RKD STUDIES

Here we ignore the mannerist school at the Bavarian court, although a Dutch artist (Pieter Isaacsz) belonged to this school as well. Basically, this group of artists has its own history and development, that preceded the flourishing of the Dutch art of the 17th century. Therefore we start with some portrait painters. Johann de Pay (1614-1660?) was trained in the Netherlands, where he especially copied Anthony van Dyck, a model he adhered to for a long time (Ansbach, portrait of 1655) [1].¹ A Self-portrait of 1649 (Augsburg), however, almost comes close to Dutch portraiture in the treatment of chiaroscuro [2].² Other portraits again are treated in a Flemish-Dutch combination of styles (Schleissheim, portraits of 1644 and 1659) [3-4]

Jacob Potma (†1704) came from Friesland. He was a pupil of Wybrand de Geest and worked for a long time as ‘Kamerherr’ [chamberlain] of the Elector of Bavaria [5] with whom he is said to have travelled to Vienna. His altar pieces and ceiling decorations in Pfreimd, however, do not show any Dutch training. ³ Nikolaus Prucker (c. 1620-1694) created some magnificent portraits that are close to Gerard ter Borch and Isaack Luttichuys (portraits in Ansbach of 1664) [6].⁴ Although he was employed by the Electors Maximilian [7] and Ferdinand Maria, his works lack all courtly elegance; his portraits rather have a dreamy, almost melancholic quality. The landscape background underlines the Dutch character of his portrait type. His later portraits, such as Maximilian Graf von Kurtz (1595-1662) (Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich) [8] are more loose and smooth, comparable to the works of Govert Flinck, Jürgen Ovens or Jonson van Ceulen.⁵

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Jacob Potma
A master teaching a child to draw
Braunschweig, private collection Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Albert (von) Otto

It is said that Jonas Wolff, who in 1641 came to Munich and died there in 1680, was trained in Vienna. That is hard to believe, considering his Dutch-looking portraits such as the one that was in the Grimaldi auction (Amsterdam, 1912-12-04, no. 74) [9]. In the modelling it is very similar to the works by Thomas de Keyser; maybe a bit more stiff than we are used to in good, ‘real’ Dutch paintings.

Herewith we have reached the end of our list. We cannot name landscape painters in this context, unless we refer once more to Johann Franz Beich, who died in Munich.⁶ This is all the more surprising, since Dutch landscape paintings occur now and again the Bavarian collections. In the collection inventories of Rudolf Wilhelm zu Stutenberg,⁷ Freiherr Franz von Mayer⁸ and others we find the names of Jan Both, Willem van Bemmel, Philips Wouwerman,⁹ Jan Asselijn, Jan van Ossenbeeck and Pieter van Laer. In the electorate collection, however, Flemish art predominated, especially after Elector Maximilian II Emanuel (1662-1726) [10], who also became governor of the Spanish Netherlands in 1691, purchased art on a grand scale in Antwerp, which benefitted the Alte Pinakothek and other Bavarian collections.¹⁰

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Jacques Ignatius de Roore
Allegorical tribute to Maximiliaan Emanuel of Bavaria (1662-1726), c. 1711-1714
Munich, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, inv./cat.nr. 93/1017