Etchings of Wenceslaus Hollar in the Collections of the Folger Shakespeare Library

Transcription

1 Slavic & East European Information Resources ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: Etchings of Wenceslaus Hollar in the Collections of the Folger Shakespeare Library Rachel Doggett To cite this article: Rachel Doggett (2010) Etchings of Wenceslaus Hollar in the Collections of the Folger Shakespeare Library, Slavic & East European Information Resources, 11:2-3, 64-76, DOI: / To link to this article: Published online: 08 Sep Submit your article to this journal Article views: 627 View related articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at Download by: [ ] Date: 25 November 2017, At: 04:32

2 Slavic & East European Information Resources, 11: 64 76, 2010 Copyright Ó Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: print/ online DOI: / Etchings of Wenceslaus Hollar in the Collections of the Folger Shakespeare Library RACHEL DOGGETT Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, District of Columbia, USA The Folger Shakespeare Library holds more than 2,000 examples of the etchings of the seventeenth-century Bohemian artist Wenceslaus Hollar, who was born in Prague but spent most of his adult life in England. The strengths of the Folger Library s Hollar collection are described with emphasis on Hollar s copies of artworks in the Arundel collection; his book illustrations, particularly those he produced for the publisher John Ogilby and the antiquary Sir William Dugdale; his maps and topographical views, most notably his views of London made before the Great Fire of 1666; and his detailed studies of English and European women s costume. KEYWORDS Wenceslaus Hollar, Folger Shakespeare Library, Earl of Arundel, John Ogilby, Sir William Dugdale, Great Fire of London, London views, London maps, St. Paul s Cathedral, Prague views, costume history INTRODUCTION The Folger Shakespeare Library, an independent research library located on Capitol Hill, is best known for its collection of Shakespeare materials, the largest in the world. It is also well-known to scholars for its collections of early English and Continental books dating from the mid-fifteenth to the mid-eighteenth century, as well as for its collections of manuscripts, works of art, theatrical programs, playbills, promptbooks, and memorabilia. 1 The library holds more than 2,000 examples of the work of the seventeenth-century Bohemian artist Wenceslaus Hollar, who was born in Prague but spent most of his adult life in England. Address correspondence to Rachel Doggett, MSLS, Curator of Books Emerita, Folger Shakespeare Library, 201 East Capitol Street S.E., Washington, DC 20003, USA. tregaron@verizon.net 64

3 Etchings of Wenceslaus Hollar 65 Approximately 500 Hollar etchings are in the Folger art collection, while the rest are in early printed books. 2 Since the Folger s collection of seventeenth-century English books is one of its greatest strengths, it is not surprising to find Hollar well represented. It was only in 1996, however, that the Folger undertook a comprehensive survey of its holdings of this artist s work and displayed some of the best examples in the exhibition Impressions of Wenceslaus Hollar. 3 The library has continued to add to its Hollar collection. Wenceslaus Hollar s etchings of buildings such as St. Paul s, his topographical views and maps, his copies of the works of other artists, and his precise studies of women s costume are invaluable records of artifacts, buildings, and landscapes that in many cases no longer exist. They form one of the richest visual records we have of seventeenth-century England and English life from some of the minutiae of everyday life to the grandeur and spectacle of public spaces and events. But it was not only English life that Hollar recorded. There are views of European cities and buildings based on sketches he made as early as the 1620s and 1630s, Dutch seascapes and ships, and plates of the costume of European women of various locales and stations in life. The most comprehensive and authoritative listing of the more than 2,700 etchings Hollar produced is Richard Pennington s Descriptive Catalogue of the Etched Work of Wenceslaus Hollar (1982). The etchings referred to in this paper are in the Folger collections under a variety of shelfmarks and will be identified here only by their Pennington numbers. 4 For the most part, I have grouped the etchings I discuss by subject, but the arrangement is chronological as well, illustrating something of Hollar s evolution as an artist and his responses to the events of the time in which he lived. HollarwasborninPraguein1607.TheretheHolyRomanEmperor,Rudolf II, had surrounded himself with many eminent painters, sculptors, scientists, and philosophers. It seems likely that as a boy Hollar must have visited printsellers stalls and artists studios. Although his family did not encourage his artistic ambitions, there are early works that indicate that Hollar received some training in the art of etching before he left Prague in 1627, possibly from Aegidius Sadeler, whohadbeenappointedimperialprintmakerbyrudolf. 5 When he left his native city, Hollar traveled through Europe, spending time in Stuttgart, Strasbourg, Frankfurt, Cologne, and Amsterdam. While in Frankfurt he worked in the shop of Matthaeus Merian, well known as a printer of maps and bird s-eye views. 6 Among works in the Folger Library from this early period of travel are two sets of the Seasons produced in Strasbourg in One, after Jan van de Velde, consists of scenes of peasant life (P618 P621) while the other comprises views of Strasbourg and activities of each of the seasons (P622 P625). THE ARUNDEL ART COLLECTION In 1636, in Cologne, the Earl of Arundel invited Hollar to join the English diplomatic mission to the Emperor Ferdinand in Vienna. The embassy included

