Leiden Fijnschilders and the Local Art Market in the Golden Age
How to cite
Bakker, Piet. “Leiden Fijnschilders and the Local Art Market in the Golden Age” (2017). In The Leiden
Collection

Catalogue,

2nd

ed.

EditedbyArthurK.

Wheelock

Jr.

New

York,

2017–20.

https://theleidencollection.com/essays/updated-leiden-fijnschilders-and-the-local-art-market-in-the-golden-age/(archived May 2020).
A PDF of every version of this essay is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive ismanaged by a permanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative
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© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Leiden Fijnschilders and the Local Art Market in the Golden Age
Page 2 of 26

The year 1631 marked a turning point for painting in Leiden.[1] An abrupt end
came to a period during which, sustained by a favorable economy, thenumber of painters had grown without interruption. This growth began in allof the cities in the Dutch Republic (fig 1) around 1610 and lasted until around
mid-century in most of them. This was also true in Leiden, although it groundto a temporary halt in 1631 with the sudden departure of several painters,
ushering in a period of artistic stagnation lasting close to a decade. By far the
best-known painter to leave Leiden was Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69) (fig

Fig 1. Graph: The Number ofPainters in Six Cities in Holland:
1590¬–1710.

2), who moved to Amsterdam to run the workshop of the famous art dealer
Hendrik Uylenburgh (ca. 1587–1661). His friend Jan Lievens (1607–74) (fig3) headed to London shortly thereafter in the hope of being appointed a court
painter.[2] In that year, Leiden lost even more painters who today rank among
the most important of the seventeenth century. For instance, the highly
successful landscapist Jan van Goyen (1596–1656) traded in his native city
for The Hague; and even though the still-life painter Jan Davidsz de Heem
(1606–84) was not born in Leiden, he had been working there for quite sometime when he left to try his luck in Antwerp in 1631.
This exodus cannot be attributed to deteriorating economic circumstances.
On the contrary, around 1630 the textile industry in Leiden—the mainstay ofthe local economy well into the eighteenth century—entered a period ofspectacular expansion that would last until the late 1650s.[3] The reasons forleaving, thus, would have been personal, motivated by the belief of findingFig 2. Rembrandt van Rijn, SelfPortrait with Shaded Eyes, 1634,
oil on panel, 71.1 x 56 cm, The
Leiden Collection, New York, inv.
no. RR-110.

greater success elsewhere; this is certainly true for Rembrandt and Lievens.
Regardless, this loss of talent was a serious drain on Leiden’sartistic life.[4] By the end of the 1630s, however, the situation changed withthe success of Gerrit Dou (1613–75) (fig 4), whose star would rise rapidly inLeiden and shine beyond the country’s borders. Dou would found a local
school of painting in Leiden that would extend late into the eighteenth
century—Louis de Moni (1698–1771) was the last important artist—whose“members,” since the nineteenth century, have been known as the “Leidse
fijnschilders” (Leiden fine painters).[5] The term fijnschilder refers to a specificmanner of painting: a highly precise and extremely detailed facture and asmall-scale format. This essay examines their position in the local art market,
as well as the liefhebbers, the “art lovers” or connoisseurs of their work.

[6]

It

will not, however, focus on the two leading Leiden fijnschilders Gerrit Dou

Fig 3. Jan Lievens, Self-Portrait,ca. 1629–30, oil on panel, 42 x 37
cm, The Leiden Collection New
York, inv. no. JL-105.

and Frans van Mieris the Elder (1635–81), since they are discussed inseparate essays. The artists considered in this essay are Quiringh van
Brekelenkam(after

1622–ca.

1669),

Jan

Adriaensz

vanStaveren© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Leiden Fijnschilders and the Local Art Market in the Golden Age
Page 3 of 26(1613/4–69), Dominicus van Tol (ca. 1635–76), Peeter Leermans(1635–1706), Jacob Toorenvliet (1640–1719), Pieter Cornelisz van
Slingeland (1640–91), Carel de Moor (1655–1738), the brothers Jan(1660–90) and Willem van Mieris (1662–1747), and Frans van Mieris theYounger (1689–1763), all represented in The Leiden Collection. Before
discussing these fijnschilders, however, it is important to understand thenature of the Leiden painters’ community and the changes it underwent in
the course of the seventeenth century.

The Artistic Climate in Leiden in the SeventeenthCentury
Until 1578, painting in Leiden, as elsewhere in the Netherlands, was done on

Fig 4. Gerrit Dou, Self-Portrait
Holding a Portrait of His Parents
and Brother, ca. 1649, oil on oval
panel, 27 x 23 cm, Herzog Anton
Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig,
inv. no. GG 303.

commission. With its constant need for altarpieces and other devotional
paintings, the Catholic Church was the most important patron. When after
1578 the Dutch Reformed Church became the official religion in the Northern
Netherlands, demand for devotional paintings virtually stopped, althoughaltarpieces and devotional pictures continued to be made for “hidden
churches.”[7] The Lutherans similarly felt the need to decorate their churches,
from

which

Joris

van

Schooten(1587–1651)—himselfaLutheran—profited.[8] Artists, however, had to look for new markets. They
found them in part in public institutions on a local and regional level.[9] For
example, in 1594 the Leiden town council engaged Isaac Claesz van
Swanenburg (1537–1614) to paint seven monumental allegories for the“Saaihal” (Serge Hall), which occupied the artist until 1612.[10] Other
institutions, too, engaged artists. Leiden still boasts six civic guard paintings
by Joris van Schooten (1587–1651) and several group portraits of regents by

Fig 5. Gerrit Dou, Portrait of Dirck
van Beresteyn, ca. 1652, oil on
oval silver-copper alloy, 10.2 x 8.2
cm, The Leiden Collection, New
York, inv. no. GD-111.

Pieter Leermans, Mathijs Naiveu (1647–1726), and Carel de Moor, among
others.[11]Interestingly, except for Rembrandt and Lievens, the stadholder’s court in
The Hague did not patronize Leiden artists.[12] The fact that the court nevergranted Gerrit Dou or Frans van Mieris commissions, despite theirinternational reputation and the interest shown them by foreign rulers, may
relate to the personal preference of Frederick Henry (1584–1647) and Amalia
van Solms (1602–1675) for painters from Utrecht, Haarlem and the Southern
Netherlands.[13] Timing, however, was also a factor. Dou and Van Mieris
garnered their great fame during the first Stadholderless period, which lasted
from 1650 to 1672.
Leiden painters found their most important new patrons among burghers,

Fig 6. Frans van Mieris, Portrait ofa Fifty-Two Year Old Man , 1665,
oil on panel, 19.2 x 15 cm, The
Leiden Collection, New York, inv.
© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Leiden Fijnschilders and the Local Art Market in the Golden Age
Page 4 of 26

particularly for portraiture (fig 5) and (fig 6). While burghers only rarely

no. FM-104.

commissioned portraits of themselves before 1600, they did so withincreasing frequency in the seventeenth century. Moreover, portraits were nolonger the sole preserve of the elite. They could be ordered in all shapes andsizes and for every imaginable price. In Leiden up to thirty percent of all of
the paintings in homes on and nearby the elegant Rapenburg were
portraits.[14]The Anonymous Mass Market and the Call for a
Guild
Most Leiden painters pinned their hopes on the free market, which had
become very active since the beginning of the Twelve Year’s Trucein 1609.[15] An important consequence of the suspension of hostilities wasthat the free movement of people and goods between the Northern and theFig 7. Gerrit Dou, Self-Portrait, ca.
1645, oil on panel with arched top,
12.4 x 8.3 cm, Kremer Collection.

Southern Netherlands was possible again for the first time since the outbreakof the revolt. The Truce was a windfall for the art dealers from the Southern
Netherlands, who crossed the border to the Republic in droves to sell theirwares. They not only did so at the various weekly and annual fairs—the only
days on which dealers from elsewhere were officially allowed to trade theirgoods—but also outside of the designated market days. This trade proved
highly lucrative, in part because the dealers could offer pictures they had
brought with them for relatively low prices.[16]Initially, the painters in the Northern Netherlands fell back on a proven recipe
to protect their interests: protecting local production by prohibiting imports.
Painters in all of the cities of the Republic petitioned their local governments
to protect them from foreign imports. They generally found a ready ear, andwere permitted to amend the guild privileges, mostly stemming from theFig 8. Jan Adriaensz van
Staveren, Esther Before
Ahasuerus, ca. 1640–45, oil on
panel, 86.7 x 75.2 cm, The Leiden
Collection, New York, inv. no.
JvS-100.

