14.6 Conclusion
Of course, following the old masters was common practice in late 18th- and early 19th- century Britain. Royal Academy president Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) urged his students to learn from the Dutch old masters and the British Institution organised old master exhibitions with the specific aim to encourage the modern generation of British artists. Imitatio et emulatio was the credo. But while emulatio may have been the ultimate goal in theory, imitatio certainly did not mean a lack of success in common artistic practice.
The previous sections have shown that in the wake of the old masters, modern Dutch artists found opportunities to establish themselves in the promising art market of late 18th- and early 19th-century Britain. The paintings of the Dutch landscape painters were often specified with Dutch geographical notions in the exhibitions and sales catalogues. However, they seem to have applied their Dutch style of painting within an English or unspecified entourage as well. As time passed on the Dutch depicted local sites and general natural views. It were not so much the specific places in 17th-century Holland, but general features of Dutch landscape painting that appealed to the late 18th and early 19th century English elites: the timeless picturesque and rural scenery that could equally be found on English soil or anywhere else. The valuation of the old masters in the British art market also created other opportunities for these Dutch migrants, outside painting. Their knowledge of Dutch art, background and networks also helped in other activities within the art world. They became engravers, dealers, restorers, copyists, experts and dealers. Anglo-Dutch cooperations took place both in the field of painting, in the case of De Koningh, and in secondary activities such as the publication of books on Dutch art.
The Dutch answered to British taste at the turn of the 18th century, in which 17th-century Dutch painting, particularly landscape painting, represented a cultural ideal that was reflected in timeless pictorial values of the picturesque, equally adopted in British modern painting. Living Dutch artists promoted and profited from this by creating similar pictures and offering easy access to those by the old masters through secondary resources. By doing so, they created opportunities of artistic exchange and Anglo-Dutch commercial collaborations and they contributed to a more general phenomenon in British culture at the turn of the 18th century.