17th Century Dutch Paintings - Part 4 :Masterpieces from Mount Stuart - The Bute Collection and National Galleries of Scotland

The gallery on the Mound in Edinburgh has a collection of Dutch masterpieces including Rembrandt and Franz Hals.  I can remember the Mound Collection from my childhood; and the Skating Minister by Naysmith and Titian’s Three Ages of Man are pictures I can remember when at school. 

I had heard about the Mount Stuart collection of the Marquis of Bute and about the exhibition from some publicity and when visiting the Lusieri exhibition a guard mentioned the Masterpieces from Mount Stuart.   (http://www.nationalgalleries.org/whatson/368/masterpieces-from-mount-stuart)  I decided on 24^th August 2012 to go on my own. 

I checked in at the information desk and was taken to the octagon shaped gallery (3, I think) and started my tour.  I tried out my knowledge of the Jan Steen genre painting on the staff member but it was not a Steen.  The first painting which I thought was a Jan Steen turned out to be by another artist. 

The staff member told me about the exhibition and had been quite envious of the colleagues who had been to Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute (Rothesay)  in gathering the pictures. (http://www.mountstuart.com/)  I did manage to get the curatorial gossip on the collection.  I checked where the other 17^th Century pictures were and was given instructions on where they were located. 

I worked my way round the room and was faced with something very familiar.  It was a view of the Great Kirk in Haarlem by Gerrit Berckheyde.  We had studied one like it in the National Gallery in London.( http://profwhitestick.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/17th-century-dutch-paintings-golden-age.html )  That picture had set me off on my discovery of these paintings which have so much to offer in terms of clarity, colour and narrative. 

I moved round the room and spotted two Albert Cuyps.  For verification I asked complete strangers to read out the picture labels and so far it had been one wrong and 3 correct.  My fifth guess of a possible artist was wrong and I decided to get the catalogue and come back again with some background. 

On my second visit, I managed to get details of the paintings which I found interesting.  These included:

The Disputed Reckoning by Pieter de Hooch (I recognised this through the chequered tiled floor.)

The Grote Markt and the Church of St Bavo in Haarlem by Gerrit A Berckheyde

A Horse, Cattle and a Cowherd Resting in a Landscape by Albert Cuyp

Cattle Wattering by Estuary by Albert Cuyp

A  Young Girl Holding a Basket of Cherries by Jacob Jordaens

Frozen River Landscape by Aert van der Neer

Mountain Landscape with Waterfall by Jacob Isaacksz van Ruisdael

Cavalier Playing a Lute to a Lady by Jan Steen

The Card Players by David Teniers the Younger

I checked the whereabouts of the regular collection and went round the rooms “spotting” another Cuyp guessing the Rembrandts and Franz Hals and spotting a Van der Heyden.  On returning to have another quick look at the Mount Stuart collection the guard asked me how I had got on. 

I had probably overdone my enthusiasm for Cuyp, so he offered to take me round the collection pausing in front of the Rembrandt. We went on to discuss the Cuyp Nijmegen painting and I was given a detailed description of the people and objects.  In passing the guard mentioned another picture which had been acquired for the collection. 

I was able on my 2^nd visit to pick out some pictures which I liked and get a sighted friend to note the labels, as follows: 

Pictures from the Permanent Collection:

Saloman Van Ruysdael

Alkmaar in Winder, 1656

Oil on canvas

NG2799

Hendrick Ten Oever

View of Zublle with Bathers, 1675

Oil on canvas

Meindert Hobbema

Wooded Landscape

NG2377

Hendrick  Van Minderhout

An Engagement between English and Dutch Fleets (c1665)

In the 19^th century this was erroneously attributed to Willem van de Velde the Younger and titled A Sea Fight

Albert Cuyp

Landscape with view of the Valkhof, Nijmegen

NG2314

Jan van der Heyden

A View of Cologne with the Carthusian Church and St Pataleon, c1660-1665

Adam Pynacker

The Stone Bridge

On my solo visit I managed to buy the catalogue titled Masterpieces from Mount Stuart – The Bute Collection by Christian Tico Seifert.  This has an introduction by Anthony Crichton-Stuart (one of the Bute family).  I also bought a set of cards of a painting by Hendrick Avercamp titled Winter Landscape.  On a further visit to stock up on presents, we found the elusive postcard of Pitlessie Fair. (http://www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/artists-a-z/W/6004/artist_name/Sir%20David%20Wilkie/record_id/2431)

Many thanks to the Mound staff for locating and reading out some of the labels and discussing some of the highlights.  The shop staff were also helpful in finding some items.

If in Edinburgh, make a point of visiting the Torrie Collection which is in the Georgian gallery of the Talbot Rice Gallery within the University of Edinburgh Old College.  I covered this in Part 2 of my Dutch painting series: http://profwhitestick.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/dutch-paintings-part-2-torrie.html

Dutch Paintings Part 2: Torrie Collection, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh

Dutch Paintings from the 17^th Century have proved to be interesting.  The pictures are not large but are still attractive to collectors.  Many museums, national art galleries and institutions have collections of Dutch Paintings.  One such collection is the Torrie Collection which is held by the University of Edinburgh. 

I was at the Talbot Rice Gallery several times last summer and went round the Torrie Collection, once on my own and once with a friend, who read out the captions from a catalogue.  My first visit to the Torrie collection was around the time of my visit to Surgeons’ Hall in Edinburgh and it was Jan Steen’s “Doctor Visit” which made me recall it.  Harbour scenes with ships and boats seemed familiar as did the painter William van de Veld. 