4 66 R. Doggett FIGURE 1 The Long View of Prague, 1649, center section (P880). By Permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. a stop in Prague that would be Hollar s last visit to the city of his birth. While there he made drawings that he later used for his Long View of Prague (P880; see Figure 1). 7 Hollar recorded the entire Arundel journey in more than one hundred drawings and watercolors, most of which are still extant. 8 By the end of 1636, Hollar had traveled to England to produce etchings of works of art in the growing collection of the Earl and Countess of Arundel. 9 According to George Vertue, the Earl of Arundel intended for Hollar and Hendrik van der Borcht the younger, his curator, to draw and etch items in the collection for publication. 10 Among etchings of works in the Arundel collection to be found in the Folger Library are Hollar s portrait of Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII, after a drawing by Holbein, 1649 (Figure 2; P1342), and his Infant Hercules Asleep after Parmigianino (Figure 3; P275). The Folger collection contains a number of other Hollar etchings after Holbein, including Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, 1642 (P74), an etching based on a colored miniature by Holbein that was once in Arundel s possession and is now in the Windsor Castle collection. There are other etchings after Parmigianino and some after Leonardo drawings (Hollar etched sixty in the Arundel collection) as well as etchings after Dürer and others. As David Jaffé points out, much of the Arundel art collection is known to us through Hollar s etchings. 11 Most of Hollar s prints of moths, butterflies, and insects, 1646 (P A), based on drawings in the Arundel collection, are also in the Folger Library.

5 Etchings of Wenceslaus Hollar 67 FIGURE 2 Anne Boleyn after a drawing by Holbein, 1649 (P1342). By Permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. COSTUME STUDIES By 1638 Hollar was beginning to do some work for London stationers. 12 Most of the title pages and illustrations that Hollar produced for the English book trade in the late 1630s and 1640s are in the Folger. It was during this period that Hollar began work on the twenty-six plates for his Ornatus Muliebris Anglicanus, or, The Severall Habits of English Women (P1778 P1803). Published in 1640, they

6 68 R. Doggett FIGURE 3 The Infant Hercules Asleep after Parmigianino, undated (P275). By Permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. mark the beginning of Hollar s association with the printseller Peter Stent, whose name appears on state two of the title page. The Folger has two sets of these plates in various states printed from about 1640 through Hollar s interest in costume had begun during the years he traveled on the Continent. Some of his early plates of Continental fashions published in Cologne in the years 1630 to 1636 (P1646 P1669) are in the Folger. By the first part of his series of European women had appeared in London under the title Theatrum Mulierum, and it was followed by a second part the next year under the title Aula Veneris. These two sets of plates were probably intended to make up one series. Pennington discusses their history in some detail (see P1804 P1907).