Middle Ages, to suit their needs.[17]In Leiden the situation was somewhat different from the other Dutch cities. In
1609 a group of painters presented itself at the town hall to found a painter’s
guild. Despite their efforts, the Leiden painters failed to convince the town
council. The burgomasters, however, did prohibit the import of paintings for ayear. They also promised to prolong the prohibition annually should it provenecessary, which they did until 1617, when a rise in local demand for
paintings made the prohibition unnecessary. By then Leiden artists had also

Fig 9. Table 1: Number of Leiden
inventories with at least one
attributed painting: 1600–1709.

discovered that specialization and/or a cost-reducing painting techniqueresulted in higher production and lower prices, which placed them in a better
position in the market.[18]© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Leiden Fijnschilders and the Local Art Market in the Golden Age
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In 1642 Leiden artists once again sought to found a painter’s guild, this timeto protect local artists from competition from their compatriots. The painterswere enraged that “diversche personen woonachtich in andere Steden ende
Provincien hen onderstaen dagelijcx binnen dese Stadt te komen met hunne
Schilderijen, ende daer mede buijten d’Ordinarisen jaermarckten, niet alleenvoorstaen, maer oock deselfde presenteren by openbaere vendue tevercoopen, ende te gelde te maecken: ende in sonderheijt met deselfde door
dese Stadt omme-loopen ende vercoopen” (various persons living in other
cities and provinces force them [the local artists] to endure their dailypresence with their paintings in this city, and this in part outside of the official
annual fairs, and not only this, they present them [the paintings] for public
sale to make money; and especially wander around the city peddling themFig 10. Table 2: Number of
attributions in Leiden inventories inorder of the number of listings:
1600–1710.

[their wares]).[19] On 14 April 1642, the city council forbade non-Leiden
painters from selling paintings, prints, and drawings in Leiden outside of theannual fairs.[20]The request to establish a guild was submitted just two months after the
publication of Lof der Schilderkunst, a speech the painter Philips Angel(1616–83) delivered at a gathering of colleagues and art lovers in Leiden on
18 October 1641. The desire for a guild was fueled both by the need forprotection and the desire for social status.[21] Angel’s treatise was intended
to demonstrate the relevance and dignity of painting, and the career of Gerrit
Dou, Leiden’s leading artist in these years, was his greatest example.
According to Angel, an artist’s status was determined primarily by thedeference wealthy art lovers accorded an artist. A special example of such

Fig 11. Table 3: The mostmentioned artist painters in Leiden
inventories in order of the numberof inventories: 1600–1710.

homage, one without peer in the Republic, was the astonishing amount of
500 guilders that “the incomparable art lover” Pieter Spiering (1595–1652)
paid Dou annually for the right of first refusal for any painting he produced.[22]That Angel held up Dou’s work to his confreres as an example worth
following is thus entirely understandable.[23]First Pupils, or Followers?
Around 1640 Dou was by far the most successful painter in Leiden. The priceof his work could run as high as a thousand guilders.[24] Even without
Angel’s encouragement he would have been a model worth emulating. That
Dou had pupils is certain, but upon reading the recollections of Dou’s

Fig 12. Quiringh van
Brekelenkam, Fisherman and His
Wife in an Interior, 1657, oil on
panel, 47 x 60.3 cm, The Leiden
Collection, New York, inv. no.
QB-100.

workshop by the painter Joachim Sandrart (1606–88), it is unclear how apupil with average talent could have learned the craft from a teacher who
was so utterly absorbed in his own work.[25] Dou had such high personal
standards when it came to discipline and neatness that one wonders whether© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Leiden Fijnschilders and the Local Art Market in the Golden Age
Page 6 of 26

he was qualified to pass on the craft to others. Typifying his attitude to work
was an uncompromising perfectionism. Dou lived for his art; he was absent
from his workshop only when weather conditions prevented him fromworking. Moreover, he performed certain tasks himself that other colleaguesdelegated to their pupils. For instance, he prepared all of his own paints andultimately ground the pigments on glass, according to Arnold Houbraken(1660–1719). He made his own brushes, and was so afraid of irregularities in
the paint surface from dust that after painting he stored his palette, brushes
and paint in a dust-free cabinet. When he resumed work the next day, hewaited as long as was necessary for the dust to settle, and only then would
he take out his equipment from the cabinet with upmost care and begin topaint. That he was also fearful of dust while painting emerges from some ofhis self-portraits, in which can be seen how he protected himself against it by

Fig 13. Gabriel Metsu, Young
Woman Seated in an Interior,
Reading a Letter, ca. 1658–61, oil
on panel, 25.8 x 21 cm, The
Leiden Collection, New York, inv.
no. GM-103.

placing a parasol above his easel (fig 7).
In 1642 Leiden was home to around thirty fine art painters, a number ofwhom worked in Dou’s technique, among them Jacob van Spreeuwen(1609/10–after 1650), Jan Adriaensz van Staveren (fig 8), Pieter Cornelisz
van Egmondt (ca. 1614–64), and Isaac Koedijck (1617/18–ca. 1668). An
anonymous, late eighteenth-century Leiden manuscript asserts that Dou
trained Van Spreeuwen (“Discipel van G. Douw” [disciple of G. Dou]), Van
Staveren (“de kunst geleerd bij Gerard Douw, en volgde zijn manier”[learned the art from Gerrit Dou, and followed his manner]); and Koedijck(“ook [was] uit het school van Gerard Douw” [also [was] from the school ofGerrit Dou]). The author of this manuscript, who did not mention Van
Egmondt, included Koedijck, Van Staveren and Van Spreeuwen in a list ofFig 14. Jan Steen, Prayer Before
the Meal, 1660, oil on panel, 54.3
x 46 cm, The Leiden Collection,
inv. no. JS-116.

Dou pupils.[26]Surprisingly, if one is to judge from a study of seventeenth-century Leiden
estate inventories that contain at least one attributed painting, these Dou
followers do not seem to have been very successful in selling theirpaintings.[27] As seen in Table 1 (fig 9), a total of 3,756 paintings are listed inthese inventories, 1,950 of which carry an attribution. These works were
attributed to 465 different artists, 147 of whom were from Leiden or worked
there for some time.[28] Of this first generation of Dou’s students, only Van
Staveren is mentioned often enough in these documents that his namerecurs in Table 2 (fig 10).
Van Spreeuwen is mentioned but 15 times, while Van Egmondt’s nameappears only 7 times. Koedijck’s name is missing entirely; not only inLeiden, but also in Amsterdam, where he probably spent more time between

Fig 15. Pieter Cornelisz van
Slingeland, Portrait of a Man
Reading a Book, 1668, oil on
copper, 16.2 x 12.6 cm, The
Leiden Collection, New York, inv.
no. PvS-100.
© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Leiden Fijnschilders and the Local Art Market in the Golden Age
Page 7 of 26

1640 and 1652 than in his hometown.[29] However, if one is to judge by the
number of inventories in which works by these painters occur, their place inthe Leiden artistic firmament seems even less significant (fig 11).
For example, the majority of Van Staveren’s paintings belonged to a single
owner who, moreover, was related to him: the clergyman Eduard
Westerneyn, the husband of the painter’s sister Alida van Staveren, who
had lived with her brother until she married in 1636 and was also his soleheir.[30]A cautionary note is nevertheless called for here since, with the exception of
Van Spreeuwen, most of Dou’s followers practiced a second occupation thatprovided an additional source of income. Van Staveren came from a regent
family, sat on the town council, and even became a burgomaster. Koedijck,
too, was from a distinguished family, and was called a “merchant” on

Fig 16. Jacob
Toorenvliet, Doctor’s Visit, ca.
1666–67, oil on copper, 52.3 x41.3 cm, The Leiden Collection,
New York, inv. no. JT-102.

several occasions. Van Egmondt was also a merchant, a draper. He initially
lived in comfortable circumstances, but went bankrupt in 1650, at which time
he may have begun to paint seriously: he paid his first contribution to the
Guild of Saint Luke only in 1661, just three years before his death.[31] Thus,
with the exception of Van Spreeuwen, painting was not the main pursuit of
the first generation of fijnschilders working in Dou’s manner. This craft did not
determine their social success or failure.
Nevertheless, the work of these artists probably found greater favor thanwould appear from the inventories. For instance, in the above-mentioned
manuscript, Van Staveren is glossed as follows: “men hier te lande [pleeg]
veele fraaijen stukjes van hem te zien, waar in men zeijde dat zijn meester [= Dou] de laatste hand zoude gelegd hebben” (one was wont to say thatthey had seen many beautiful pieces by him in this country, to which it was

