Rocznik Muzeum Narodowego w Warszawie (1(37).2012/2013)

Antoni Ziemba Modus Rusticus as a Model of Dutch Social Identity...

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Michael Montias, Marten Jan Bok and Michael North deemed the “fast technique” an attempt
to expand the market to create attractive offers for potential clients, in addition to the system
of official and private commissions. The fast technique of painting was meant to be a product
of the free contemporary art market in Holland, i.e., in the 1620s and 1630s, as well as a way
of creating a new market demand. The new type of painting sold easily because it was cheap
and it created demand because, being mass-produced, it generated a fashion for a “simple
though artistically sophisticated” product.48 It seems that the most sensible interpretation
of the “fast technique” was to treat it as a particular artistic concept and invention, an idea
for a new type of painting, aiming to please the novitas customer and to excite him with the
virtuosity obtained from such modest means - measuring up to the famous model of Apelles,
who painted using only four colours: white, ochre, red and black (Pliny’s Historia naturalis,
XXXV, 5o).49 Artists had various motivations for adopting “Apelles’ invention,” depending
on their social or financial position, although it was always a conscious step in their career
development.50 Samuel van Hoogstraten was probably right in claiming that many artists
adopted the formula of a fast and cheap painting method, not so much for material gain, as
for winning a reputation among art lovers. In his description of Jan van Goyen’s technique, he
emphasizes the latter’s conscious rivalry (wedstrijcT) with the inventions of Jan Porcellis and
François de Knippbergen - the masters of single-tonal “grey” or “greyish-brown” landscapes
and seascapes. In Van Hoogstraten’s opinion, the quintessence of such painters’ mastery, es-
pecially that of Van Goyen, was the ability to control the “chaos of natural hues” and to extract
the true world order concealed within that chaos, by means of the virtuosity and confidence
of the brushstroke.51 The limited palette and modest technique brought that virtuosity to the
fore, making reference to the aforementioned Apelles’s model in Pliny’s work, as well as the
generally known “courtly” model of elegant nonchalance in mannerist literature (sprezzatura
in Baldassare Castiglione’s work): the feeling of an apparent artistic ease, which appeared
stronger the more technical difficulties the artist had to overcome.
On the other hand, in the case of Jan van de Cappelle, he was probably the last of the artists
who had to succumb to the need to economize in their work and production. He belonged
to the rich Amsterdam elite, being a tradesman, art dealer and outstanding collector. From
1648/1649 to 1660, he became the master of the simple, “quiet” seascape, in my opinion not
48 John M. Montias, “Cost and Value in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art,” Art History, vol. 10 (1987),
pp. 455-66; Montias, “The influence of economic factors on style>” De Zeventiende Eeuw, 6 (1990), pp. 49-57; Marten
J. Bok, Vraag en aanbood op de Nederlandse kunstmarkt 1580-1/00 / Supply and demand in the Dutch art market, 1580-
1700 (Utrecht: Universiteit Utrecht, 1994), pp. 116-7; Michael North, Kunst und Kommerz im Goldenen Zeitalter. Zur
Sozialgeschichte der niederländischen Malerei des 1/. Jahrhunderts (Cologne-Weimar-Vienna: Böhlau, 1992), pp. 120-4;
Michael North, “Kunst en handel. Culturele betrekkingen tussen Nederland en steden in het zuidelijke Oostzeegebied,”
in Karel Davids, Jan Lucassen, A Miracle Mirrored. The Dutch Republic in European Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995), pp. 286-7.
49 In this direction - of considering the tonal, monochromatic formula as a consciously chosen rhetori-
cal model - go the intentions of the article by Eric J. Sluijter’s (“Jan van Goyen als marktleider, virtuoos en verni-
euwer,” in Christian Vogelaar et al., Jan van Goyen, exh. cat., Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal Leiden, 12 October
1996 -13 January 1997 (Leiden-Zwolle: Waanders, 1996), pp. 39-59, esp. pp. 45-48) as well as Lawrence O. Goedd’s
(“Naturalism as Convention. Subject, style, and artistic self-consciousness in Dutch landscape,” in Looking at
Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art. Realism Reconsidered, Wayne Franks, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997), pp. 129-43) both tend in this direction, i.e., acknowledging the tonal monochromatic formula as a conscious
selection of a rhetorical model.
50 Ziemba, Iluzja i realizm..., op. cit.
51 Samuel van Hoogstraten, Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst (Dordrecht: Fransois van
Hoogstraeten, 1678), quoted after: Sluijter, Jan van Goyen als marktleider..., op. cit., pp. 45-6.