7 Etchings of Wenceslaus Hollar 69 In the series of costume plates and in his nine etchings of muffs and other articles of fur, (P1945 P1952A, only one of which, P1951, is in the Folger), Hollar s fascination with texture and his talents as a miniaturist are apparent. He recorded the tiniest details of fur, lace, and fabric with unusually delicate and intricate lines and preserved a wealth of information for students of fashion history. Hollar s three series of the Seasons personified as English women, produced between 1641 and 1644 (P606 P617), are in larger format than the costume series but display the same attention to textures and detail (Figure 4, Spring, P610). The changing styles in English fashion represented in the Ornatus Muliebris Anglicanus plates and the Seasons have been discussed by J. L. Nevinson. 13 Richard Godfrey has demonstrated that some of the plates were based on Van Dyck paintings. 14 Most of the plates in these series are in the Folger collection. POLITICS AND THE MOVE TO ANTWERP Hollar lost the patronage of the Earl of Arundel in 1642 when Arundel left England because of the growing conflict between king and parliament. He turned to London book- and printsellers for work. For Thomas Jenner, a competitor of the printseller Peter Stent, Hollar began producing illustrations depicting events of the civil wars. These include some of his least-known works, roughly drawn images that are difficult to associate with the artist who produced the Spring of Figure 4. One series of prints known as the Parliamentary Mercies was used in at least five pamphlets printed by Jenner. The plates, each of which originally consisted of two scenes with captions, one scene above the other, have a complicated history. Some were cut in half and the halves used later in completely different contexts with captions imperfectly erased. 15 See Pennington P491A for this series and P491B for a set of comparable prints, the Teares of Ireland. The Folger has representative examples of differing states in both series. Such quickly and cheaply turned out newsbook illustrations, as well as portraits and maps by Hollar and others, permitted everyone to keep up with news of the civil wars. 16 Hollar s Map of England and view of Prague (P543) produced during the same period is a markedly different and finely executed work that reflects some of Hollar s own experiences. A detailed bird s-eye view of the Battle of the White Mountain of 1620 appears beside a map of England and scenes of the beginning of the civil wars. 17 Hollar left Prague in the aftermath of the Battle of the White Mountain, and he would leave England soon after the civil wars there deprived him of his patron. In 1644 Hollar left London for Antwerp. There he produced many of his etchings of works in the Arundel collection, presumably from drawings he made during his time in the Arundel household. Holbein was one of the artists whose works Hollar copied, and while he was in Antwerp Hollar turned to Holbein s Dance of Death as a reference while etching his own series (P233 P266), which

8 70 R. Doggett FIGURE 4 Spring, 1641 (P610). By Permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. the Folger has. These are some of Hollar s most successful works, displaying again his talents as a miniaturist as well as his eye for fashion and architecture. Each of the etchings was printed within one of three borders designed by Abraham Diepenbeeck. 18 During his stay in Antwerp Hollar collaborated with