Fig 17. Domenicus van Tol, Boywith a Mousetrap by Candlelight,
ca. 1664–65, oil on panel, 30 x
23.3 cm, The Leiden Collection,
New York, inv. no. DT-100.

said that his master [Dou] had put the finishing touches). However, “[d]ekonsthandelaars hebben de meesten en besten (…) al overlang opgekogt enbuijtenlands voor schilderingen van Douw verkogt” (the art dealers had
already long ago bought up the most and best of them […] and sold them
abroad as paintings by Dou). This situation applied to Van Spreeuwen as
well, of whom “[m]en zegt, dat er hier te lande stukjes van hem plegen tezijn, die zeer na by die van zijn meester kwamen, en door handelaars naar
elders gevoerd zijnde, voor die van Douw zouden verkogt zijn” (it is said thatin this country there are pieces that come very close to those by his master,which having been shipped elsewhere by dealers are apparently sold as
being by Dou).[32] The actions of these art dealers may explain why few
works by these painters are found in the Netherlands. It also seems plausible

Fig 18. Jacob
Toorenvliet, Alchemist, 1684, oilon copper, 31.6 x 25.3 cm, The© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Leiden Fijnschilders and the Local Art Market in the Golden Age
Page 8 of 26

that the export of their paintings assumed serious proportions after Dou’s

Leiden Collection, New York, inv.
no. JT-107.

death in 1675.
Another possible explanation for the dearth of references to these artists in
Leiden inventories is that the attributions of their works were not known.
Then, as now, it would have been difficult for a notary’s clerk to distinguishbetween the work of Van Spreeuwen, for example, and that of other Dou
followers. Their paintings, particularly their genre scenes, may have been
listed as “anonymous.”[33]Adriaen van Gaesbeeck, Abraham de Pape, andQuiringh van Breklenkam
Towards the end of the 1640s, three more fijnschilders joined the ranks ofthose mentioned above: Adriaen van Gaesbeeck (1621–50), Abraham dePape (1620–66), and Quiringh van Brekelenkam. As in the case of otherFig 19. Willem van Mieris, Diana,
Goddess of the Hunt, 1686, oil on
panel, 18 x 14.4 cm, The Leiden
Collection, New York, inv. no.
WM-101.

fijnschilders, one seeks in vain for their names in Houbraken’s Schouburgh,
although they are similarly noted by the anonymous eighteenth-century
biographer who calls them pupils of Dou. The author is brief with respect to
Van Gaesbeeck, who died young: “Hij is al mede uit het school van G.
Douw, dog blauwer en kouder van coloriet, gelijk ook wat swaarmoediger”(He, too, is from the school of G. Dou, although with a bluer and colder
palette, and somewhat more somber).[34] The author also deals summarily
with De Pape, who “heeft zijn stukjes zeer uijtvoerig bewerkt in de maniervan zijn meester” (who fashioned his pieces very elaborately in the mannerof his master).[35] This observation finds confirmation not only in De Pape’s
extant work, but in the inventory of his stock.[36] Among the almost 100
paintings in it, there were at least 16 copies of works by Dou. Descriptions ofsubjects were present, too, such as “een vroutgen die een haen plockt” (aFig 20. Jan van Mieris, Courtesan
Counting Money, ca. 1680, oil on
panel, 28.4 x 22.6 cm, The Leiden
Collection, New York, inv. no.
JM-101.

woman plucking a chicken), “een vioolspeelder” (a violin player), “een kleen
hermitgen” (a small hermit), and “een spelde werckster” (a bonelacemaker).
It is noteworthy that De Pape’s stock was also large in scope, which raises
the question of whether he, like Van Staveren, may have had difficulties inselling his paintings. Nevertheless, it is evident that De Pape did not have to
make a living from painting. He had inherited so much real estate that hecould live very comfortably from the rental income. Aside from the twentyseven houses he owned and a small fortune in bonds, he possessed a large
library, which indicates that he must have been a cultivated individual.[37]The position of Adriaen van Gaesbeeck in Table 2 (fig 10) is also inflated,© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Leiden Fijnschilders and the Local Art Market in the Golden Age
Page 9 of 26

since forty-three pictures are part of a single estate, that of his father
Cornelis van Gaesbeeck, who was called a deputy bailiff in 1652.[38] Given
that Adriaen died in 1650, it may be assumed yet again that this represents
his stock. As Van Gaesbeeck was active as a painter for only four years, thelimited distribution of his work may have been due to the brevity of his
career.
The first fijnschilder to develop a personal style was Quiringh van
Brekelenkam.[39] According to the anonymous eighteenth-century biographer,
Van Brekelenkam followed Dou “op eene lugtige manier” (in alight manner).[40] Dou’s influence is evident in Brekelenkam’s work, but
Hofstede de Groot noted correctly that Brekelenkam derived his use of color,
compositional structure, and rendering of figures from Gabriel Metsu, his
through-views in interiors from Pieter de Hooch (1629–in or after 1684), andhis chiaroscuro from Nicolaes Maes (1634–93).[41] Brekelenkam succeededin molding all of these influences into a style that garnered much success inLeiden (fig 12). His name is listed next to fifty-five paintings in no fewer thantwenty inventories. It is striking that two individuals owned an exceptional
number of his paintings: the wealthy Catholic merchant Hendrick Bugge van
Ring had eighteen pieces, and the innkeeper Pieter van Grient eleven,possibly as many as sixteen.[42]Despite this success, Brekelenkam ended his years in poverty. According to
his eighteenth-century “biographer,” Brekelenkam had a large family which
required a high production rate to support, “tgeen oorzaak is geweest dat
veele slegte stukjes van hem inde wereld zijn gekomen, die hij maar schielijk
afgeroffeld heeft om maar geld in handen te krijgen” (leading him to produce
many bad paintings, which he simply dashed off to earn somemoney).[43] Indeed the prices that he charged for his work were of a very
different order than those commanded by Dou. The value of the assessed
paintings in inventories varies from four to sixteen guilders, prices that do notnecessarily imply “dashed off” work, but certainly indicate that Brekelenkam
was not working for the high end of the market. Brekelenkam probably also
suffered from the crisis in the art market—already felt in other cities for sometime—that affected Leiden in the 1660s. Although he was not the only
fijnschilder who faced financial difficulties, the hardships were particularly
acute in his case because his social background was less elevated than thatof, for example, De Pape and Van Staveren. Brekelenkam’s father was asimple tailor without any assets.

Years of Flowering and the First Signs of Decline© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Leiden Fijnschilders and the Local Art Market in the Golden Age
Page 10 of 26

