This time a complete wall covering dating from the 18th century is the subject of the In Pursuit of Provenance blog. In this series we discuss an object from the Netherlands Art Property Collection (NK Collection) on which in-depth provenance research is being carried out. Hopefully, this will enable more restitutions requests to be honoured and allow property to be returned to its rightful owners and their heirs.
This month we have a wall covering that now serves as a room divider. The most important questions about this object have not yet been answered: which house did it come from? Who were the original owners and who was in possession of it during the war?
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Front of room divider, former wall covering, with pastoral landscape. Approx. 1750-1800, NK3306-3308.
Just imagine: you are standing in a room in an elegant townhouse. Everywhere you look the four-metre-high walls are decorated. You see rolling hills, an Italian town in the distance, a woman on horseback riding by and a shepherd keeping his flock together beside a stream. It feels as if you are in a painting. That is what a period room must have looked like in a house in the north of the Netherlands at the end of the 18th century, where this wall covering once adorned the walls.
Already in the 17th century wealthy families had many paintings made to decorate their rooms. From ceiling paintings above doorways to scenes on the chimney breast or paintings to fill large sections of the wall. This grew in the 18th century when artists and home owners tried to create a more unified interior and the painted wall covering made its appearance. From pastoral landscapes to mythical depictions: one large scene was painted on all the walls to create a period room.
The provenance research
This wall covering with a pastoral landscape was recovered from Germany just after World War II. However, it was unknown who the work had belonged to before the war, so ultimately it became part of the NK Collection. This is why research on its provenance is currently being conducted. There was little or no provenance information at the start of the investigation: it is unknown how it ended up in Germany or in which house it must have originally hung. Remarkably, the canvas is no longer a wall covering but is stored at the Netherlands’ Collection Centre in Amersfoort as a folding room divider or screen, made up of several panels. It was converted into a room divider in 1962, measuring no less than 2.73 metres high and 8.8 metres wide (NK3306, 3307 and 3308). One section of the painting is now a separate panel, measuring 2.7 metres by 1.26 metres (NK3309).
A search of various archives has unfortunately not yielded anything. At the RKD, the Netherland Institute for Art History, the work is described as anonymous and in the archives of the Netherlands Art Property Foundation (SNK) it appears in an inventory book; with no clues to a possible provenance in either case. Databases such as the Getty Provenance index, Lost Art and the Munich Central Collecting Point have no information at all about the object.
Separate panel, former wall covering with pastoral landscape. Approx. 1750-1800, NK3309.
The first clue: a Groningen story
You don’t encounter a work of this size every day. Therefore the help of senior interior specialist Eloy Koldewij (Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, RCE) and art and interior historian Richard Harmanni was called upon. Harmanni offered the first pointer: it may well be a work by the German painter Hermannus Fridericus Carolus de Hosson (1718 - 1799). The wall covering (or: painted wallpaper) is very similar to wallpaper that can now be seen in the Ekenstein country house in Appingendam but which originally came from a house in Groningen.
The interior historian noted that the wallpaper showed the same treatment of the landscape and, in terms of the figures, a borrowing from the prints of Zuccarelli, something which De Hosson used in all his wall coverings. With an attribution to De Hosson it became clear that the house where this wall covering must have hung was somewhere in Groningen or Leeuwarden. De Hosson arrived in Groningen from Münster and worked for many years in and around the city, as well as in Leeuwarden in the final years of his life.
Can you help us?
Now we know who was the creator of NK3306, 3307, 3308 and 3309. And we know where the story of this wall covering began. But we don’t have all the facts yet. The most important questions about this object have still to be answered: in which house did it hang? Who were the original owners and who was in possession of it during the war?
Do you recognize this wall covering or do you know anything more about its origins? If so, please contact us at: restitutie@cultureelerfgoed.nl. Any leads, from either before or during the war, could be important in helping us to find the rightful owner.
Provenance researchers at the RCE
A team of provenance researchers at the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE) is working on renewed and additional provenance research on objects held in the Netherlands Art Property Collection (NK Collection). Part of their work is to make the research results accessible online and to extract relevant information and data in a sustainable manner. This major research impetus helps to bring the objects into even better focus.
This blog was written by Daniela Solano, provenance researcher at the RCE. Colour photos to follow.