9 Etchings of Wenceslaus Hollar 71 other artists, possibly for the first time. Among these were Pieter van Avont and Jacques van Artois, as well as the engraver Paulus Pontius. In The Seated Huntress (P276) and The Sleeping Huntress (P277) after Van Avont, for instance, figures and drapery were engraved by Pontius while Hollar etched the backgrounds. 19 In Antwerp, Hollar also produced a number of views of London and the English countryside. One of his finest works from these years is his Long View of London (P1014). Printed in Amsterdam by Cornelius Danckers in 1647 from six plates that form seven sections (the Folger lacks one), it depicts the city of London in one long panorama and is the most complete view of the city before the Great Fire of Much of our knowledge of what the city and its buildings looked like comes from this view and from Hollar s etchings of individual buildings, well represented in the Folger collection. RETURN TO ENGLAND: OGILBY AND DUGDALE By the beginning of 1652, Hollar had returned to England, where he went to work for the publisher John Ogilby and the antiquarian Sir William Dugdale. Over the next twenty-five years he would produce over 500 plates for these two men alone. 21 Soon after his return, Hollar was producing plates for Ogilby s deluxe English translation of Virgil that would appear in 1654 and was working on Dugdale s Antiquities of Warwickshire, The History of St. Pauls Cathedral, and the Monasticon Anglicanum. Ogilby, who was a pioneer in issuing large, illustrated folio volumes, had prepared his own translation of Virgil and had commissioned illustrations from a number of artists, including Franz Cleyn, who prepared most of the designs. Hollar etched forty-three plates after Cleyn and the dedication and arms on eleven others. 22 It seems likely that he also collaborated with the French engraver Pierre Lombart on the backgrounds of many of the remaining plates. 23 Ogilby re-used the plates in 1658 and 1663 editions of the Latin text and in a 1668 edition of the English translation. In 1697 the plates appeared again in a new edition of Virgil translated by John Dryden and published by Jacob Tonson. 24 Some of the complicated history of these plates, described by Pennington (P290 P332), can be traced through the successive editions available at the Folger Library: the 1654, 1665, and 1675 Ogilby editions and the 1697 and 1698 Dryden editions. Hollar worked with Ogilby again in the 1660s. Ogilby s description of the coronation of Charles II, The Entertainment of His Most Excellent Majestie Charles II, in his Passage Through the City of London to his Coronation (1662), shows the entire royal cavalcade etched by Hollar on narrow strips of paper that when put together are 228 inches long (P570 P574). 25 In 1665 Hollar was once again producing etchings for Ogilby, this time for his folio edition of Aesop s Fables (P333 P390A). Hollar s interior scenes preserve valuable information on the appearance and furnishings of seventeenth-century English rooms even though the occupants are animals. Ogilby re-issued the Aesop in 1668, probably

10 72 R. Doggett because he lost most of his stock of the first edition in the Great Fire of London. 26 With the 1668 edition he included his own Aesopics, or A Second Collection of Fables, for which Hollar produced eighteen new plates (P391 P408A). The 1668 re-issue and the 1673 edition are in the Folger. Hollar s collaboration with the antiquary Sir William Dugdale began in 1654 and resulted in some of his most important work. Dugdale had spent many years recording the history of British medieval institutions, particularly the monasteries. Although he did not describe the buildings themselves, he recognized their importance and engaged artists to prepare accurate views of them for publication in his Monasticon Anglicanum. 27 Work was already well underway when Hollar returned to England from Antwerp. The first volume of the Monasticon was published in 1655 and contained only ten plates entirely by Hollar out of sixty-nine in the volume. Volumes two and three (1661 and 1673) each contained significantly more of Hollar s work. In the meantime, however, Dugdale s The Antiquities of Warwickshire had appeared in 1656 with 183 Hollar etchings (maps, views, monuments and tombs, figures and coats of arms in windows, etc.). The History of St. Pauls Cathedral followed in These works by Dugdale are all present in the Folger collection. THE GREAT FIRE Hollar had some involvement in most of Dugdale s works. His plates for the Monasticon were at the time probably the most precise renderings of church architecture that had been produced in England. 28 His etchings for The History of St. Pauls Cathedral are the only accurate records of the interior of the cathedral as it appeared before the Great Fire. Hollar etched plates of all sides of the exterior of the church, of the nave, choir, and crypt, as well as of tombs, monuments, and the glass. When the Great Fire began, booksellers who had stalls in the churchyard moved their stock into St. Faith s, their guild church located in St. Paul s crypt, but the crypt was doomed with the rest of the building. Among the losses were 300 copies of The History of St. Pauls and five of Hollar s copperplates. 29 Shortly after the Fire, Hollar etched two bird s-eye views of the destroyed city (P1003 P1004; the Folger has only P1004). John Evelyn claimed to have been influenced by one of these plates when preparing the plans he intended to submit for the rebuilding of the city. 30 Hollar also produced parallel views of London before and after the fire (P1015), which the Folger has. These are long views, one of the untouched city above one of the smoldering remains. In 1660, prior to the fire, Hollar had made plans for what he hoped would be his masterpiece, a map of London and Westminster that was to contain 10 Foot in bredth and 5 Foot upward wherein shall be expressed not onely the Streets, Lanes, Alleys, &c. proportionably measured: but also the Buildings...as much resembling the likeness of them, as the Convenience of the roome will