In the 1640s, when the second generation of fijnschilders appeared inLeiden, there were no signs of a crisis in the art market. On the contrary, tojudge from the growing number of active painters, it would have appearedthat the city was on the verge of a period of great flowering. Although thedeparture of Rembrandt, Lievens and other preeminent painters in the early
1630s did initially lead to artistic stagnation in Leiden, the early 1640s
welcomed the portraitist Pieter Dubordieu (1609/10–78), the still-life painterPieter de Ring (ca. 1615–60), and the portrait and history painter Abraham
van den Tempel (1622/3–72). Not long thereafter, Jan Steen (1626–79) andGabriel Metsu (fig 13) also became active in Leiden. The local painters’community would reach its maximum level in 1649 with a total of fifty-four
painters.
The gradual rise in the number of painters would ultimately lead to someproblems. As mentioned above, in 1642 the request of the Leiden painters tofound a guild had been denied, but the town council would grant it in 1648.
Prior to this date, thirty-one Leiden artists had joined together in 1633 in an
informal group that met every two weeks, at which times they recorded thesales of their paintings. They also complained about the swelling stream ofpaintings from elsewhere, which undoubtedly led the town council to permit
the painters’ community to found a guild. Yet it never became a guild in thereal sense of the word.[44] While the painters annually elected to the board
called themselves “deken” (dean) or “hoofdman” (headman), in the eyes ofthe burgomasters they were simply “opzienders” (supervisors), charged withregulating the painting trade.
Considerable quantities of paintings had been imported to Leiden for a longtime, as is indicated by the large share of non-Leiden painters represented in
the 258 Leiden estate inventories. Almost 49 percent of the 3,756 attributed
paintings were works by non-Leiden artists. Many of these imported
paintings came from Haarlem: of the 1,806 non-Leiden attributions, 693(more than 38 percent) have a Haarlem provenance.[45] This situation
became acute in the early 1640s because of the marked rise in the numberof artists in Leiden, who started saturating the market. A number of these
artists had moved to Leiden from other cities. For example, three paintersfrom Delft settled in Leiden in the 1640s, and no less than nine in the 1650s,
including in 1655 Hendrick van der Burgh (1627–after 1664), the brother-inlaw of Pieter de Hooch, and Barent Fabritius (1624–73), whose brother Carel
had died in the disastrous gunpowder magazine explosion in Delft. Jan
Steen, who had left Leiden earlier in 1649, also returned from Delft in 1657,
although he only stayed in Leiden for a short period of time.
© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Leiden Fijnschilders and the Local Art Market in the Golden Age
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It seems as though in 1642 painters did not realize that the arrival of evermore new colleagues would overwhelm the Leiden market. Although theactual decline set in only in the 1670s, when the Leiden textile industry had
passed its peak, the first signs were visible already in the 1650s, when morepainters left the city than arrived there from elsewhere. Gabriel Metsu wasalso among those who left Leiden in the 1650s. Around 1655 he found his
way to Amsterdam, where the demand for paintings—judging from thenumber of painters—would stagnate only in the 1660s.[46] Jan Steen left
Leiden, once again, in 1660 and settled in Haarlem (fig 14). The painters
who had earlier come from Delft, Van der Burgh and Fabritius, left for
Amsterdam that same year, as did Abraham van den Tempel. Moreover, theprofession began to lose some of its appeal to the young local talent: thenumber of Leiden-born painters who established a workshop in the 1650s
was significantly lower than in the preceding decade, a trend that persisted in
the following decades.[47]Gerrit Dou and Frans van Mieris had no need or desire to leave Leiden. They
did not work for the open market but for a select group of art lovers who,
even when they did not live in Leiden, knew how to find their way to theirworkshops. Leiden was not the only city where the diminishing demand for
new paintings would seriously affect employment opportunities: ultimately,
not a single city would escape the decline.

Pieter Cornelisz van Slingelandt, Jacob
Toorenvliet, and Dominicus van Tol
Pieter Cornelisz van Slingelandt, like Frans van Mieris, belongs to thegeneration of Leiden fijnschilders who embarked on their careers between
around 1655 and 1665. Like Van Mieris, Van Slingelandt was a pupil of Dou;the city chronicler, Simon van Leeuwen (1625–82), held them both in highregard: in 1672 he noted “dat sy haar Meester gelijk werden, ende waar het
mogelijk, te boven sullen gaan” (that they are equal to their master, and may
possibly go on to surpass him).[48] He had achieved fame as early as 1663,
when the French traveler Balthasar de Monconys (1611–65) mentioned Van
Slingelandt, only just then active as an independent painter, together withDou and Van Mieris, creating the impression that he viewed them as equals.
Slingelandt’s refined painting style is evident in his small-scale Portrait of a
Man Reading a Book (fig 15), now in The Leiden Collection. It is thus not sosurprising that along with paintings by Dou and Van Mieris, Cosimo III de’
Medici also owned work by Van Slingelandt, even though no visit to his© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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workshop is documented.[49]Van Leeuwen commented on the prices that Van Slingelandt charged for his
work. When De Monconys offered the painter “60 escus” for a small
painting, the painter demanded 400 guilders for it. Five years later, in 1668,
his prices were even more exorbitant, as he charged 1500 guilders for a
portrait.[50] We associate these kinds of prices only with Dou and Van Mieris.
Like them, he based his prices in part on the number of hours that heworked, which could add up. Regarding the above mentioned portrait,
Houbraken noted that “hy een maand of zes weken heeft zitten schilderen
over een Bef met kant” (he spent a month or six weeks painting a lacejabot).[51]All of this augured well for a successful career, yet in the end Van
Slingelandt did not attain the same fame that Dou and Van Mieris enjoyedboth in and outside of the Dutch Republic. Financially, too, his career left
much to be desired.[52] A contributing factor to his financial difficulties surely
was “zyne tydslytende wyze van schilderen” (his time-consuming manner ofpainting), which kept production low.[53]Leiden estate inventories list only three owners of his paintings, with a totalof seven works. Four of the paintings belonged to a single owner, theMennonite cloth merchant Cornelis van Houck, who, at his death in 1684,
possessed two portraits and “twee ebbehoute kasjes” (two ebony cases) by
Van Slingelandt.[54] The artist’s relationship with the cloth merchant musthave been special, because Van Houck stood surety for him in a protracted
legal battle over a portrait.[55] In the wealthy Van Houck, Van Slingelandt may
have hoped to find a benefactor comparable to De Bye (for Dou), but four
paintings—no matter how expensive—are too few to justify such a conclusion.
That estate inventories, however, do not convey every detail about the
distribution of his work is evident from the fact that a few dozen portraits are
attributed to the artist, indicating that he did not lack for work.[56]Two of Van Slingelandt’s contemporaries, the slightly older Dominicus vanTol, and Jacob Toorenvliet, who also had studied under Dou, had less artistic
success. Toorenvliet did not join the Guild of Saint Luke, probably because
he worked in the workshop of his father Abraham Toorenvliet (1620–92), thewell-known glass painter. He would leave Leiden, not in 1670 as has always
been assumed, but much earlier, in or shortly after 1662; and not for Rome(although he would visit the Eternal City) but Vienna (fig 16).[57] What exactly
prompted him to do so is hard to gauge. He set off for Vienna not long after a
few pictures by Van Mieris and Dou entered the imperial collection, and© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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perhaps thought that as a pupil of Dou he stood a good chance of finding an
appointment at or close to the court.[58] His hopes do not seem to havematerialized; however, much is still unknown about Toorenvliet’s Vienna
period.
Upon completing his training Van Tol, who was Dou’s nephew, may haveworked for some time as his uncle’s assistant, for he joined the Guild ofSaint Luke only in 1664, thus at a relatively advanced age. The earliest
mention of a painting by him, “een nachtje” (a nocturnal scene), occurs in
the 1665 estate inventory of the wine merchant Joris van der Lip.[59] One
such night scene is in The Leiden Collection: Boy with a Mousetrap by
Candlelight (fig 17). According to the anonymous eighteenth-century
biographer, of all of the fijnschilders, Van Tol “’t allernaast bij zijn ooms
manier gekoomen en heeft zig daar bij gehouden” (most closely
approximated his uncle’s manner and stuck with it).[60] His public—the middle
range of the market—was entirely different however. Interest in his work
seems to have been limited. His move to Utrecht in 1669 appears to havebeen dictated by a lack of success. His situation did not improve when hereestablished himself again in Leiden in 1675. In fact, he continued to be
dogged by debt, and when he died in 1676, his widow had to hand over his
estate to his creditors.
Van Tol was not the only Leiden fijnschilder to feel the pinch in selling his
work in the 1660s. Johan van Swieten (1617–61), whose pictures appear
only in his own estate inventory, also experienced this difficulty in selling his
works. Fortunately for him, his family was well off and he could switch to adifferent occupation. As of 1657 he is mentioned in the archives only as acloth merchant. Ary de Vois (1631–80)—the only fijnschilder not trained inLeiden to be discussed here—could not ward off adversity after a promising
start when he first settled in Leiden in 1653. Only eighteen of his paintings
are found in six estate inventories, two of which were those of his colleagues
Abraham Toorenvliet and Johan van Swieten, who owned five and two of his
paintings respectively.[61] From other archival documents, De Vois appears tohave regularly stood surety for others who borrowed large amounts. De
Vois’ situation seems to have changed after 1673, when he divested someproperty, including fifty paintings, to settle a debt to his brother.[62] From thenon all of the documents relating to him concern financial problems.

