RKD STUDIES

Preliminary commentary on Thoré-Bürger's annotations in his copy of Musées de la Hollande, volume 1 (1858).²

The two-volume Musées de la Hollande (1858-1860) by Thoré-Bürger were a work in progress. The same can be said about the annotations in the first volume, in which the two most important Dutch art museums are discussed: the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Royal Cabinet of Paintings, or Mauritshuis, in The Hague.¹ In these annotations – some of which can be dated between 1859 and 1863 – we see Thoré-Bürger gathering information on his new field of research: Dutch art history.

An interesting document that testifies of his way of working, is provided by a copy of the sale catalogue of the Stolberg/Brabeck collection, which bears annotations by Thoré-Bürger himself.² The sale took place in October and November 1859 in Hanover. Thoré-Bürger must have been excited to see several museum directors in the sale room, with whom he would have been in close contact: Gustav Friedrich Waagen, who was buying for the museum in Berlin,³ and with whom he would write a collection catalogue of the collection Suermondt at Aachen;⁴ Johann David Passavant, director of the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, who would buy an important Arent de Gelder painting at the sale;⁵ Charles Eastlake, who bought two paintings for the National Gallery, London;⁶ and Ary Johannes Lamme, director of Museum Boijmans in Rotterdam. The management of the Rijksmuseum and Mauritshuis were noticeably absent.⁷ In Thoré-Bürger’s copy of the catalogue, he has pasted two small handwritten sheets, bearing his own notes on the paintings, and often facsimiles of the signatures on them. This interest in signatures also emerges from Thoré-Bürger's annotations in Musées de la Hollande, as well as a focus on artists’ life dates and portraits. But the essence of his work was simply a matter of careful observation, as evidenced by the description of Rembrandt’s Night Watch.⁸ However, when the first volume of Musées de la Hollande was published in 1858, Thoré-Bürger hadn't yet been able to properly examine all the paintings in the Rijksmuseum, for instance because some of them were hung too high. His annotations reveal that he had since succeeded in viewing many of those high-hanging paintings.⁹ As a result, he sometimes was able to correct the attribution of a painting.¹⁰

The notes in volume 1 of the Musées also clearly demonstrate Thoré-Bürger’s involvement in other art historical activities, such as for instance the description of the Arenberg collection in Brussels, published in 1859.¹¹ Naturally, he also worked on the second volume of Musées de la Hollande, covering the Van der Hoop Museum in Amsterdam and the Boijmans Museum in Rotterdam, published in 1860. And in the same year, he released a catalogue on the Suermondt collection in Aachen, written together with Waagen. In addition, several articles by his hand appeared during the early 1860s, covering a few German museums, and the Parisian Péreire collection.¹² Consequently, the annotations contain references to paintings in all these collections. They also reveal the results of his recent travels to Germany, for instance to the above-mentioned Stolberg sale. Occasionally, we also find details of previous trips to England, when he visited the major exhibition in Manchester in 1857, for example.¹³

Thoré-Bürger diligently kept track of new publications, as shows from his annotations. He mentions those on the Lazienki collection in Warsaw, and the numerous museum catalogues from Germany, Austria and France.¹⁴ He considers the 1857 Antwerp catalogue and the one from Vienna of one year later to be exemplary, mostly because they publish facsimiles of signatures and because they were based on thorough art historical research.¹⁵ Additionally, he has eagerly browsed through the second edition of Dubourcq's 1858 catalogue in search of new facsimiles, which are noted down in his annotations, in turn.¹⁶ He also recognized the importance of auction catalogues for the provenance of paintings: he used Hoet 1752 for older information and consulted various more recent auction catalogues.¹⁷ Recent Dutch biographical and survey works did not escape from Thoré-Bürger’s sight either. He seems to have immediately reviewed every newly published volume by, for example, Kramm, in search of new information.¹⁸ The people he met along the way, must have also been important sources for Thoré-Bürger. He met with restorers, such as Nicolaas Hopman and Etienne Leroy; collectors such as Herman de Kat, Leendert Dupper – both from Dordrecht – and the Brussels-based J.H. Cremer. At the same time, Thoré-Bürger was in contact with fellow-(art)-historians in the Netherlands, amongst whom were Carel Vosmaer, and Pieter Scheltema – for whose articles on Van der Helst and Govert Flinck, translated into French, he had provided the notes.¹⁹

Ellinoor Bergvelt
Frances Suzman Jowell