Landscapes with trees and perspective lines seemed to be 200 years in advance of the Corot paintings I had liked in 1975 and had viewed again recently at the National Gallery in London.  Some Dutch painters had gone to Italy and had developed in ways similar to Claude Lorraine. A few had returned to the Netherlands and influenced local painters while others continued in their own styles.

Following the topic of Dutch Pictures has led me to many other collections and The Zoffany’s picture of Lawrence Dundas around his pictures allowed a little detective work on the internet in matching some of the painter names (difficult) with recurring themes in landscape and genre painting.   I ordered some books on the internet and during my stay in hospital a friend read out extracts from two: a catalogue of Albert Cuyp pictures and drawings; and an introduction to Dutch Landscapes in the Royal Collection by Desmond Shawe-Taylor (with contributions by Jennifer Scott). 

The following quote from the latter is particularly noteworthy.  Shawe-Taylor talks about the process of cleaning and restoring a painting and in doing so draws parallels with the intellectual process of appreciating these paintings.  Thus:

“The understanding of painting can require a similar process.  Over the years the habitual way of thinking about the art of a particular period can start to obscure and discolour the works themselves; sometimes sincerely held ideas can overlay the truth with plausible anachronisms.  The process of intellectual restoration is as fraught with difficulties as that of real restoration; the ‘original experience of a work’ can seem as elusive a concept as the ‘original appearance of a work’.”

It has also been fun searching discussions of Dutch Paintings on You Tube and I have learned at least how the You Tube system works.  I could not resist tweeting out a link to a video of a restoration completed in the Mauritshuis in the Hague in Netherlands of a Jan Steen painting titled The Doctor’s Visit. (see below)

Having been in contact with Talbot Rice Gallery since last year I asked them about the Torrie Collection and while I was in hospital they very kindly sent me images of the paintings which I liked. I would have visited the gallery during the Easter period though my impending hip operation put all travel from London on hold. 

716 Jan van der Heyden - Wooded Park Landscape With Deer

By kind permission of "The University of Edinburgh
Fine Art Collection".

Jan van der Heyden was born in 1637 and died in 1712.  He was particularly noted for town scenes, but also painted landscapes such as this one. 

738 Jan Steen - The Doctor's Visit

By kind permission of "The University of Edinburgh
Fine Art Collection".

Jan Steen was born in Leiden around 1626 and died in 1679.  Steen painted many comic subjects, though there is frequently a moral content to the scene.  The Doctor’s Visit was painted several times and the restoration of the painting in the Mauritshuis in The Hague can be found on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3utdGnQ9RnY

Although the video is in Dutch, it is sub-titled (but I can’t read them, of course) and there are quite a lot of scientific terms which are recognisable, such as infrared and ultraviolet.  The video, however, does show the process of restoring a painting and illustrates the important part which chemistry and spectroscopy plays in picture restoration.  I can’t detect any difference between the restored and unrestored images from the Torrie collection and on You Tube, the trained eye may well discover the benefits of the removal of previous restorations and newer ways of interpreting the artist’s original work - although, bearing Desmond Shawe-Taylor's statement quoted above, some care has to be taken in the interpretation of the thoughts of the artist when the work or works were commissioned.

739 David Teniers the Younger - Peasants Playing Bowls

By kind permission of "The University of Edinburgh
Fine Art Collection".

David Teniers the Younger was born 1610 and died 1690.  Sports and pastimes often feature in Dutch paintings and I was attracted to this painting of people bowling in the street as it reminded me of a craze in the 1960s for 10-pin bowling!  For some reason Edinburgh did not indulge in 10-pin bowling, though both Kirkcaldy (birthplace of Adam Smith) and Glenrothes (then a new town) had 10-pin bowling. 

744 William van de Velde - Fishing Boats in a Calm

By kind permission of "The University of Edinburgh
Fine Art Collection".

William van de Velde the younger was born 1633 and died in 1707.  He followed in his father’s footsteps in having an interest in painting marine scenes.  There are many paintings with ships in full sail, in various weather conditions.  Both father and son worked in London in Greenwich and are buried in St James’s, Piccadilly.  My father’s family had a couple of paintings of sailing ships which were probably done in the 19^th century based on the harbour at Charlestown, near Dunfermline.  An ancestor of mine had been the harbour master there.

Also of interest is another You Tube video in which Desmond Shawe-Taylor discusses Aelbert Cuyp’s The Passage Boat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyRuylhzzVs

In preparing this post, I’d like to thank Shawn Coulman, Marketing and Education Assistant and Jill Forrest, Museums Support Officer both at the Talbot Rice Gallery. 

Details for the Gallery are:

Talbot Rice Gallery
The University of Edinburgh
Old College, South Bridge
Edinburgh
EH8 9YL

+44 (0)131 651 4784www.trg.ed.ac.uk
facebook.com/talbotricegallery

The Talbot Rice Gallery is situated in the Old College of the University of Edinburgh and as well as housing the Torrie Collection there are frequent exhibitions and events.  The gallery is very welcoming and it was a member of the staff and a volunteer who alerted me to the Artlink project which I discussed last year.  I look forward to meeting up with both Talbot Rice and Art Link during the ‘summer’.  If you are visiting the Edinburgh Festival, it’s well-worth visiting the Talbot Rice Gallery.