RKD STUDIES

Judging from their activities at the London exhibitions, it can be stated that the migrating artists sought out the stages to present their work to an English audience. However, it is not said that they were indeed successful in selling at these occasions. The lucrative English art market at the turn of the 18th century with its many galleries, dealers and commissioners, offered more opportunities to promote and sell [13]. An insight as to what extent the artists were able to sell their works at the exhibitions is given by Schweickhardt, whose account book is kept at the municipal archives in The Hague.¹ According to his notes, Schweickhardt sold only one painting from Royal Academy exhibitions. In March 1791, the artist noted the sale in that year’s exhibition of a winter piece with ice skaters, sleds and horses. In 1790, he also sold three works at the ‘Society’.² For the larger part, the artist sold directly to collectors or via dealers, rather than at exhibitions. He produced stock works, numbering his paintings and making smaller-scale landscapes, drawings and etchings. Soon, his work circulated on the art market. In 1788, one year after his arrival, ‘A landscape with cattle’ was sold at Greenwood auction house for £7.15. In April of the following year, eight painting by his hand were offered at a private contract sale, exhibited in April and May of 1789 at Christie’s great rooms at Pall Mall.³ His works continue to appear in the following years.

Like Schweickhardt, most artists seem to have entered the art market soon after their arrival in London. Works by Leendert de Koningh were on sale from 1804 onward: four by his hand were sold 8 February 1804 at Edwards auction house, stated to be the property of ‘just one gentleman’.⁴ The same week, on 3 February 1804, ‘A view of the flint bridge at Plymouth’ was auctioned at Farebrother.⁵ These early sales suggest that De Koningh must have already sold work during his one-year stay in London in 1801. Likewise, works by Peter le Cave circulated in the art market from an early stage, the first in 1791. Pictures by Theodor de Bruyn and Hendrik Meijer appeared at auction respectively from 1789 and 1790 onward.

The Dutch modern masters were mostly sold at auctions of old master pictures and drawings and were both offered and bought by dealers and collectors of the old masters. An important exception was when Thomas Monro (1759-1833) sold drawings by Hendrik Meijer along with several other contemporaries in May 1800 at Christie’s. The sale contained ‘a capital and valuable assemblage of drawings, by the most admired ancient and modern masters’.⁶ Monro was an important patron for young British artists like Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) and Thomas Girtin (1775-1802) and invited them to train at his own so-called ‘academy’, organising informal evening classes at his prestigious Westminster address at Adelphi Terrace [14]. Next to the drawings of cottages by Meijer, Monro offered works by various British artists, by Girtin and Turner, but also John Sell Cotman (1782-1842), Thomas Sandby (1721-1798) and others.

The auction catalogues also give evidence of occasional Anglo-Dutch cooperations, particularly between De Koningh and British colleagues. A marine painting by Charles Martin Powell (1774-1825) was offered in London in 1815, described ‘A Sea View, with figures by De Koning’.⁷ Likewise, an anonymous London sale in 1821 offered a painting by Robert Ladbrooke (1768-1842), ‘View on the River Yar in Norwich, very spiritedly painted; the cattle introduced by De Koning’.⁸ Both Powell and Ladbrook were strongly influenced by Dutch 17th-century painting. A cooperation with a Dutch modern master, whose work is likewise much indebted to the old masters, is therefore understandable.

While pictures by living Dutch painters frequently hung side by side with hundreds of works by contemporary British artists at the London exhibitions, in the auction rooms they were mostly situated among the old masters. Yet, the sale catalogues and other findings illustrate that some artists had integrated in some ways in the British contemporary art scene and, like De Koningh, contributed to artistic exchange between Dutch and British landscape painting, at least to a certain extent.

13
John Bluck after Augustus Charles Pugin and after Thomas Rowlandson published by Rudolph Ackermann
Paintings auctioned at Christie's London, 1808
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv./cat.nr. RP-P-2015-26-1701

14
Joseph Mallord William Turner and Thomas Girtin
Five-arched bridge over a river with buildings on the far bank, c. 1796
London (England), Tate Britain, inv./cat.nr. D36529 Turner Bequest CCCLXXV 8