11 Etchings of Wenceslaus Hollar 73 permitt. Example whereof is in Considerable part to be seen... A single surviving prospectus for this map signed by Hollar (from which the above quotation is taken) is a small treasure to be found in the Folger Library (Figure 5). 31 Hollar s experience and the drawings and information he had accumulated over the years had certainly prepared him for such a huge FIGURE 5 Propositions concerning the map of London (signed by Wenceslaus Hollar, 1660). By Permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

12 74 R. Doggett FIGURE 6 Bird s-eye plan of the west central district of London (P1002). By Permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. undertaking. The Great Fire, however, brought an end to Hollar s plans. The money to fund his project could not be found. Yet two copies of what is probably the example described in the prospectus have survived (Figure 6; P1002). One is in the Folger Library (recently acquired) and the other in the British Museum. 32 CONCLUSION There are many other Hollar etchings in the Folger collection that have not been described here: his long view of Greenwich (P977); his small scenes around London; his work for Elias Ashmole and other antiquaries besides Dugdale; his portraits, including the remarkable ones of a young negro and negress and an American indian (P2003, P2006, P2007, P2009); and his views of Tangier (P1187 P1202) undertaken in 1669, just eight years before his death. Hollar s renderings of the tiniest details of lace and fur and of the larger elements of architecture and landscape are things for which he is often cited. His plates for Dugdale are precise architectural records and are unencumbered

13 Etchings of Wenceslaus Hollar 75 by the human figures that would give the buildings life. In his strikingly beautiful etching of Antwerp Cathedral made in 1649 (P824), however, he placed the building at the heart of a city, central to the lives of the people he shows moving through and around it. In a few instances the execution of the Earl of Strafford (P552) and the signing of the Peace of Münster (P561) Hollar captured the tension and excitement of crowds of people, hundreds of bodies pressing forward to witness an important event. One of Hollar s last etchings was a view of Prague dated 1676 but based on a drawing made fifty years earlier (P879). Only two impressions are known (one in the Royal Library, Windsor, and one in private hands). He etched other views of Prague as well, and the Folger has three of these (P748, P776, P880), one being the Long View of1649onthreeassembledsheets(figure1;p880).althoughheleft Prague as a young man, Hollar never forgot his origins. On his plate of the nave of St. Paul s, prepared in the 1650s, he expressed his concern for its deteriorating condition, identifying himself as: Wenceslaus Hollar the Bohemian illustrator of this church (which daily expects its fall), and once its admirer, [who] will thus preserve its memory. Hollar died in 1677 at the age of seventy while he was working on plates for Robert Thoroton s The Antiquities of Nottinghamshire.He had worked throughout his life, etching needle in hand, to preserve for us many aspects of the age in which he lived. His work is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in seventeenth-century England and Europe. NOTES 1. For information about the Folger Shakespeare Library, its history, and its collections, consult the library s Web site at 2. Address inquiries about the Folger Library s Hollar collection to Dr. Erin Blake, Curator of Art and Special Collections, at eblake@folger.edu. 3. The exhibition catalog, Rachel Doggett, Julie L. Biggs, and Carol Brobeck, Impressions of Wenceslaus Hollar (Washington, DC, 1996), is available at the Folger Library. 4. Hollar s etchings have been well-documented in three successive works: George Vertue, A Description of the Works of the Ingenious Delineator And Engraver Wenceslaus Hollar: Disposed into Classes of Different Sorts, With Some Account of his Life (London, 1745 and London, 1759); Gustav Parthey, Wenzel Hollar: Beschreibendes Verzeichniss seiner Kupferstiche (Berlin: Nicolai, 1853); and Richard Pennington, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etched Work of Wenceslaus Hollar, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), which maintains Parthey s numbering and classification, but with corrections and additions. 5. Richard T. Godfrey, Wenceslaus Hollar: a Bohemian Artist in England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), See John Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Oliver Lawson Dick (London: Secker and Warburg, 1949), ; and Godfrey, Wenceslaus Hollar, Godfrey, Wenceslaus Hollar, For an account of the journey, see Francis C. Springell, Connoisseur & Diplomat: The Earl of Arundel s Embassy to Germany in 1636 as Recounted in William Crowne s Diary, the Earl s Letters, and Other Contemporary Sources: With a Catalogue of the Topographical Drawings... by Wenceslaus Hollar (London: Maggs Bros., 1963). 9. Pennington, A Descriptive Catalogue, xxiii-xxv.