The Decline Persists
The misfortunes encountered by painters such as Van Tol, Van Swieten, and© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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perhaps to a somewhat lesser extent by Van Slingelandt and De Vois, werecaused by a number of factors that affected the entire Dutch art market in the1670s (fig 9). The market for new paintings had simply become saturated,
and there was ever less space for them on the walls of homes. The durabilityof works of art was also in part why painters were progressively troubled by
the secondary market. Rather than paintings being distributed among heirs,
probate estates came to be auctioned with increasing frequency, whichmeant that the supply of second-hand paintings rose proportionally.
Bankruptcies, too, generated a growing supply of second-hand work and,given that this financial instability intensified in times of war, the supply
around 1672 was enormous. Moreover, the shrinking economy reduced
purchasing power, a development with disastrous consequences for the
lower range of the market. When the economy collapsed in the Year ofDisaster, the art market followed suit; it never recovered, except for thehighest range, the one in which Dou and Van Mieris were active in Leiden.[63]Other contributing factors to this recession were new developments ininterior design.[64] Particularly influential were the refinements in the housesof the elite, the only group to remain unaffected by the shrinking economy; infact, fortunes in this group only multiplied.[65] Many wealthy individuals retired
from business life or assumed full-time board positions. With increasing
frequency, meetings were held in private homes, and making a good
appearance became paramount. There was ever more to choose from todisplay wealth and status. Paintings had to vie for a place on the wall withother decorative objects, such as tapestries and gilt leather hangings, or
luxury colonial wares such as porcelain and lacquer ware.[66] Furthermore,painting experienced increasing competition from other types of painted work
such as painted wall hangings, which became increasingly fashionable after
1660. Fixed paintings also appeared more often above doors andmantelpieces, and on ceilings.[67] The growing demand for ceiling paintings
and for painted ornamental decorations signaled the radically changing roleof the fine art painter in interior display.
Just as earlier growth had followed an independent pattern in every city, so
too did the period of decline. The turning point was first reached in Delft (fig9), which already took place in the early 1640s, thus well before the city
witnessed the achievements of Johannes Vermeer (1632–75), Pieter deHooch, and Carel Fabritius (1622–54). In Leiden, this point was reachedmore than a decade later, around 1660. Between 1648, the year in which the
Guild of Saint Luke was founded, and 1655, the number of painters hoveredaround fifty. In the next ten years there were always around forty painters© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Leiden Fijnschilders and the Local Art Market in the Golden Age
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active in Leiden, but this number only diminished thereafter, from thirty-ninein 1665 to eighteen in 1682 and around ten in the 1690s.
As can be seen in Table 1 (fig 1), the decline was not equally dramatic
everywhere, but it was, nonetheless, definitive. The good times were gone
once and for all after 1660, and fallout was inevitable. Several fine art
painters switched to other professions. Others developed from specialists
into generalists in hopes of attracting a broader public, or turned todecorating the houses of the wealthy. One such artist was Jan Mortel(1652–1719)

who,

accordingtotheanonymouseighteenth-century

biographer, began painting portraits in Leiden in 1672, but soon stopped inorder “bloemen en fruijtstukken te maken, het zij voor schoorstenen oftheetafels en al waar geld mede te winnen was” (to paint flower and fruit
pieces, whether for overmantles or tea-tables, and anything that would makemoney).[68] It is hardly surprising that in the last quarter of the century a boy
would think twice about becoming a painter. More and more workshops
stood empty because painters had either left the city or had died and theirstudios were no longer taken over by a new generation.
Table 2 (fig 10) would seem to indicate that the fijnschilders as a groupwithstood the crisis fairly well, yet, as has been seen, the crisis had a serious
financial impact on many fijnschilders. Not spared were members of the lastgeneration of fijnschilders who, with the exception of Abraham Snaphaen(1651–91) and Jacob van der Sluijs (1660–1732), had trained under Dou or
Van Mieris. Mathijs Naiveu (1647–1726), Bartholomeus Maton (1641/5–after
1693) and Abraham Snaphaen, who began working as independent masters
in 1670, all left Leiden around 1680 and moved to Amsterdam, Stockholm
and Dessau, respectively. Jacob van der Sluijs followed suit a year later. He
moved to Amsterdam to complete his training under Jacob van Toorenvliet,
who had just returned to the Republic after spending close to twenty years
abroad (fig 18). Both artists moved to Leiden in the 1680s, where theystruggled financially. Van der Sluijs supplemented his income by working asa bailiff.
In contrast, two other Leiden fijnschilders, Carel de Moor and Willem van
Mieris (fig 19), did find success in the last quarter of the seventeenth century
and thereafter.[69] Like his father, Willem van Mieris became a famous painterwho commanded steep prices for his work and enjoyed privileged patronage,
including that of several foreign princes. His most important benefactor was
the fabulously wealthy Leiden cloth manufacturer Pieter de la Court van der
Voort (1664–1739), who granted him numerous commissions, chiefly after© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Leiden Fijnschilders and the Local Art Market in the Golden Age
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1700. Willem’s brother Jan van Mieris also benefited initially from thepatronage of the De la Court family (fig 20), but in 1688 he decided to seek
his fortune in Italy, where he died in 1690. Carel de Moor, who studied withboth Dou and Frans van Mieris, rapidly developed into a famous artist whose
reputation extended well beyond Leiden.[70] Much like Willem van Mieris, De
Moor was not dependent on the free market. He had wealthy patrons andamassed a vast fortune primarily painting portraits. The Leiden elite eagerly
frequented his workshop and could easily afford the high prices he charged.

Conclusion: The Leiden Fijnschilders in
Perspective
In examining the Leiden fijnschilders and their position in the local painters’community, it is useful to review the situation in Delft. Montias, in his bookabout the artistic character of Delft, touched on the concept of a “painters’
school.”[71] According to him, a local “painters’ school” could develop only
when the community was large enough. The interaction between the artists
would then be sufficient to give rise to a “painters’ school” with typicalartistic features associated with the city. Montias did not indicate the size of
this “critical mass,” although in Delft—where such a school had arisen around
Vermeer, De Hooch, and Fabritius circa 1650—the number of active artists
was about thirty-five.
At first sight the situation in Leiden seems comparable to that in Delft. Bothcities accommodated a school of painting with a recognizable individual
character, which arose in a painters’ community large enough to sustain it.
Yet there are also differences. The Delft school lasted only a few years, while
the Leiden school endured far into the eighteenth century. Montias explained
the Delft school’s brief life as being due to the rapid decline in the number ofpainters, which soon dropped below the critical mass. Given how long theLeiden school held out, one might assume that the critical mass in Leiden
remained constant all these years, and yet as demonstrated in Table 2 (fig10) this was definitely not the case.
Upon further consideration, the situations in these two cities have much lessin common than initially would seem to be the case. The Leiden school ofpainting was not, as in Delft, the result of mutual interaction and reciprocal
influences, but chiefly the work of two brilliant painters, Gerrit Dou and Frans
van Mieris, teacher and pupil, in which the pupil (Van Mieris), after firstworking in the style of his teacher and then deriving inspiration from paintersfrom elsewhere, developed his own style. Gerrit Dou was its bedrock. After© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Leiden Fijnschilders and the Local Art Market in the Golden Age
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Rembrandt’s departure in the early 1630s, he independently developed thesmooth and detailed manner of painting about which Angel waxed so lyricalin his address of 1641. Some took Angel’s advice to heart and followed
Dou’s style, sometimes so literally that their work can hardly be
distinguished from that of their model. This desire to emulate Dou’s manner
proved to be a windfall for art dealers who, according to the anonymouseighteenth-century biographer, bought up the best pieces and sold them
abroad as originals by Dou.
The financial success of Dou’s followers fell far short of that of their master.
Many of them had no need for such success per se, as they also plied
another trade, particularly painters of the first two generations. Brekelenkam
was the first pupil of Dou to set his own artistic course, a decision that,
judging from the dissemination of his work, did him no harm. Nevertheless,even he proved to be helpless in the face of the crisis in the art market thatbegan to manifest itself seriously in Leiden as of the 1660s. The same fate
awaited most of Dou’s followers; not even Van Slingelandt could live up to
the high financial expectations. Except for Dou and Frans van Mieris,commercial success was granted to only two painters of the last generation:
Willem van Mieris and Carel de Moor.
The success enjoyed by Willem van Mieris did not come of its own accord.
Cloth merchant Pieter de la Court van der Voort’s patronage was doubtless
dictated by the artist’s own work, but his ability to copy the work of Dou andhis father had been equally important. Van Mieris did this so skillfully thatmost of the copies cannot be distinguished from the originals, and De la
Court had no qualms about including them in his collection as such. There isa similar anecdote about De Moor. In 1773, the well-known Leiden collector
Johan Aegzn van der Marck owned no fewer than eleven works by the artist.
Regarding the finest painting of “een Juffertje die een brief gelezen
hebbende in de hand heeft, en een oude koppelaarster, die haar dezelve
gebragt heft” (a young lady reading a letter, and an old procuress, whobrought it to her), the eighteenth-century biography noted that it “… bij allekenners [is] gehouden voor’t alderbeste kabinetstukje dat hij ooit
gepenseeld heeft, zijnde in’t Juffertje veel van de oude Frans van Mieris, enin’t oude vrouwtje van Gerard Douw die, (….), beide zijn meesters geweestzijn” (… is considered by all connoisseurs as the very best cabinet picture thathe ever painted, with much of the old Frans van Mieris evident in the young
lady, and of Gerrit Dou in the old woman, […] both of whom had been his
masters). These two stories illustrate that even the most accomplished andsuccessful Leiden fijnschilders after Dou and Van Mieris never managed to© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Leiden Fijnschilders and the Local Art Market in the Golden Age
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emerge fully from the shadows of their illustrious predecessors.

