Published papers

Is there a special place for the Low Countries in art history’s current debates on global mobility? How should we conceive of the globalization of Netherlandish art in the early modern period, and in what ways does the distinctively worldly orientation of the Netherlands in this period contribute to early modern visual culture? This volume examines how artworks produced in the wake of European expansion—art produced in the Netherlands in reaction to the world outside of Europe and art made outside of Europe in reaction to encounters with the Netherlands—help us better understand the cultural impacts of globalization.

Centered on a watercolor copy of Caspar Netscher’s The Lace Maker by Abraham Delfos, this study examines the cultural significance of Dutch reproductive drawings (natekeningen) produced around 1800. At the turn of the nineteenth century, a burgeoning “national taste” (nationale smaak) idealizing seventeenth-century Dutch art precipitated a dramatic surge in the market value of certain types of paintings from that era depicting the modest, unadorned daily life of burghers. The present inquiry seeks to illuminate how reproductive drawings both reflected and catalyzed this aesthetic shift, particularly through an examination of Delfos’s multifaceted career as an artist, dealer, and director of the Leiden Academy. His intimate connections with elite collectors, such as the Van Leyden family, provide a lens through which to clarify the production and function of these works. Transcending their status as mere copies, these exquisitely rendered drawings served as a vital medium for conveying the pictorial features and qualities of highly prized masterpieces in private collections, to which direct access was sometimes limited. Within a tight-knit network of connoisseurs, such works likely served as a form of social currency as part of a potential gift culture (C. Dumas 2021). The social substrate for this culture was provided by “Art Viewing Gatherings” (kunstbeschouwingen), which fostered the habit of collective appreciation and expert discussion. Ultimately, the exchange and appreciation of these individual drawings are presented as key factors in the broader reevaluation of seventeenth-century Dutch painting.