14 76 R. Doggett 10. George Vertue, Vertue Note Books, 6 vols., Walpole Society Publications 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 30 (Oxford: Printed for the Walpole Society by J. Johnson at the University Press, ), 1:47. See also David Jaffé, et al., The Earl and Countess of Arundel: Renaissance Collectors. (London: Apollo Magazine, 1995), 12, Jaffé, et al., The Earl and Countess, Pennington, A Descriptive Catalogue, xxix. It seems likely that the writer Henry Peacham introduced Hollar to some of London s printers and booksellers. For more on Peacham, see David Howarth, Lord Arundel and his Circle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), See J. L. Nevinson, The Four Seasons (King s Lynn: The Costume Society, 1979), Godfrey, Wenceslaus Hollar, See Impressions of Wenceslaus Hollar, 24 27, on pamphlets in the Folger Library containing these etchings. See also Tamsyn Williams, Magnetic Figures : Polemical Prints of the English Revolution in Lucy Gent and Nigel Llewellyn, eds., Renaissance Bodies: The Human Figure in English Culture, c (London: Reaktion Books, 1990), See Alexander Globe, Peter Stent, London Printseller (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1985), The Folger Library copy of the map appears as the frontispiece to John Rushworth, Historical Collections, vol. 1 (London: Tho. Newcomb for George Thomason, 1659). 18. Pennington, A Descriptive Catalogue, For more about Hollar s associations with other artists and print publishers in Antwerp, see Jacqueline Burgers, Wenceslaus Hollar: Seventeenth-Century Prints from the Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (Alexandria, VA: Art Services International, 1994), For more on the Long View, see Burgers, Wenceslaus Hollar, 18, Pennington, A Descriptive Catalogue, xxxiv. 22. Pennington, A Descriptive Catalogue, xxxiv, P290 P See Impressions of Wenceslaus Hollar, The long and complicated history of Hollar s plates for Ogilby s Virgil after they left his hands has been described by Pennington in A Descriptive Catalogue, xxxix-xl and P290 P See Pennington, A Descriptive Catalogue, Pennington, A Descriptive Catalogue, xliii, P333 P408A. 27. Graham Parry, The Trophies of Time: English Antiquarians of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 10, Parry, The Trophies of Time, 11, John E. N. Hearsey, London and the Great Fire (London: John Murray, 1965), See also William Dugdale, The History of St. Paul s Cathedral, 2nd ed. (London: Edward Maynard, 1716), xxx. 30. Pennington, A Descriptive Catalogue, xli-xlii. 31. Wenceslaus Hollar, Propositions Concerning the Map of London and Westminster &c: Which is in Hand by Wentsel Hollar (London, 1660). Folger MS X.d.454. This unique copy of the Propositions is Hollar s receipt for a sum received from Sir Edward Walker, who had been Arundel s secretary on the embassy to Vienna nearly twenty-five years earlier: I acknowledge to have received of Sr. Edward Walker, the Summe of 20 Shill[ing]es upon the Conditions aforesaid. 32. Wenceslaus Hollar, [Bird s-eye plan of the west central district of London] (London, ca. 1660).