- Piet Bakker, 2017

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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Endnotes

1. I would like to thank Willemijn Fock for allowing me to consult the hundreds of copies andtranscriptions of the Leiden estate inventories that she has collected in the course of theyears for the interdisciplinary research on the Rapenburg in Leiden.
For a more general survey of painting in Leiden in the 17th century, see Christiaan Vogelaar,“Schilderen en bouwen voor burgers en stad,” in Leiden: De geschiedenis van een Hollandsestad, ed. Simon Groenveld (Leiden, 2003), 2: 148–171.
2. See the biographies of Rembrandt van Rijn and Jan Lievens in this catalogue.
3. Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude, Nederland 1500–1800: De eerste ronde van moderne
economische groei (Amsterdam, 1995), 333–343. See Boudien de Vries, et al., “Heteconomisch leven: Spectaculair succes en diep verval,” in Leiden: De geschiedenis van een
Hollandse stad, ed. Simon Groenveld (Leiden, 2003), 2: 84–107.
4. This loss was compounded a year later when the highly successful marine painter Jan
Porcellis (ca. 1585–1632) died in Zoeterwoude, near Leiden.
5. For a survey of the Leiden fijnschilders, see Eric Jan Sluijter, “Schilders van ‘cleyne, subtile
ende curieuse dingen.’ Leidse fijnschilders in contemporaine bronnen,” in Leidse
Fijnschilders: van Gerrit Dou tot Frans van Mieris de Jonge, 1630–1760, ed. Eric Jan Sluijter,
Marlies Enklaar, and Paul Nieuwenhuizen (Exh. cat. Leiden, Museum De Lakenhal) (Zwolle,
1988), 15–55.
6. The question of who were their clients is not new; it has been posed frequently, and in themeantime has even been the subject of a modest historiography. See: Eric Jan Sluijter,“Schilders van ‘cleyne, subtile ende curieuse dingen.’ Leidse fijnschilders in contemporaine
bronnen,” in Leidse Fijnschilders: van Gerrit Dou tot Frans van Mieris de Jonge, 1630–1760,
ed. Eric Jan Sluijter, Marlies Enklaar, and Paul Nieuwenhuizen (Exh. cat. Leiden, Museum De
Lakenhal) (Zwolle, 1988), 36–46. For important Leiden collections, see also Theodoor
Herman Lunsingh Scheurleer, Cornelia Willemijk Fock, and A.J. van Dissel, eds., Het
Rapenburg: Geschiedenis van een Leidse gracht, 10 vols. (Leiden, 1986–92), passim.
7. Xander van Eck, Clandestine Splendor. Paintings for the Catholic Church in the Dutch
Republic (Zwolle, 2008). For commissions extended by the Catholic Church, see thebiographies of Pieter de Grebber (ca. 1603–1652/53) and Abraham Bloemaert (1566–1651)
in this catalogue.
8. Lili Byvanck-Quarles van Ufford and J. Happee, Beeld en Gelijkenis. Schilderingen in een
Schuilkerk. De geschilderde panelen in de Evangelisch—Lutherse Kerk te Leiden (Leiden,1980).
9. Marten J. Bok and Gary Schwartz, “Schilderen in opdracht in Holland in de 17e eeuw,” Oud© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Leiden Fijnschilders and the Local Art Market in the Golden Age
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Holland 23 (1991): 189.
10. Rudolf E.O. Ekkart, Isaac Claesz. van Swanenburg 1537–1614. Leids schilder enburgemeester (Zwolle, 1998).
11. All of these works are presently the property of the Museum De Lakenhal. See Maarten
Wurfbain,Catalogusvandeschilderijenentekeningen.

