RKD STUDIES

Cartwright’s prints are insignificant compared to the important collections formed by the London collectors Samuel Pepys,¹ William Courten, alias Charleton,² and Hadriaan Beverland.³ They were connoisseurs, and Cartwright was not. Their collections can, however, be used to see which prints were available in London at the time, where their choices match, and, above all, what Cartwright lacked. In general, it can be said that Pepys’s collection had a more historical character, and that he collected prints mainly for their content. Those of Courten and Beverland were more artistically oriented in terms of the names of the artists and the quality of the prints.⁴ The print collection of the stage actor and bookseller Thomas Betterton is more comparable to Cartwright’s in size and scope. However, all four of them were about twenty to forty years younger than Cartwright, which means that they also included later-born artists in their collections.

Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) [22], the famous diarist, left his library, including his prints, to Magdalene College, Cambridge. He had begun collecting in around 1660; in 1700 he started to arrange the prints in albums. He also used prints of Paris, London and Rome to decorate his house.⁵ In 1980 a catalogue was published of the prints and drawings in his library.⁶ There are albums devoted to images of London and Westminster, Paris and Rome. Album 2984 contains images of the Old Testament and the New Testament, made by the same printmakers as those in Cartwright’s collection.⁷ There are images of Venetian and Florentine festivities, and fairs in The Hague and Amsterdam.⁸ Jan van der Waals concluded that there is ‘ample evidence that in arranging his collection Pepys’s first concern was with the subject depicted, and not with the fine arts, the artists or the printmakers’.⁹ In general we find many of the same names as in Cartwright’s list, although Pepys has many more. Under the heading ‘Anticks and drolls’ we find prints by many of the Northern printmakers that we also see in Cartwright’s lists: Heinrich Aldegrever, (Hans) Sebald Beham, Adriaen Brouwer, Pieter Bruegel I, Jacques Callot, Albrecht Dürer and Lucas van Leyden. Pepys however had under the same heading prints by other artists too, such as Adriaen van Ostade (1610-1685), Pieter Jansz. Quast (c. 1605/6-1647) and Cornelis Saftleven (1607-1681).¹⁰ He also had many more French prints; we know that he himself bought prints in Paris and that he sent his nephew, John Jackson, to buy prints for him abroad.¹¹ Pepys also possessed prints by Wenzel Hollar (1607-1677).

William Courten, alias Charleton (1642-1702) [23], settled in London after a long time abroad, where he had assembled an encyclopaedic collection on a large scale, broadly, and for a lot of money. It seems that also much of his print collection came from abroad. He opened his museum in 1684 in a suite of ten rooms in the Temple in London, where it was seen by John Evelyn (1620-1706) as recorded in his diary in 1686.¹² Courten was friendly with naturalists, including Martin Lister and John Ray and the collector Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753). He bequeathed his collection to Sloane, who founded the British Museum, where it ended up. Courten left manuscripts as well – letters and lists with prices for the prints – which were published by Antony Griffiths.¹³ First Sloane and later the staff of the British Museum overturned Courten’s original arrangement and disassembled his albums, so it is difficult to determine exactly what belonged to his collection. However, the written material helps. Courten’s lists are headed ‘My best stamps that are out of my books’,¹⁴ interestingly comparable to Cartwright’s heading ‘Markes of ye Best prints’. ‘Out of my books’ indicated that the prints had been extracted from albums in his main collection. Courten had his lists arranged by engraver, and Hadriaan Beverland (see below) had supplied valuations for Courten’s best prints: Dürer (50 entries), Lucas van Leyden (44), Aldegrever (38), Baldung (18), Etienne Delaune (12), (Hans) Sebald Beham (43), Pencz (10), Virgil Solis (5), de Bry (5), Rembrandt (20), and others – again many names also found in Cartwright’s list. Courten presumably stopped collecting prints after 1687.¹⁵ The portraits in his collection were arranged by sitter. He also possessed mezzotints produced in London.

The Dutch collector and dealer Hadriaan Beverland (1650-1716) [24] crossed the Channel in 1680 and stayed in London. He was an associate of Courten, with whom he exchanged prints and medals. As a curioso he became part of the circle of the Royal Society, including Courten and Hans Sloane, and he was involved with many London collectors: many letters have survived. Joyce Zelen discovered a new catalogue in which Beverland offered 4,900 prints and drawings for sale in London on 12 November 1690.¹⁶ That will be used here as comparison material.

