam and who we will meet again in Southern Germany, also spent three years (1672-1674) in Hannover. In the two still-lifes that until recently were in Braunschweig-Lüneburg possession [8-9],⁵ he appears as a follower of Willem van Aelst and Hendrik de Fromantiou, who represented this genre in Berlin.

A full decade later we encounter the Hamburg painter Joachim Luhn as a court painter in Salzdahlum (1689/92). We already discussed his portraits in Dutch taste.⁶ About the same time his fellow citizen Johann Oswald Harms (1643-1708) settled in Salzdahlum, after he had worked in Venice and Dresden. A winter landscape in Dutch style of 1675 is in Hamburg [10], where he returned in 1696.⁷ Also Andreas Scheits came from Hamburg to Hannover, where he was active as a court painter from about 1696 on and spent the rest of his life. He was trained in Holland and was not a bad portrait painter, as his portraits of the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) prove [11-12].⁸ He is also important as a teacher of Hungarian artist Ádám Mányoki (1673-1756), to whom we will return.⁹ The third Hamburg painter showing up in the area was Hans Hinrich Rundt (c. 1660-c. 1750), who had moved from there to Detmold and worked shortly in Wolfenbüttel in 1699 [13] and in 1702 in Brake.¹⁰

10
Johann Oswald Harms
Winter landscape, dated 1674
Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle, inv./cat.nr. 428

In 1682 Jacques Vaillant (1643-1691) came over to Hannover from Berlin to paint a few portraits [14-15] and Mattheus Terwesten, coming from Italy, stayed here for a short while (1699) before he returned home.¹¹ Theodor Lubieniecki, who had been a pupil of Gerard de Lairesse, also made a stopover in Hannover on his way back from Italy, before he was employed in Berlin as a court painter. We can complete the list with René Auguste Constantyn (c. 1685-after 1730), a follower of the history painter Theodoor van der Schuer. Of Constantyn we only know that he went to Germany in the early 18th century. As we encounter him some years later in England as a court painter for George I (1716), it is logical to assume that his German trip brought him to the court of Hannover.

13
Hans Hinrich Rundt
Portrait of Rudolph Augustus, Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg (1627-1704), 1699
Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, inv./cat.nr. B 110

Through family ties of the House of Welf with the Palatinate – a daughter and a granddaughter of the Winter King married with Electors of Hannover – an impressive number of Dutch portraits by Gerard van Honthorst, Jan van Ravesteyn, Anthonie van Ravesteyn and others moved into the collections of the Hanoverans.¹² Friedrich V von der Pfalz and his spouse employed a whole series of Dutch portrait painters. A daughter of the Winter King, Louise Hollandine, the later abbess of Maubuisson (1622-1709) [16] was taught by Honthorst.¹³ Apparently she never completely gave up painting, since even in 1699 she sent her sister, Electress Sophie of Hannover, a work of her own making. Recently a double portrait in the museum in Braunschweig (no. 673) [17] in the manner of Adriaen Hanneman is attributed to her.¹⁴ Hanneman, who earlier supplied the electoral families in Berlin and Dessau, ensured that the portraits of this dynasty would be handed down to posterity.¹⁵ Even today we find his pleasant portraits in the Hanoveran castles [18-19]. Princess Louise Hollandine had her own portrait painted by him too [20].¹⁶

Michiel van Mierevelt (1566-1641) portrayed numerous princes of Braunschweig and Hessen, most of them not from life, but from primitive portraits that were sent to him from Germany. He embellished them and prepared them to be engraved. Naturally he had the portraits of the King of Bohemia, as Friedrich V still was called respectfully, and that of his wife and children ‘in stock’ in numerous versions.¹⁷ Many of those found their way to relatives in Hannover.

16
Louise Hollandine van de Palts
Self-portrait of Louise Hollandine Palatine (?1622-1709) as Benedictine nun
Hannover, private collection het Huis van Hannover

Another favoured artist by the Palatines was Jacob van der Merck (c. 1610-1664), so that it comes as no surprise that we find his rather rare paintings in the Hausmann collection, that had taken in many works from the old princely collection.¹⁸ For the rest the Hausmann collection was the product of a good, bourgeois taste. The same goes for the collection of Heinrich Grote (1675-1753), whose best Netherlandish paintings were acquired from the English art dealer John Greenwood (1727-1792) [21] in 1775 and auctioned the next year in London.¹⁹ Since the subject here is collections from central Germany, we can also think of the collection of Count Fürstenberg-Herdringen in the neighbouring Westfalen. It contains Dutch, mainly Utrecht paintings that were inherited from Vincent van Wttenhorst [22]. Until recently this beautiful collection was completely unknown to artists and amateurs.²⁰

21
William Pether
Portrait of John Greenwood (1727-1792), in or after 1792
Boston (Massachusetts), Museum of Fine Arts Boston, inv./cat.nr. 54.178