Stedelijk

MuseumDe

Lakenhal—Leiden (Leiden, 1983).
12. Peter van der Ploeg and Carola Vermeeren, Princely Patrons: The Collection of Frederick
Henry of Orange and Amalia of Solms (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis) (Zwolle, 1997);
Koenraad Jonckheere, The Auction of King William’s Paintings 1713 (Amsterdam, 2008).
13. Peter van de Ploeg and Carola Vermeeren, “‘From the ‘Sea Princes’ Monies’: The
Stadholder’s Art Collection,” in Princely Patrons: The Collection of Frederick Henry of Orange
and Amalia of Solms, ed. Peter van der Ploeg and Carola Vermeeren (Exh. cat. The Hague,
Mauritshuis) (Zwolle, 1997), 34–60, esp. 55–58. See the biographies of Peter Paul Peter
Rubens (1577–1640), Pieter de Grebber, Abraham Bloemaert, Hendrick ter Brugghen(1588–1629), Rembrandt van Rijn, Jan Lievens, and Govaert Flinck (1615–60) in thiscatalogue.
14. According to an estimate by Marten Jan Bok and Gary Schwartz, portraits constituted around
one quarter of the total production of paintings in the seventeenth century. See Martin Jan
Bok and Gary Schwartz, “Schilderen in opdracht in Holland in de 17e eeuw,” Oud Holland 23(1991): 183–195.
15. Marten J. Bok, “Vraag en aanbod op de Nederlandse kunstmarkt, 1580–1700” (PhD. diss.,
Utrecht University, 1994), 97–130.
16. Eric Jan Sluijter, “Over Brabantse vodden, economische concurrentie, artistieke wedijver ende groei van de markt,” in Kunst voor de markt 1500–1700, ed. Reindert Falkenburg, etal. Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 50 (Zwolle, 1999), 113–143.
17. G.J. Hoogewerff, De geschiedenis van de St. Lucasgilden in Nederland (Amsterdam 1947),
passim.
18. A good Leiden example is Jan van Goyen, who with his monochromatic landscapes not only
renewed the genre, but also introduced a novel, timesaving technique. This innovation
increased his productivity substantially, allowing him to offer his generally high quality work
for a relatively low price. A successful strategy, as emerges from countless mentions of his
work in estate inventories in Leiden and elsewhere, and the many painters who followed him.
John Michael Montias, “The influence of economic factors on style,” De Zeventiende Eeuw 6(1990), 49–57; Eric Jan Sluijter, “Jan van Goyen als marktleider, virtuoos en vernieuwer,”in Jan van Goyen, ed. Christiaan Vogelaar (Exh. cat. Leiden, Museum De Lakenhal) (Zwolle,
1996), 38–59.
19. Regionaal Archief Leiden, Gildenarchieven, inv. 849 vol. 1, Deecken ende Hooftmansboeck© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Leiden Fijnschilders and the Local Art Market in the Golden Age
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van ’t Gilde van St Luijcas Ordre beginnende anno 1648, fols. 3–5, published in Abraham
Bredius and Wilhelm Martin, “Nieuwe bijdragen tot de geschiedenis van het Leidsche St.
Lucasgild,” Oud Holland 18 (1904): 123–124.
20. Auctioning pictures in public was prohibited, with the exception of those in the estate ofsomeone who had died, or the stock of painters and dealers who had died in Leiden or closed
down their business. The town council also appointed three supervisors to ensure that therules were strictly followed. G. J. Hoogewerff, De geschiedenis van de St. Lucasgilden in
Nederland (Amsterdam 1947), 177–178; Eric Jan Sluijter, “Schilders van ‘cleyne, subtile
ende curieuse dingen.’ Leidse fijnschilders in contemporaine bronnen,” in Leidse
Fijnschilders: van Gerrit Dou tot Frans van Mieris de Jonge, 1630–1760, ed. Eric Jan Sluijter,
Marlies Enklaar, and Paul Nieuwenhuizen (Exh. cat. Leiden, Museum De Lakenhal) (Zwolle,
1988), 29–31; Klein maar fijn. De Leidse fijnschilders van Gerrit Dou tot Frans van Mieris deJonge: 1630–1770 (Exh. cat. Leiden, Museum De Lakenhal) (Leiden, 1988), 29–31; Hessel
Miedema, Kunst historisch (‘s-Gravenhage, 1989), 189–91.
21. Hessel Miedema, “Kunstschilders, gilde en academie: Over het probleem van emancipatie
van de kunstschilders in de Noordelijke Nederlanden van de 16de en 17de eeuw,” Oud
Holland 101 (1987): 1–34.
22. For Pieter Spiering, see the essay Gerrit Dou and His Collectors in the Golden Age in thiscatalogue.
23. See Eric Jan Sluijter, De lof der schilderkunst. Over schilderijen van Gerrit Dou (1613–1675)
en een tractaat van Philips Angel uit 1642 (Hilversum, 1993).
24. See the essay Gerrit Dou and His Collectors in the Golden Age in this catalogue.
25. Joachim von Sandrart. Joachim von Sandrarts Academie der Bau-, Bild- und MahlereyKünste von 1675: Lebem der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. Arthur R.
Peltzer, (Nuremburg, 1675–79, reprinted in Munich, 1925), 195. See the essay Gerrit Dou
and His Collectors in the Golden Age in this catalogue.
26. Van Egmondt is missing in this “survey”. See Fred. G. Meijer, “Pieter Cornelisz van
Egmondt, een kennismaking,” Oud Holland 104 (1990): 256–69. On the anonymous
manuscript, see Regionaal Archief Leiden, Bibliotheek Leiden en omgeving, LB 254, port.
41a, Lijste van schilders, die binnen de Stad Leyden gebooren zijn, off aldaar gewoond en de
kunst geoeffend hebben, (anonymous, unpag.). Although the author of the manuscript
creates the impression of being well informed, there is no supporting evidence that these
artists, who were practically Dou’s contemporaries, trained with Dou. Van Spreeuwen, forexample, lived a mere hundred meters away from Rembrandt, and like Dou and Isaac de
Jouderville (ca. 1612–48), may have studied with that master.
27. Several thousand inventories spanning the seventeenth century are preserved in the
Regionaal Archief Leiden in the archives of the Weeskamer, the Notarieel Archief, and a© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Leiden Fijnschilders and the Local Art Market in the Golden Age
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number of family archives. Cornelia Willemijn Fock and her students systematically combed
through the various protocols for the seventeenth century. A total of 258 inventories werecollected with names of painters, among which were the 120 documents (the ones with themost interesting collections) used for the research on the possession of paintings in Leiden
for the Rapenburg project. See Cornelia Willemijn Fock, “Schilderijenbezit in Leiden in dezeventiende eeuw,” in Het Rapenburg: Geschiedenis van een Leidse gracht, ed. Theodoor
Hermann, Lunsingh Scheurleer, Cornelia Willemijn Fock, and A.J. van Dissel (Leiden, 1990),
5: 1–36. Attributed paintings occur chiefly in the estates of wealthy burghers. See John
Michael Montias, Artists and Artisans in Delft: A Socio-Economic Study of the SeventeenthCentury (Princeton 1982), 222. The 120 inventories from the period 1600–99 for the
Rapenburg project counted a total of 2,130 attributions. That is approximately 60 percent of
the 3,756 in the new selection, which with 258 documents is more than twice as large.
28. Notaries recorded attributions only regularly as of the 1630s. This gradually came to an end
after 1670, and was rarely done anymore in the 1680s and 1690s. The same applies to
describing the depictions. As of the 1680s, notaries increasingly mention just the number ofpaintings. Only portraits are then still distinguished.
29. Koedijck may have been primarily an art dealer (he is called a “koopman” [merchant] on
several occasions), as is suggested by his continual shuttling back and forth between Leiden
and Amsterdam.
30. Van Staveren, who died in 1669, five years before an inventory of Westerneyn’s estate wasdrawn up, had bequeathed the paintings from his studio to Alida. Thus, the large number ofpaintings in this inventory point to the fact that Van Staveren lacked success as an artist.
RAL, NA not. J. van der Stoffe, inv. 1192, deed 34. An (incomplete) transcription of theholding of paintings is in Abraham Bredius and Otto Hirschmann, Urkunden zur Geschichteder Holla?ndischen Kunst des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts (The Hague,
1915–22), 2183–86.
31. The guild’s records, however, note that: “d’voornoemde Egmont voor veele jaren een
schilder geweest is” (the above-mentioned Egmondt had been a painter for many years).
Regionaal Archief Leiden, Gildenarchieven, inv. 849, Deeken ende Hooft-Mans Boeck, fol.
139.
32. Joachim von Sandrart, Joachim von Sandrarts Academie der Bau-, Bild- und MahlereyKünste von 1675: Lebem der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. Arthur R.
Peltzer (Nuremburg. 1675–79, reprinted in Munich, 1925), 195. See the essay Gerrit Dou and
His Collectors in the Golden Age in this catalogue.
33. Until the 1630s the percentage of genre paintings in relationship to the total ownership ofpaintings in Leiden and Delft is about the same, fluctuating between 1 and 4.5 percent. The
situation in Leiden changed subsequently. The percentage of genre paintings there rises
strongly from 6.4 percent in the 1630s to 17.4 percent in the 1670s. An increase is also visible© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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in Delft for the first time in the 1670s, although it remained limited to 7.4 percent. Cornelia
Willemijn Fock, “Schilderijenbezit in Leiden in de zeventiende eeuw,” in Het Rapenburg:
Geschiedenis van een Leidse gracht, ed. Theodoor Hermann Lunsingh Scheurleer, Cornelia
Willemijn Fock, and A.J. van Dissel (Leiden, 1990), 5: 19; John Michael Montias, Artists andArtisans in Delft: A Socio-Economic Study of the Seventeenth-Century (Princeton, 1982),
242.
34. Regionaal Archief Leiden, Bibliotheek Leiden en omgeving, LB 254, port. 41a, Lijste vanschilders, die binnen de Stad Leyden gebooren zijn, off aldaar gewoond en de kunst
geoeffend hebben, (anonymous, unpag.).
35. Regionaal Archief Leiden, Bibliotheek Leiden en omgeving, LB 254, port. 41a, Lijste vanschilders, die binnen de Stad Leyden gebooren zijn, off aldaar gewoond en de kunst
