RKD STUDIES

In London, Van Hoogstraten also painted several feigned letter racks (or ‘necessary boards’ as they are sometimes called) [15], a pictorial subcategory that he seems to have largely invented and which had an enduring appeal in England in the work of later Dutch immigrants, particularly Edwaert Collier (1642-1708) [16]. Michiel Roscam Abbing has suggested that these illusionistic paintings were largely created by Van Hoogstraten as gifts for potential patrons or other people with whom he wanted to curry favour.¹ Essentially, his argument is that the depicted objects are so personal to the artist that they could not have been commissioned or intended for sale.

With one example now in Kingston Lacy [17], Roscam Abbing imagined a scenario where Abraham Cowley (1618-1667), the author of the printed play The Guardian — folded up and dog-eared behind one of the leather bands — would have received the painting as gift, perhaps in exchange for a copy of the play, which was published in 1650.² However, while not excluding the possibility that Van Hoogstraten may have given paintings to potential clients as gifts, there is no evidence that the Dutch painter and Cowley were part of the same milieu.³ Roscam Abbing’s assumption that Cowley was a member of the Royal Society, to which at least one other prominent patron of Van Hoogstraten’s belonged, is without foundation; while sympathetic to the aims of experimental science, Cowley never joined or attended the Society’s meetings. In fact, dissatisfied with the rewards he received for his support of the Royalist cause during the Interregnum, he appears to have largely retired from public life after 1663, and lived in the countryside outside London.

It is much more likely that the painting was purchased or commissioned by the aforementioned Sir Ralph Bankes, who built Kingston Lacy in Dorset in 1663-1665 and whose collection of pictures remains at the core of this National Trust house. He had collected Dutch pictures since at least 1655, when he seems to have commissioned a large landscape from Nicolaes Berchem (1634-1683) in Haarlem, with Peter Lely, his favourite portraitist, acting as an intermediary.⁴ Van Hoogstraten’s painting is securely documented at Kingston Lacy from the mid 18th century, when the first inventories of its contents were compiled.⁵

There are lots of reasons for associating the letter rack with Bankes. In the first place, while many of these objects may have originally belonged to Van Hoogstraten, they would not have seemed out of place among the possessions of an Englishman like Bankes in the 1660s, who was a lawyer, MP, courtier and landowner. Books, combs, letters, scissors, magnifying glasses, cameos, shaving knives, penners, quills, keys, and playing cards were all commonplace items for someone of his class. Secondly, the Bankes family were Royalists and had suffered greatly during the Cromwellian period. Indeed, the family’s loyalty to the Crown was rewarded at the Restoration, when Ralph was knighted and became a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber to Charles II.⁶ His father had been impeached by Parliament and after his death his assets were sequestered, while the family seat of Corfe Castle was destroyed. Cowley’s play, a comedy, was first performed at Oxford in 1641 for the future Charles II and ‘Prince’, significantly, is one of the few words that can be discerned on the front page of the text in the painting. And while one of the two letters bears an inscription to ‘Samuel van Hoogstraten, painter of His Holy Imperial Majesty’, a reference to the artist’s success at the court of Emperor Ferdinand III in Vienna, this address and the cameo of a Roman emperor also connect the painting more generally with the idea of royalty, as well as the artist’s objective to achieve success at the English court. Cowley’s play was revised, renamed Cutter of Coleman Street, staged in London in 1661 and published in a new edition in 1663, but the new title page makes no reference to Charles II or the original production.⁷ Thirdly, both the original and revised plays have subterfuge as one of its main themes; several of the characters at times disguise themselves as other characters, to the confusion of the audience. Van Hoogstraten’s painting is also about deception, inviting the viewer to peruse its mimetic surfaces and decide what, if anything, is real and what is painted. Finally, this painted letter board is the only one by the artist that is surrounded by a simulated carved and gilded frame with auricular ornament in the form of flowers and fruit, a shell and a lion’s head. Several surviving paintings, owned or commissioned by Bankes from around the same time, and now part of the collection at Kingston Lacy, are still in their original carved and gilded auricular frames, which share many of the same decorative features as Van Hoogstraten’s trompe l’oeil frame.⁸

15
Samuel van Hoogstraten
Trompe l'oeil still life of a letter rack with self portrait, dated 1663
Private collection

16
Edwaert Collier
Trompe l'oeil letter rack with a possible self portrait, c. 1696
Glasgow (city, Scotland), Hunterian Art Gallery, inv./cat.nr. GLAHA:43515

17
Samuel van Hoogstraten
Trompe l’oeil of a framed necessary-board, c. 1662
Wimborne Minster, Kingston Lacy, inv./cat.nr. NT 1257236