RKD STUDIES

The Van de Veldes’ tenure in the Queen’s House seems to have come to an end in the aftermath of the ‘Glorious Revolution’ and the deposition and exile of James II in 1688. The last trace of the Van de Veldes in Greenwich is from 1692, which was the last time they paid the tax for poor relief.¹ Any attempts to curry favour with their countryman, the new king William III, were ultimately unsuccessful:² payment of the Van de Veldes’ royal stipends appears to cease in the winter of 1688-1689.³ Despite his staunch Protestantism, William’s taste in pictures was, perhaps surprisingly, more ‘Catholic’ in nature, preferring Italian and Flemish painters. More likely however, is that the Van de Veldes’ – and particularly the Elder’s – close association with James II was enough to discourage William from extending their royal patronage.⁴ After all, the public ‘outing’ of James as a Catholic came about when he was compelled to resign from the office of Lord High Admiral at the passing of the Test Act in 1673, which effectively excluded Roman Catholics from public office. Moreover, his patronage of the Van de Veldes during their first decade in England seems to have been designed to celebrate his legacy as head of the Royal Navy, as well as his continued meddling in naval affairs despite his resignation.⁵ In as late as July 1687, the year before William’s invasion, the Elder clearly still enjoyed a close working relationship with James, for he depicts himself showing the then King James II his drawings of a review of troops he recorded on Hounslow Heath [16].⁶ Perhaps their close working relationship goes some way to explain why, on 16 April 1680, both Willem van de Veldes and the Elder’s wife Judick had appeared on a list, previously unpublished in the Van de Velde literature, of ‘Papists and reputed papists’ for the Hundred (district) of Blackheath, which included Greenwich.⁷ ‘Reputed’ is key here, for the evidence suggests it is unlikely that the Van de Veldes were in fact Catholic. Willem the Elder and Judick both took the oath of allegiance and supremacy, which would have been impossible at the time for a Catholic of conscience, and both Willem the Elder and the Younger were ultimately buried in the Protestant church of St James, Piccadilly.⁸ The period was ripe with false accusations and conspiracy theories. A year earlier, in May 1679, amidst the political melee that was the fictitious Popish Plot to assassinate Charles II, Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), Secretary to the Admiralty and ‘who had long been seen as the Duke of York’s man’, had been imprisoned on an accusation of treason based on his close relationship with James and suspected (but unfounded) Catholicism.⁹ Certainly, as J.D. Davies has observed, the Popish Plot stoked an anxiety around ‘the requirement for a strong navy to oppose France and the risk that, because of [James, Duke of] York’s influence over it, that same navy might in fact be an instrument of French and catholic designs'.¹⁰ A poem to this effect from 1679 read:

16
Willem van de Velde (I)
Army exercise at Hounslow Heath, inspected by James II, 21 July 1687, 1687
Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, inv./cat.nr. MB1866/T200

T’ensure the plot, France must her legions send
Rome to restore, and to enthrone Rome’s friend
‘Tis in return James does our fleet betray
That fleet whose thunder made the world obey;
Ships, once our safety & our glorious might,
Are doom’d with worms & rottenness to fight¹¹

Against the backdrop of the feverish anti-Catholic sentiment during these years, was the Van de Veldes’ association with James and their role as de facto image-makers of the Royal Navy enough to prompt their complicity in the imagined conspiracy and suspicion, as with Pepys, of their ‘reputed’ Catholicism?

The document is of interest for an additional reason, one more directly connected to the Van de Veldes’ use of the Queen’s House, and their eventual move to Westminster. Willem the Younger is not mentioned in the same sub-section of the list as his religiously suspect parents, but instead in the second part of the document which lists ‘persons … [who] are gon away’. Here, ‘William Vandevelder Junj[or]’ is recorded as ‘gon to live a bout St Jamses’.¹² It is possible that the Younger was simply visiting Westminster at the time this list was drawn up, but the use of ‘live’ suggests more than a fleeting visit. Moreover, it seems especially salient in light of the increasing introduction of the ‘W V Velde J’ signature around this time, which complements the Elder’s increasing use of ‘d’oude’ or his age in signatures, and suggests a formalisation of the two distinct offers of the studio as represented by the Elder and Younger’s respective talents.¹³ Michael Robinson interpreted the introduction of the Younger’s new signature as evidence for a separation from the family studio, however, for reasons Daalder has already outlined, this seems unlikely.¹⁴ If nothing else, both father and son were reliant on access to the family ‘library’ of drawings, so separation would not have made much business sense, and the Van de Veldes were nothing if not canny businessmen.¹⁵ Indeed, it is possible that both the seat of the court at St James, and the burgeoning art market in Westminster more broadly,¹⁶ made up a good business case for having a ‘shop window’ to complement the studio operation still overseen by the Elder in Greenwich – something that would smooth the way when it eventually came time to vacate the Queen’s House.