geoeffend hebben, (anonymous, unpag.).
36. Regionaal Archief Leiden, Notarial Archives Notary S. van Swanenburgh, inv. 611, deed 118.
For an (incomplete) transcription of the inventory, see Abraham Bredius and Otto
Hirschmann, Urkunden zur Geschichte der Holla?ndischen Kunst des XVIten, XVIIten und
XVIIIten Jahrhunderts (Martinus Nijhoff, 1915–22), 1858–61. Cf. Eric Jan Sluijter, “Schilders
van ‘cleyne, subtile ende curieuse dingen.’ Leidse fijnschilders in contemporaine bronnen,”in Leidse Fijnschilders: van Gerrit Dou tot Frans van Mieris de Jonge, 1630–1760, ed. Eric
Jan Sluijter, Marlies Enklaar, and Paul Nieuwenhuizen (Exh. cat. Leiden, Museum De
Lakenhal) (Zwolle, 1988), 196.
37. Regionaal Archief Leiden, Notarial Archives, Not. S. van Swanenburgh, inv. 611, deed 118.
For an (incomplete) transcription of the inventory, see Abraham Bredius and Otto
Hirschmann, Urkunden zur Geschichte der Holla?ndischen Kunst des XVIten, XVIIten und
XVIIIten Jahrhunderts (Martinus Nijhoff, 1915-1922) 1858–61. Cf. Eric Jan Sluijter, “Schilders
van ‘cleyne, subtile ende curieuse dingen.’ Leidse fijnschilders in contemporaine bronnen,”in Leidse Fijnschilders: van Gerrit Dou tot Frans van Mieris de Jonge, 1630–1760, ed. Eric
Jan Sluijter, Marlies Enklaar, and Paul Nieuwenhuizen (Exh. cat. Leiden, Museum De
Lakenhal) (Zwolle, 1988), 196.
38. Regionaal Archief Leiden, Notarial Archives, Notary A. Raven, inv. 758, fol.188, 23 May 1652.
39. See the biography of Quiringh van Brekelenkam in this catalogue.
40. The quote is taken from Angelika Lasius, Quiringh van Brekelenkam (Doornspijk, 1992) 11.
41. Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch
Painters of the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith, ed. and trans.
Edward G. Hawke (London, 1907), 1: 465–66. Cf. Angelika Lasius, Quiringh van
Brekelenkam (Doornspijk, 1992), 13.
42. Regionaal Archief Leiden, Inventory Pieter de Grient, Archives of the Weeskamer, 1391d, 13
December 1656, and Regionaal Archief Leiven, Inventory Henric Brugge van Ring, Notarial© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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Archives, Notary L. van Swieten, inv. 1005, deed 10, 30 March 1667. If De Grient indeed
owned sixteen pictures—his inventory is not quite unequivocal on this point—then the total
number of attributions to Brekelenkam is sixty.
43. See Joachim von Sandrart, Joachim von Sandrarts Academie der Bau-, Bild- und MahlereyKünste von 1675: Lebem der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. Arthur R.
Peltzer (Nuremburg. 1675–79, reprinted in Munich, 1925), 195. S See the essay Gerrit Dou
and His Collectors in the Golden Age in this catalogue.
44. This was different for the house painters. After initially functioning as a side car in the guild,as the century progressed they increasingly gained power and pressured the guild to meettheir own needs. See Piet Bakker, “Crisis? Welke crisis? Kanttekeningen bij het economischverval van de schilderkunst in Leiden na 1660,” De Zeventiende Eeuw 27 (2011): 232–70.
45. Followed by Amsterdam 242 (13 percent), The Hague 180 (10 percent), Utrecht 89 (5percent), Delft 86 (5 percent), and Rotterdam 85 (5 percent). Attributed to foreign painters(Southern Netherlands, Italy) are 188 paintings (10 percent). A relatively high number of
attributions, 211 (11 percent), could not be topographically located for a variety of reasons(painters with the same name; unidentifiable names).
46. For the development of the Amsterdam art market in the period 1620–79, see John MichaelMontias, “Works of Art in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam. An Analysis of Subjects andAttributions,” in Art in History/History in Art. Studies in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Culture,
ed. David Freedberg and Jan de Vries (Santa Monica, 1992), 331–72; John Michael Montias,“Works of Art in a Random Sample of Amsterdam Inventories,” in Economics and the Arts,
ed. Michael North (Cologne, 1996), 67–88; John Michael Montias, “Artists named in
Amsterdam Inventories,” Simiolus 31 (2005): 322–47.
47. In 1640s 22 local painters set up a workshop, in the 1650s only 12, and in the 1660s only 9.
48. Simon van Leeuwen, Korte besgryving van het Lugdunum Batavorum nu Leyden (Leiden,
1672), 191–92.
49. The Bubble Blower, signed and dated 1661 (Gallery Uffizi, Florence).
50. Francois Meerman and His Family, 1668 (Musée du Louvre, Paris). See the biography ofPieter Cornelisz van Slingelandt in this catalogue.
51. Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen(The Hague, 1753; reprinted in Amsterdam, 1976), 3, 162.
52. Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen(The Hague, 1753; reprinted in Amsterdam, 1976), 3, 162. In 1674 he, or rather he and his
brothers as the heirs, were taxed on a fortune of 7000 guilders. Naturally, this does notsuggest poverty, but neither does it represent great prosperity, certainly when we realize thatthe amount in part concerned four, or possibly, five brothers and sisters. Jan Peltjes, Leidse
Lasten: Twee Belastingskohieren uit 1674 (Leiden, 1995), 76.
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53. Jan Peltjes, Leidse Lasten: Twee Belastingskohieren uit 1674 (Leiden, 1995), 76. For
Cornelis van Houck, also see the biography of Pieter Cornelisz van Slingelandt in thiscatalogue.
54. Regional Archief Leiden, Notarial Archives, Notary L. van Overmeer, inv. 978, deed 125, 12
October 1684.
55. See the biography of Pieter Cornelisz van Slingelandt in this catalogue.
56. See Rudolf E.O. Ekkart, “Twee portretten door Pieter van Slingelandt,” Leids Jaarboekje(1992): 93–8.
57. On Jacob Toorenvliet’s sojourn in Vienna and Rome, see his biography in this catalogue.
58. See the essay Gerrit Dou and His Collectors in the Golden Age and the biography of Jacob
Toorenvliet in this catalogue.
59. Regionaal Archief, Leiden, Notarial Archives, Notary P.G. van Tielt, inv. 905, deed 156, 27
March 1665. Another four owners are apparent. Their estates date between 1688 and 1705
and concern possible acquisitions from Van Tol’s second Leiden sojourn after
1675. See Dominicus van Tol’s biography in this catalogue.
60. Joachim von Sandrart. Joachim von Sandrarts Academie der Bau-, Bild- und MahlereyKünste von 1675: Lebem der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. Arthur R.
Peltzer (Nuremburg. 1675–79, reprinted in Munich, 1925), 195. See the essay Gerrit Dou and
His Collectors in the Golden Age in this catalogue.
61. Regionaal Archief Leiden, Inventory Van Swieten, Notarial Archives, Notary H. Brasser, inv.
416, deed 42, 31 March 1662, and Regionaal Archief Leiden, Inventory Toorenvliet,
Bibliotheek. Leiden en Omstreken, inv. 67504 (f) Aantekeningen over Leidse schilders en de
kunsthandel, (unpag.), 1692.
62. Regionaal Archief Leiden, Notarial Archives, Notary P.A. van Scharpenbrant, inv. 1103, deed
146, 6 November 1673.
63. Marten J. Bok, “Vraag en aanbod op de Nederlandse kunstmarkt, 1580–1700” (PhD. diss.,
Utrecht University, 1994), 121–127.
64. Cornelia Willemijn Fock, “Het interieur in de Republiek 1670–1750: (g)een plaats voor
schilderkunst?,” in De Kroon op het werk: Hollandse schilderkunst 1670–1750, ed. Ekkehard
Mai, Sander Paarlberg, and Gregor M. Weber (Exh. cat. Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum;
Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum; Kassel, Museumlandschaft Hessen Kassel) (Zwolle, 2006),
63–84.
65. The share of the wealthiest 1 percent of the population in the total wealth rose from 33 to 59
percent in Leiden between 1623 and 1722. Lee Soltow and Jan Luiten van Zanden, Income
and Wealth Inequality in The Netherlands, 16th–20th Century (Amsterdam, 1998), 37–4,
tables 3.6 and 3.7.
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66. Cornelia Willemijn Fock, “Het interieur in de Republiek 1670–1750: (g)een plaats voor
schilderkunst?,” in De Kroon op het werk: Hollandse schilderkunst 1670–1750, ed. Ekkehard
Mai, Sander Paarlberg, and Gregor M. Weber (Exh. cat. Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum;
Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum; Kassel, Museumlandschaft Hessen Kassel) (Zwolle, 2006),
64.
67. Cornelia Willemijn Fock, “Het interieur in de Republiek 1670–1750: (g)een plaats voor
schilderkunst?,” in De Kroon op het werk: Hollandse schilderkunst 1670–1750, ed. Ekkehard
Mai, Sander Paarlberg, and Gregor M. Weber (Exh. cat. Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum;
Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum; Kassel, Museumlandschaft Hessen Kassel) (Zwolle,
2006), 68–71.
68. Joachim von Sandrart. Joachim von Sandrarts Academie der Bau-, Bild- und MahlereyKünste von 1675: Lebem der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. Arthur R.
Peltzer (Nuremburg. 1675–79, reprinted in Munich, 1925), 195. See the essay Gerrit Dou and
His Collectors in the Golden Age in this catalogue.
69. Unless otherwise stated, for information on Willem van Mieris, the reader is referred
to his biography in this catalogue.
70. De Moor’s workshop had formerly been that of Dou, and he rented it from Anthonia van Tol.
Regionaal Archief Leiden, Bibliotheek Leiden en Omstreken, LB 67504, “Aant. over Leidsche
schilders en over de kunsthandel.” In this document is a transcription of a document in whichin 1715 Notary Dirck van Torenvliet, as the guardian of the fideicommissary goods of
Anthonia van Thol, rents Dou’s previous house on the Galgewater to De Moor for anotherfive years for 100 guilders annually. De Moor lived here certainly as of 1710, and probably
earlier. Toorenvliet rented the premises to someone else in 1720.
71. John Michael Montias, Artists and Artisans in Delft: A Socio-Economic Study of theSeventeenth-Century (Princeton, 1982), 179–82.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection