HENDRICK VAN STEENWYCK THE YOUNGER (Antwerp 1580/82 – Leiden or The Hague 1649)
The Interior of a Gothic Church
signed with initials H. V. S with the H and V partially effaced along the right edge of the first step of the first altar in the lower left
oil on panel
21 x 26 3/4 inches (53 x 68 cm.)
PROVENANCE
Anonymous sale, Sotheby’s, London, December 3, 1969, lot 132, where purchased by
Gaunt
Estate of Paula Brown Glick, New York, acquired 1970’s until 2009, where acquired by
Lawrence Steigrad Fine Arts, New York, 2009, from whom purchased at TEFAF Maastricht, 2010 by
Private Collection, Italy until the present time
LITERATURE
Jeremy Howarth, The Steenwyck Family as Masters of Perspective, Pictura Nova XII, Brepols, Turnhout, Belgium, 2009, pp. 167-168, no. II. B 69. (as present whereabouts unknown) and p. 455 (illustrated)
Recent Acquisitions, Lawrence Steigrad Fine Arts, New York, 2010, no. 2 (illustrated)
Hendrick van Steenwyck the Younger was taught and painted in a style similar to that of his father Hendrick van Steenwyck the Elder (c. 1550–1603). His father worked in Aachen, Antwerp and Frankfurt-am-Main and is credited, together with his master Hans Vredeman de Vries, with rediscovering the art of perspective, using realistic if imaginary architectural scenes as the main subject of his paintings. [1]
It is believed that Steenwyck lived in Antwerp until 1586 and thereafter in Frankfurt. After the death of his father in 1603 it is assumed that he remained in Frankfurt until around 1609 when he returned to Antwerp. The start of the 1600s was a period in which the artist flourished and from which our painting dates. Karel van Mander in his 1604 The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters (Schilderboeck) already regarded Steenwyck as an established artist. He painted a wide range of subjects, foremost imaginary churches, as well as prison scenes, religious and mythological stories, plus fanciful Renaissance courtyards. In his architectural renderings he excelled at creating the illusion of reality and space. He was renowned for his meticulous work, and very realistic impressions of the architectural effects on light and shade, that must have astonished his contemporaries.[2]
The date of his marriage to fellow artist Susanna Gaspoel is unknown, but it is most probable that by 1617 when Steenwyck arrived in London, they were together. He achieved further success at the court of Charles I where he would remain for the next 20 years.[3] In collaboration with Cornelius Johnson and Daniel Mytens, he provided the backgrounds for portraits of Charles I and Henrietta Maria.[4] His painstaking methods and technique were described by another member of the court, Edward Norgate in Miniatura published in 1627 – 1628. Norgate was a noted scholar of the period’s art and an authority on the techniques and materials of miniature painting.[5] Along similar lines Haworth described Steenwyck’s style as “a combination of the miniaturist approach and the imaginative.[6] Also at court in the early 1630s, Anthony van Dyck drew Steenwyck’s portrait, later to be engraved and published in 1645 as part of Paulus Pontius’s the Iconography of Van Dyck drawings of contemporary leaders.
The exact date of Steenwyck’s departure from London is unrecorded, but by the early 1640s both Susanna and Steenwyck had executed paintings of the Lakenhal in Leiden. Also unknown is where they resided during this final period. What is known is that Steenwyck’s work was collected throughout Europe by connoisseurs and the nobility alike. His paintings were costly and as a result it is thought that the Steenwycks enjoyed a “prosperous lifestyle”.[7] This esteem endured, attested to by the many institutions that have his works in their collections. These include museums in the cities of Amsterdam, Baltimore, Brussels, Cologne, Copenhagen, Detroit, Dresden, Dublin, Essen, Frankfurt, The Hague, Kassel, Leipzig, London, New Haven, New York, Paris, Parma, Rome, Saint Petersburg, Stockholm, Vienna, Washington D.C., among numerous others.
In our painting the church’s interior is not site specific but meant to create the illusion of an Antwerp cathedral, as was typical in the majority of Steenwyck’s work and it is for these scenes that the artist is best known. Painstakingly rendered with precise detail these imaginary interiors were intended to transport the viewer through an illusion of time and space, via a familiar setting. The complexity of the architecture combined with the play of light and shade, a restrictive use of color, a non-symmetrical viewpoint that enhanced the perspective challenge, along with a low vantage point which provided an immediacy to the visual access, were his hallmarks.[8] In this panel they are masterfully realized to achieve the desired effect. Our view depicts a long and wide gothic church with a vaulted stone ceiling painted slightly left of center, paved with square light and dark flagstones. From the low vantage-point the viewer looks eastward down the nave to the choir screen through its open portal to the high altar. A number of side altars shown with both open and closed triptychs flank the sides of the nave, with a baptismal fount at its center. Light flows in from an unseen doorway and windows on the left side of the panel. As is traditional a beggar, here a young woman with her children, sit near the entranceway asking for alms; otherwise, elegant groups predominate the scene.
Frequently, as must be the case in this work, the painting was completed by Steenwyck and the staffage added later. This was common practice at the time and Steenwyck combined his skills with such artists as Theodoor van Thulden, Jan Brueghel I and II, Frans Francken the Younger, Cornelis van Poelenburgh, Adriaen van Stalbemt and Orazio Gentileschi among others. The staffage artist in this work remains unidentified, but his contribution plays a key role in the overall achievement of the realistically structured architectural space. Interestingly Howarth has noted that in these scenes the figures most prominently displayed probably constitute portraits of the family who commissioned the work or at least the staffage.[9] It would thus be plausible to suggest, viewing from left to right along the foreground that the woman giving alms, the strolling couple, mother and child, young lady with dog, and the matron conversing with a priest are all family members of the artist’s patron.
Paula Brown Glick, the last owner of the painting was an influential social anthropologist who resided in New York City. She devoted her career to the study of the country of Papua New Guinea and published her findings in books, articles and journals for more than forty years. Her 1978 monograph Highland Peoples of New Guinea was the first comparative discussion of these Highlands’ cultures. Her last book published in 1995, Beyond a Mountain Valley: The Simbu of Papua New Guinea is an ethnohistory of the Simbu people.
[1] Reprinted from Jeremy Howarth, “Hendrick van Steenwyck the Younger”, catalogue Lawrence Steigrad Fine Arts, Portraits and Other Recent Acquisitions, 2009, no. 8.
[2] Jeremy Howarth, The Steenwyck Family as Masters of Perspective, op.cit., pp. 7-9, 46, 52, 56, 58.
[3] Ibid, pp. 12, 16; The Royal Collection at Hampton Court still holds some 11 paintings by or partly by Steenwyck, mainly scenes of the Liberation of St. Peter.
[4] Examples of architectural backgrounds by Steenwyck to royal portraits are held in the Royal Collection at Hampton Court, Turin Galleria Sabauda, the Dresden Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, London National Portrait Gallery and the Copenhagen Statens Museum for Kunst.
[5] Edward Norgate, Miniatura or the art of limming, originally published in 1627 – 1628; modern edition eds. J.M. Muller and J. Murrell, New Haven & London, 1997; and entire paragraph Jeremy Howarth, op.cit., Lawrence Steigrad Fine Arts, 2009.
[6] Jeremy Haworth, The Steenwyck Family as Masters of Perspective, op.cit., p. 68.
[7] Ibid, pp. 36 -37.
[8] Ibid, pp. 48 – 52, 67.
[9] Ibid, pp. 47, 76.