10. The Print Collection of William Cartwright (1606-1686): a Reconstruction
Ellinoor Bergvelt
The 17th-century stage actor and bookseller William Cartwright (1606-1686) [1] is art-historically best known for his bequest of 239 mainly contemporary paintings to the College of God’s Gift in Dulwich (South London), of which 77 survive in Dulwich Picture Gallery.1 Most of these do not have much aesthetic value, but they do demonstrate what was available in London at that time for a non-aristocratic collector of moderate means. Cartwright also owned drawings: one album with 89 drawings of varying artistic quality is now in Dulwich College.2
In addition, Cartwright appears to have had a collection of prints. As recently discovered, the album in which 19 pages are pasted containing Cartwright's handwritten inventory of his 239 paintings also has five pasted-in pages with information on European prints, mainly from previous centuries, also in Cartwright's handwriting.3 Four of these five pages mention names and one of them contains monograms. From the inventory of Cartwright’s paintings we can deduce that he also had three framed prints hanging among his paintings. Of the 77 paintings that still are present in Dulwich Picture Gallery, we know that several were made after prints. The same is the case with 10 of the 89 drawings pasted in the album of drawings.
Further written material by and about Cartwright has been preserved, including his will, or 'Resolucion', in which he bequeathed his possessions to Dulwich College.4 When Cartwright died on 17 December 1686, all his assets passed into the hands of his malicious servants, Francis and Jane Johnson. As a result, his wishes were carried out only after years of legal battles between the Warden of Dulwich College and the Johnsons, and then only partially. Of these legal battles transcripts survive, which were published in the 19th century.5 From these transcripts we know that Cartwright must have owned at least 6 albums of prints, as that is the number of albums that Jane Johnson pawned for £3, according to her statement dated 26 July 1696. Unfortunately not a single print or any of these albums has survived.6 Until now, art-historical publications have mainly focused on the paintings in Cartwright's collection, and less has been written about the drawings.7 The present article will focus on the hitherto neglected part: the prints, and especially the Netherlandish prints.
The four pages that give artists’ names will be transcribed (Appendix 1), analysed and compared with other lists of European artists from the same period, as will the single page with monograms (Appendix 2). The five pages will be used to reconstruct Cartwright’s print collection, as well as the framed prints that Cartwright had hung among his paintings, and the paintings that were made after prints. I will also make some suggestions about the role the prints may have played in Cartwright's life as a collector and bookseller. Four other 17th-century London collections will be discussed for comparison with Cartwright’s collection: three collected by wealthy connoisseurs – Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), William Courten, alias Charleton (1642-1702), and Hadriaan Beverland (1650-1716) – and one by a more modest collector, Thomas Betterton (c. 1635-1710), who followed the same professions as Cartwright (albeit in reverse order; he was initially a bookseller and later an actor).8
First, however, Cartwright’s life and legacy will be discussed.
1
John Greenhill
Portrait of William Cartwright (1606-1686), c. 1665
Dulwich (Southwark), Dulwich Picture Gallery, inv./cat.nr. DPG393
Acknowledgements
The illustrations of the archival material in Dulwich College Archive are published with kind permission of the Governors of Dulwich College. Many thanks to David Alexander (York), Yvonne Bleyerveld (RKD), Marten Jan Bok (University of Amsterdam), Alan Crookham (National Gallery, London), Diana Dethloff (University College London), Paul Fletcher (Dulwich College), Antony Griffiths (British Museum), Kate Heard (Royal Collection Trust), Karen Hearn (University College London), Jasper Hillegers (Amsterdam), Helen Hillyard (Dulwich Picture Gallery), Erik Hinterding (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), Sander Karst (University of Amsterdam), Rieke van Leeuwen (RKD), Calista M. Lucy (Dulwich College), Arthur MacGregor (London), Robert Schillemans (Amsterdam), Charles Sebag-Montefiore (London), Jaap van der Veen (Ouderkerk), Freddie Witts (Dulwich College), Joyce Zelen (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). And many thanks especially to my editor Emily Lane (London).
Notes
1 The most recent publications on William Cartwright junior and his paintings are Kalinsky/Waterfield 1987, Ingamells 2008, p. 19, 45; Jonker/Bergvelt 2016, p. 12-13, and Bergvelt/Jonker 2021. There is some confusion, as there were at least two other William Cartwrights. One was an English poet and dramatist who lived from 1611 to 1643, according to the late 17th-century writer John Aubrey (1626-1697), whose biographies were only published later, for instance in Aubrey/Barber 1982, p. 62. Another William Cartwright was also a bookseller; on three title pages, two of 1663 and one of 1664, he is listed as ‘William Cartwright, at the Man in the Moon in the Old Bailey’. This Cartwright did live in the City and was therefore a member of the Stationers’ Company. David Alexander sent me the following information: ‘I assume he is the William Cartwright who was apprenticed to John Wright, a Stationer, on 1 March 1655, so he would have been born c. 1641 and would have been freed as a Stationer in 1662. He must therefore be the William Cartwright to whom John Dallow was apprenticed on 2 November 1663’; email, 3 November 2022, for which many thanks. Our William Cartwright lived outside the City, and therefore did not need to be a member of the Stationers’ Company.
2 Stainton 1987; Dethloff 2016.
3 The inventory of paintings, in Dulwich College Archive, MS XIV, fols. 1r-10r, was published in Kalinsky/Waterfield 1987, p. 20-27.
4 The text of Cartwright’s ‘Resolucion’ was published in Kalinsky/Waterfield 1987, p. 87. There is a more careful and complete transcription in Honigmann/Brock 2015, p. 225-226; many thanks to Calista M. Lucy.
5 Young 1889.
6 Kalinsky/Waterfield 1987, p. 8.
7 The album of drawings has been discussed in the context of art education in London, especially the drawing academy of Peter Lely (1618-1680), but not so much in relation to Cartwright and his collections, Bignamini 1991 and Dethloff 2016.
8 During my seminar about William Cartwright at the Wallace Collection, 18 September 2023, Diana Dethloff suggested that I should compare Cartwright’s collection with that of Thomas Betterton, for which many thanks. A sale catalogue survives of Betterton’s collection: Hooke/Roberts 1710/2013.