The catalogue starts with the heading 'Italian prints', where, as with Cartwright, we see Rembrandt included. Beverland (or the auctioneer?), like Cartwright, uses the term 'Italian' for non-British prints. This was apparently common in the London art trade of the time. Other artists absent from Cartwright’s list, such as the Flemings Van Dyck and Rubens, and Marcellus Laroon I (c. 1648/9-1702) who was born in The Hague, are listed in Beverland’s catalogue among the Italian prints.

In this catalogue we find several names that are absent from Cartwright’s list, such as Ugo da Carpi (c. 1480-1532), a maker of chiaroscuro woodcuts. Cartwright seems to have owned only engravings and etchings, as he does not mention the names of makers of chiaroscuro woodcuts or mezzotints. Like Pepys, Beverland owned many prints by French printmakers. There are separate books mainly containing portraits, one with prints by the Frenchman Claude Mellan (1598-1688), one with prints by Pietro Testa (1611-1650) and Dürer, one with prints by Gerard de Lairesse (1641-1711), a collection of Lucas van Leyden, and one with prints by Callot. What is present in Beverland's collection, but inevitably missing from Cartwright’s collection, are prints related to the Glorious Revolution of 1688: he died two years earlier.

The print collection of the actor Thomas Betterton (1635-1710) [25] was sold in 1710 in 147 lots with 2,680 prints.¹⁷ Betterton, who was 35 years younger than Cartwright, is known to have visited France. There he not only performed, but also collected works of art. Consequently he has more French prints, also made by younger artists, such as Antoine Coypel (1661-1722), Adam Frans van der Meulen (1632-1690), Robert Nanteuil (1623-1678), Jean Lepautre (1618-1682) and Israel Silvestre (1621-1691). The Dutch printmakers Jan Luyken (1649-1712) and Abraham Bloteling (1640-1690) belong to a younger generation.¹⁸ Bloteling came to London with Prince Rupert (1619-1682), where he focused on portraits in mezzotint in the period 1673-1678. As mentioned, artists who worked in the mezzotint technique do not appear to be represented in Cartwright’s collection.

According to Ferdinand, Betterton’s ‘greater concern seemed to be to gather material for the theatre’.¹⁹ Betterton has, for instance, costume prints that seem to be missing from Cartwright’s collection, as are maps. Apparently, Cartwright was not so much concerned with the subject of the prints as with their aesthetic quality, or at least with the names of the artists. The oldest Netherlandish prints in Betterton’s collection are those by Maarten van Heemskerck (1498-1574) and Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617). However, the prints by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) and the early German masters that are represented on Cartwright’s page with ‘Markes of ye Best prints’ (Appendix 2) are missing from Betterton’s collection.

It is clear that the names that we encounter in Cartwright's five pages of notes on prints can generally be found among the major collectors in London (Pepys, Courten and Beverland). However, all three also owned work by many more artists than Cartwright. It seems that French prints mainly had to be purchased in France. Was the art trade between London and France less developed than that with the Netherlands and Italy? The fact that Betterton did not have any prints by the early German and Netherlandish printmakers could indicate that Cartwright had better access to the art market (because he was still dealing in prints and Betterton was now only acting?). Or was Betterton more interested in the use of his prints for his profession as an actor and less in important names?

However, the fact that Cartwright's six albums of prints were pawned for just £3 by Jane Johnson might indicate that the prints in those albums were not very highly regarded, while good copies of Italian Renaissance prints and prints by Albrecht Dürer were worth several pounds each individually.²⁰ It may well be that Cartwright did not have the best quality prints in his possession.

22
John Hayls
Portrait of Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), 1666
London (England), National Portrait Gallery, inv./cat.nr. NPG 211

23
Anonymous c. 1655
Portrait of William Courten (1642-1702), c. 1655
London (England), British Museum, inv./cat.nr. Painting.7

24
Gottfried Kneller
Portrait of Hadriaan Beverland (1650-1716), dated 1689
Oxford (England), Bodleian Library (University of Oxford)

25
Robert Williams after Gottfried Kneller published by Edward Cooper
Portrait of Thomas Betterton (c. 1635-1710), c. 1700-1704
London (England), British Museum, inv./cat.nr. 1935,0413.20